TV script advice
 

I had another thread over in Greek Life where I asked for some information I needed to write my part of scripts for a potential TV show. The details are there, if you want to check on my veracity. People were really informative and helpful, but that thread seems to have died. Hence, this new one...

I've moved on to the next part of this scripting process: what goes on after our boy Steven accepts a bid and becomes a pledge. I've been interviewing a few guys here locally about this, but I thought -- as you people were so informative and helpful before -- that I'd put my questions here, too. Please respond to as many or as few as you want.

1. If there's a PM that several houses are rushing pretty hard, once he's accepted at bid to one house, how do the other houses find out about it? At my school, it was pretty informal, with actives just running into the guy on campus and noticing that he was wearing a pledge pin from some other house. But I imagine that on larger campuses, there could be published lists of each house's new pledges. Does this sound reasonable? What other ways does the news get circulated?
   
   
2. During the pledge training period, how much time is a pledge expected to spend at his fraternity house? How many days each a week is he expected to put in an appearance? How many hours a week?
   
   
3. How is the time spent? In a typical week, how many hours are pledges expected to work on the house? How many hours in required study periods? How much time in a typical week is spent in some kind of pledge training class?
   
   
4. Finally, and this is really specific: I've discovered a device that some fraternity uses to chart how hard each pledge is working to get to know the brothers. They call it The Matrix, and it's a big grid with pledges' name across the top and the brothers' names along the side. When someone feels they've "gotten to know" someone else, they initial the box where their names intersect. Once all the boxes contain two sets of initials, they know that every pledge has made an effort to get to know every brother and vice versa.
   
   I really want to include some of these conversations in the script, maybe show our guy working his butt off to talk to every guy, asking pretty much the same questions over and over. I think it could be a funny sequence in the script. Does anyone want to suggest what kinds of things a pledge would be expected to know about the brothers? I can make reasonable guesses, but you all have more experience at this than I do.

Thanks in advance for any help.

I'll try my hand at this.

1. Penn State has a pretty informal and private bid acceptance. It's pretty hard to find out what bid a PM accepted without talking to them. I know of one case when a kid who pledged and quit my fraternity this last fall was initiated into another fraternity in the spring. The only way we found out about it was because all of his former pledge brothers saw it on his Facebook status. However, I watched the movie Haze that had a pretty formal and very public bid acceptance with representatives from all houses in one place and an announcer announcing what bids PMs accepted. Watch the movie for a better idea of that.

2. I pledged last spring and most days I spent every waking hour that I wasn't in class at the house. In fact, a lot of days I spent my sleeping hours on a couch or futon at the house as well.

3. A good sized pledge class, if everyone is at the house at the same time, which never happens, could probably get chores done in one to three hours. I probably spent on average an hour on chores. Two hours of study stipulated. Pledge Training . . . ::repressing memories:: Only once a week and took as long as it took, tended to be at least two hours, often enough more. Funnily enough, never felt like it was that long. The rest of that time, being most afternoons and into the evening, you spend chilling with brothers.

4. I've talked with Skull pledges and DU pledges at away bars during my pledgeship. You talk with a brother enough and you tend to learn things about them. Funny stories, cool or interesting facts ect. As pledges a education was a lot easier if we knew a good amount of those stories and facts. Stuff I learned is that one of my brothers is a pretty proficient pugilist. Also stories about sexual conquest/ crazy places where someone had sex, crazy drug trips, crazy things done when drunk, out of the ordinary/ difficult thefts, (house pets, banners, composites) where the kinds of things that we were expected to know about brothers.

Hope that helps.

I'm a girl, so take it with a grain of salt as it's only what I've seen happen.

1. We have a pretty big bid day for guys. It's called Tear Night, because a guy goes to the house he's choosing and then tears up all his other bids. I kind of assume that the frats realize that if someone doesn't show up, they're not taking their bid. It's a pretty small school, so it's pretty easy to figure out who went where.

2. All the time. If you're not at class, you should be at the house (and saying you're going to class is not acceptable. Apparently some frats have brothers posted outside pledges' classes to check that they're there). The strategic way to deal with this is to schedule your classes so that they you only have an hour between classes, and can't get much done.

3. No idea, sorry.

4. This sounds good. I know one fraternity on my campus had a pledgeship that, outside of all the normal activities, included each pledge having to do one (or maybe a few) personal favor for each brother. Each pledge had a list of all the brothers on him at all times, and the brother would sign off after the favor was done. Some brothers were obviously pretty rough about it, and demanded a lot of petty little things (or big things) before signing off, but others were nice and just asked the pledge to drive them to the store. You couldn't initiate without having all the brothers sign off on you.

Hope this helped.

1) This might not work for TV, but a lot of campuses are going to online databases. Our campus uses a piece of software called ICS Recruiter. When a kid signs up for rush, he fills out a form that is filed with the Greek Life office. It has his HS GPA, activities, a picture, contact info, etc. All of the fraternities can see this stuff online. Once that kid pledges somewhere, we either get a phone call from him, find out via a Facebook update or on the database.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnCz5Loe3xA

Grand Valley State University in Michigan does a "Shout Out" where guys all get up and call out the fraternity they're joining. (They call out their new chapters at 1:50)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvEdMTQ7QP8

Here's a video of Central Michigan new sorority pledges doing the same. They call it "Jumping". (Go to 1:45 for beginning)

Some campuses have all the guys come to get their bids at a specific time and run out together - Southeast Missouri State, Northeastern Oklahoma, and Transylvania are 3 I can think of.

1. In my house, the Rush Chairman had a list of all outstanding bids, like a Sales Funnel Report, with where the person was in his decision process. It was the Rush Chair's responsibility to know if we had a pledge locked in or if we were going to lose him to another house.

2 & 3. Depends on the house. Some houses require a pledge to be only at meetings, functions, or dinner. Other require every hour when the pledge is not in class or sleeping or studying. At a minimum, most have a weekly pledge meeting to attend.

4. We use a small black book that had a page for each active. It had at a minimum each actives name, major, and hometown info on it but you could add any other info you wanted to remember (that got bonus points). When you did something good or crappy, an active could write a comment and associate points with the comment. (Like +20 because you bought me a beer, or -15 because you called me an ass). You had to complete the pages as a pledge, and keep a 0 or positive balance of points. It was a certainty that if you had a negative point balance with an active brother that you were in trouble and needed to fix the issue.

A pledge had to carry the book around on his person at all times (like wearing a pledge pin), and was to present it to any active who asked for it. The best thing I saw was one pledge who had girls sign the book for him (and you can imagine what they said).