Our Panhellenic Council Forbids Matching Outfits?!-Anybody Else?
 

Hi all!

I'm a new member, but I'll be active before fall recruitment. At our last recruitment workshop, we got the Panhell rules. In concordance w/ "no frills" policy, chapters cannot order/purchase identical outfits!!

Panhell defines identical as everyone buying the same item from the same store in the same color.

EXAMPLE: Our Recruitment Dir. cannot say "For 50's party, order the white button down shirts from page 34 of the J.Crew catalog, style A".

It's strange b/c I hear a lot of you ladies talking about identical pref dresses, and I'm like :eek: "wow!" I wish we could do that!

Anyone else dealing with this?

This is a TOTALLY new one on me!! I'd love to hear which campuses have this rule!!

Does this mean you guys can't order t-shirts from a Greek store or anything either? Because that would be wacked.

I do kinda see what they're saying in that everyone buying identical outfits can be a drain on the checkbook. Our Directors of Formal Recruitment have always been kinda trendy girls, and have always wanted us to go out and buy new expensive outfits and we've put our feet down on that. Not to say we dress like total slobs, but most of us don't feel like shopping at Abercrombie when we can get something the same (and probably better quality) at JCPenney's.

The "no frills" rules have been in effect for along time and up until I graduated still were. I just graduated a few years ago. If they are not rules any more-that is the new thing. I personally think it's inappropriate to expect everyone to wear the same thing. It is expensive, it is impractical and has nothing to do with sisterhood. Now if we all want to join the same cult I could see it.....

To clarify:

We CAN wear our chapter tees the first day. We made some violet and some white so we ALL wouldn't be matching.

Our outfits can be SIMILAR (i.e.-everyone in a brown V-neck top)
BUT not INDENTICAL (i.e.- everyone in the chocolate brown v-neck top from p. 234 of the Macy's catalog) It can't be the exact identical item from the same place.

There is a way around it:
For example, our philanthropy shirts are avalilble in 3 basic colors (navy,red,white) so we can all look uniform without technically matching.

So FYI, it's not as if we'll be @ recruitment looking like slobs or anything,lol.

:)

Say you have three styles of lettered t-shirts you can order, and everyone decides to order the same one. What happens then?

I've never heard of this, either. When I was an active, we were sent lists over the summer detailing the outfits that we were supposed to wear for each day of rush. However, the biggest part of it was stuff that 99.9% of us already had, and if someone didn't have it, they borrowed it from someone else. I hardly ever had to buy new stuff, and when I did, it was just like a cheap tank top or something. We never exactly matched, but we did wear similar outfits. I think it looked really nice. All the other houses on campus did this as well, so from my point of view it was perfectly normal.

My campus has the ULTIMATE no frills rush. No skits, no themes, no fresh flowers. We can't wear the same clothes. If you wear letter shirts the first night, they can't all be the same color. The same with Philanthropy t-shirts as well. Pref is the only night where you can wear similar clothing, but not identical.

We may get the same style of shirt, if we really like the design. We would just order them in 2 different colors. For example:If everyone likes the same rush tee design, we can order the shirts w/ the same design in 2 diff colors (40 purple and 40 white) that way, we don't all have the EXACT same shirt.

BASICALLY: Same shirt, different color OK.
Same shirts, same color, same store NOT OK

Hopefully you guys can understand better:)

They had something similar to this at a school where I was advising. You couldn't all wear the same exact shirt in the same exact color. First night you could wear chapter T-shirts, like if you have one screenprinted or matching letters. What we did was wore little polo shirts with denim. Some girls were red, others wore yellow or orange shirts. For the denim, no jeans, but capris and skirts were ok. So some wore capris and some wore jeans. It looked great and worked out fine.

We're allowed to wear matching shirts, like our letter shirts. We always order enough theme shirts for everyone (they come out of dues). We're not allowed to wear anything else that matches, though. Inevtiably, two or three girls are going to be wearing the same black cocktail dress for Pref, but if it's everyone, we could be in big trouble with Panhelleni

We're also not allowed to wear anything that could be constituted as a costume -- so, like, no matching hats, no completely matching outfits, nobody dressed up as the mascot, whatever. This year we did a country club theme and we all wore fake pearls, and there were some people who thought Panhell might come down on us for it. Fortunately, they didn't (and they didn't all match, so we could've probably gotten away from it).

Anyway, the chapter is really opposed to having to pay out of pocket for rush clothes, so we would never be able to say "okay, everyone go buy j. crew flip-flops in xyz style". We asked everyone to wear white bottoms for the same country club theme, and a lot of people got really angry because they didn't already own them. (I spent a lot of time explaining the "wear it with the tags on" concept. ;)) So we try and keep it to jeans or black pants as much as possible.

Elon is trying to enforce no-frills now, too :rolleyes: Personally I loved going to houses seeing everyone dressed alike. It showed unity, and it makes it easier in the crowded rooms to see where sisters were. Last year we all wore the same shirts, etc, but this year we could just say "wear a polo shirt in one of three colors and a denim skirt that comes to your knees." It's much easier to regulate proper attire when we all dress alike.

Here are the rules at my old school.
We can have:
1. Identical shirts, printed or unprinted, costing no more than $10.00 per member.

2. One (1) identical accessory/prop costing no more than $10.00 per member. Accessories/props include: shoes, hats, collars, belts, bow ties, and vests. Identical shorts, pants, skirts, pajamas, nightshirts, boxers, dresses, or jumpers are not accessories/props and therefore may not be worn.

So, the ultimate "no frills rush" doesn't allow y'all to get a discount order on ordering t-shirts.

Greek Doublespeak at its finest!!

That sounds like our rules to the letter.