[jenidallas]

Roommate, pageant queen, and I all pledged Gamma Phi Beta. The cheerleaders were both picked up on COB at 4:01 pm as were a couple other girls waiting to COB (including two who didn’t even go through recruitment at all). All-in-all, we ended with a pledge class of 17 (doubling the size of the chapter). Lions had a pledge class of 12-13 and Bears picked up three more to finish at 8 new members.

The girl down the hall was a new Lion and had a rough start. She did not want to go to Bid Day and spent a couple of months telling everyone she was supposed to be a Tiger but had an old “enemy” from high school who blocked her. (That part was later acknowledged to be true by all involved. What’s funny now, decades later, the Lion dated a guy for a long time and now her old enemy Tiger is married to him… but that wasn’t even a factor back then!) But back to her - she stuck with Lion and if you were to ask her a semester later, she would tell you that she never wanted to be anything but a Lion. We are still friends and still keep in touch.

I became friends later with the awkward girl in Bears and now understand just how nervous she was to be preffing the chapter advisor's daughtre that day. I came to have a lot of respect for those women. They basically had to build themselves back up from 3 initiated members and the women they took DID take on early leadership roles and turned the chapter around. They took both the girls from my high school (who apparently everyone was SURE would go Tigers) and the girl I went on the mission trip with (who everyone was SURE would go Lions) – the other three in that group went Tigers with us. Apparently late the night after round two (and the secret party - or parties, as these girls were invited to both!), they all came back and discussed the chapters and discovered they were leaning two different ways on what they wanted their campus experience to be. It just goes to show nothing is certain. Half of them decided that Bears would allow them to basically rewrite the rules for sororities on the campus and make things more level. And they did. They also COBed two women I really hoped Tigers would get so they had immediate impact on the campus. By the time I was a junior in college, they were the largest chapter on campus and the entire dynamic had shifted largely because of their one class.

The rushee who was so rude during recruitment also went Tigers which meant we were sisters. I did at one point tell her exactly what I thought of her behavior and that was a big poo storm in our pledge class. We did a few things together but never really became close and we do not stay in touch at all now. She is a good example that you do not have to be friends with all your sisters and can still survive.

The rush chair, who I so very much admired, was my first Crescent Sister on Bid Day and ended up becoming my big sis. We are still close! Sadly her dad (the university president) left at the end of my first semester and she transferred to the new college with him.

I initiated in January of 1991. I was honestly not sure if I was ready or not as I felt like something was “off” – I was head over heels with the sorority in general but still felt like something was not right about my campus experience. I suspected it was not the sorority but the college and told my parents I would give it until spring break and transfer if I still felt “off”. The university was not what I expected it to be and over the holidays I realized I was not having the same college experience that other friends were having, partially due to my schools size but more due to changes going on at the school that were affecting academics and student life.

I will say also that while I was a freshman, I felt a lot of pressure to “reinvent” myself – to dress more like the women in my chapter, to do my hair differently, even to do things that might be out of character for the old me in order to be liked. I don’t blame sorority for that – I think that’s just a part of growing up.

Ironically WHILE I was at initiation, there was a series of armed robberies in my dorm as well as the men’s dorm. (By armed, I mean gang members with semi-automatic weapons.) My parents decided I could come home to live for the rest of the semester and pretty much my mind was made up that I would transfer at first opportunity. I packed a bag and started sleeping at home and driving to school and slowly moving my things out of the residence hall as I didn’t want to alarm anyone but my sisters figured out what was going on anyway and some of them distanced themselves from me.

My mom was very worried that I’d initiated and THEN decided to transfer so we decided it would be best to look at schools that had chapters. (Smart idea, mom!) I decided I wanted to also go visit both schools I narrowed down to for several days to get a feel for the campuses (and what life would actually be like since my freshman year was not at all what I thought it would be).