[Cutie_Hootie]

Every Monday was badge attire--every fraternity boy wore khaki slacks, shirt, tie, and navy blazer. The girls all wore skirts or dresses, preferably plaid skirts. (My favorite not-as-dressy outfit was a plaid skirt with a denim shirt (untucked!) and my beautiful fisherman sweater, all from Abercrombie and Fitch. Egads!) We always dressed up for classes, and only wore jeans on Tuesdays or Thursdays when most people had labs. We always wore letters on those days. Most people had plaid letters. Every self-respecting sorority girl had a tote bag with her letters embroidered on that too, and carried it to class daily. We always wore a gold herringbone necklace with another necklace with our lavalier hanging on it (the necklaces came out the front of our turtlenecks, which was not a good look for me!). We wore our own letters until we were lavaliered by our boyfriend, then pinned, then engaged. We had beautiful white candles for our candlelight, wrapped in both red and yellow ribbon with a white carnation as well as his fraternity colors mixed in.

We were the first year that didn't get presents at Pref, and everyone felt sorry for us. (it was never a big deal to any of us though) We definitely had full frills rush other than the gifts though. It was awesome to walk into each house every day and see it totally transformed.

Like so many others, we paint-penned everything that couldn't run away from us...even stupid stuff like hangers, clothespins, lighters (for those forbidden candles in your room of course). We had paintpenned candles for big/little revelation, and of course we had real candles for everything!

Nothing was better than serenades--we loved going from house to house to introduce our new pledges, invite them to our Fall party Chi-Oahu (to the tune of Copacabana by Berry Manilow) or drum up excitement for Formal. And fraternity serenades were the end all be all. We all crowded into our front entry and stairwell to see who would get flowers, who were the new pledges, and most importantly, what song they sang and who they sang it to. The pledge serenade was most important because we were then invited to join in a pledge dance with one of the fraternities. And the other big serenade time was for Homecoming, where the entire campus would turn out on the Quad to hear the chapters sing.

Pledging was an adventure--quizzes every week, plenty of pranks--especially scavanger hunts, stealing composites and other things from the fraternities, and bonding with your pledge sisters. And we had to wear skirts every week, regardless of weather (we had formal rush in January). I remember one time when we had six inches of snow on the ground and a killer windchill, and our pledge trainer just said, "I won't tell you not to do it, but in my opinion, a Chi Omega does not wear pants with her badge." None of us did wear them after hearing that!

The entire campus had a curfew. All the dorms were single sex, and all dorms and fraternity/sorority houses closed at midnight during the week and two on the weekends. It was always a shock to walk into the bathroom (of the dorm) at about 4 am and see feet facing the WRONG way.

Our campus was dry, but for some reason no one would say anything if you had a cup in your hand or a backpack on your back. So on Fridays and Saturdays, you'd see a lot of people with overloaded backpacks taking off down to the fraternities. A guess a lot of studying was going on...It was always fun to be spoiled by the fraternity pledges. They picked you up and brought you down to the house, walked you back to your room, even drove us to and from the bars. Of course, they waited on you hand and foot in the house. And our favorite song was American Pie, where we would change the words to "white carnation" from "pink carnation", so it became a screaming war between us and Phi Mus. We also loved Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana, where we would scream ChiOOOOOOChiOOOOOOO during various parts...wow, we were cheesy!

Ahh, the good old days (I'm rather shocked by how much my campus culture has changed in just a decade!!)