[jenidallas]

I checked my mailbox early in the morning and was thrilled to find out that I had a full schedule for day two. The cheerleader who didn’t like Lions got released by them but didn’t seem at all upset. My roommate commented that if we all had to stick together that only Bears or Tigers were still on the table. I wasn’t sure how I felt about all the talk about sticking together though… what if my favorite in the end was not the same as theirs?

I don’t remember the order of the parties but I remember I wore a blue dress with a white collar. (So strange that I remember this.) Here are my impressions:

Lions – same catchy chant as the first round. (I will say that 23 years later, that damn chant is STILL stuck in my head and I’ve used it as an example in recruitment schools with chapters of how effective chants can be.) Their skit was corny but showed definite sisterhood and I remember thinking that their style of dress that day was so NOT me. I had a couple of great conversations but I was not feeling very connected – the women were a lot more “home” oriented than I was (many were education majors and kept talking about things that made them seem more like wives and mothers than women a couple of years older than me). I felt like I might have to change to fit in here. I remember they had sugar cookies shaped like their symbol.

Tigers – more chanting and cute matching outfits. I swear, these girls always look like they walked straight out of a catalog. They seem like the popular girls in high school and I wonder if I would always be trying hard if I were here. Their skit was not very funny but everyone laughed a lot – it was really polished , but I felt like a lot of it was inside jokes and I was not sure if I was in on the joke. I was super impressed that they had monogrammed cups and napkins and everything seemed so grown-up. I also noticed that they had removed all the normal classroom chairs and brought in nice white rental chairs that looked fancy.

Bears – again, the Bears party seemed different than the other parties but I couldn’t figure out why. Instead of a skit, they did a funny song with parts that talked about activities. At one point the song discussed fraternities that were not on our campus and how they had mixers with them. That really confused me. I noticed that only the super pretty girls were participating and the others were sitting out with us and that made me uncomfortable as I wondered if you had to be pretty to be in the skit. I talked to another fabulous woman who I really connected with. I was really feeling a Jekyll and Hyde feeling about this chapter. Also, I’ve agreed to not talk to my mom that weekend as we were not sure if it would violate a rush rule but I’m just so confused right now as to what was going on as it seemed like two different chapters were present.

After the last party, the rush guides gathered us all together and told us that we would receive our preference schedules in our mailboxes by 10 am the next day. One of them also emphasized that it was critical that we check our mailboxes after dinner that night as there might be important communication coming our way. She winked at a couple of us when she said that and I didn’t understand what that might mean.

Then they told us that it was important that we know that it was “possible” that a sorority could be using members from another chapter and/or young alumnae to help with recruitment that weekend and that only chapter members/advisors would be present at preference the next day so we needed to keep an open mind as to what we had actually experienced during rounds one and two as that would be more representative of what a full chapter would be like. This confused a lot of the women and there was a lot of chatter. Several folks said it was Bears and they had bussed women in from another big chapter. Others said it was Lions and they were using women who had just graduated and passing them off as chapter members. Someone even said that Tigers had women who traveled around who were perfect and hired just to do rush parties. I tried not to listen to the talk but my mind was racing.