recruitment themes
 

Hey ladies! As we are working on our recruitment for next fall, we decided to try a new theme seeing as our other one was quite outdated (Club AOII).

What are some themes your house has used, either in the past or even currently? I want to compile a list to share with our recruitment chair.

I was KD at Auburn in the mid-seventies. When I went through rush and then again my first year "on the other side" we did a "KD's Hades" party. We all had these red satin "hot pants," white shirts, I think, red satin capes and red devil horns. We served devils' food cupcakes with an alcohol-soaked sugar cube on top, aflame. It was really cute. It is a wonder that we didn't set something on fire! There was a skit complete with a devil......after my sophomore year some people decided that it was too "devilish" and they re-wrote the skit to include a "heavenly" side as well as a "hellish" one-I think some if not all of the actives wore angel outfits that year......now I am a Christian but frankly the original one didn't bother me, it was over-the-top and obviously tongue-in-cheek, but not long after I left they did away totally with that skit and went to a nautical theme, I think. I did keep that costume a long time though, I remember wearing it one Halloween with my mother wearing something equally as ridiculous and having a ball "trick or treating" a particular neighbor.....then my 2 year old wore the pants and cape and called herself the "princess of potatoes..."

That same 2 year old grew up to be a DDD at Alabama and they had a cute skit called "Fly Delta" where they turned the entire house ( and the house is actually ROUND) into an airport terminal.....cute!

I haven't thought about that devil costume for a long time--I wonder where it is?????

Club AOII isn't necessarily dated. The way your chapter presents it may be though. You could change it to Mocktails and make it more cocktail party style. If you get cocktail rounds (bar height tables w/ no chairs) it'll take up space and make the room appear fuller. It also give you a place to dispurse paraphanalia around the room.

No harm in looking to other themes though. The threads that came up with the search function for the most part had to do with panhellenic recruitment themes. "No matter the letter" and that type of thing.

Some ideas that could work stolen from the threads below :)

"Hollywood" theme party- wear cocktail dresses and serve shirley temples and little appetizers. Purchase a long piece of red fabric and use it as the red carpet. Decorate with old-school hollywood decor, and lots of string-lights. It looks very pretty and it's nice to get dressed up right before pref night as well.

Welcome to Paradise...where it's all about sunshine and being on vacation.

Welcome to the Jungle- wear animal print one night, camo another, etc etc...animal crackers, jello jigglers, and trail mix for refreshments.


If you do some searching in the recruitment threads I know there's hundreds of posts with ideas. Also, pretty much any theme that works for COR and lots of themes that work for exchanges/mixers can be made into a good recruitment night theme.

Some things that I've heard of over the years include: slumber party, cabaret/broadway, summer camp, Tiffanys/Breakfast At..., Jungle, CocaCola, Night at the movies, surf/beach, luau/Hawaii, Mardi Gras, casino/Monte Carlo, seasons (fall/summer, etc), garden party, Sex and the City, Around the World, Winter Wonderland (for January recruitment), and American Idol.

Speaking of Winter Wonderland, I know a chapter that used that theme for Skit Day in August and the PNMs loved it. The room was all decorated in white lights and Christmas trees and they sang Christmas carols and everybody felt a lot cooler!

When I was in college in the mid-1990s we had a a Jamaica-themed day (we had matching tye-dyed tee shirts with dancing bears on them) and then a christmas theme (even though it was september). The next year Panhel switched from two days of skits to just one, so we switched to "It's An AOII Day"- which was a Brady Bunch themed skit. We decorated our Formal LR into a disco (foil on the walls, disco ball hanging down). And we took some of the Brady Bunch songs and changed the words to fit the skit- It's a Sunshine Day became It's An AOII Day, Keep on Movin' Became Keep on Rushin', etc.
It was really cute and we had the entire chapter in clothing from the 70's (which we found fairly inexpensively at second hand shops).
I think my chapter now does a soda-shop themed skit.