What memories!!!
We had a pretty frilly recruitment until the mid-late 80s. I think we called the first night either intro or theme night. We decorated in an island theme that night and sang a bunch of fun welcome and introduction type songs. The next two nights were skit nights, my all time favorite AOII Kindergarten skit (hey, it was the 80s, it worked back then
) and then the Alice in AOIILand skit. Each one with more and completely differerent decorations. If you've lived it, you know what it's like to be decorating half the night, only to rip it all down and repeat 5 days/nights in a row
Thank heavens for our alumnae, some nights I'm not sure we'd have made it without them!
We only gave flowers at pref, and we would put the PMNs flowers into vases at the entrance, so the 'rushers' wouldn't necessarily know which chapters the 'rushees' had been to first. Yes, we all wore matching red dresses at Pref too! There's nothing like entering a room for pref with the lights dimmed, flowers everywhere and more candles than the eyes can see. Our prefs were beautiful!
Having said all that, I do think the NPC recruitment resolutions are strong and I wish every chapter on every campus complied with them. My least favorite recruitment memory was as an adviser, seeing a complete disregard of release figures by a couple sororities on that campus. It was as if those groups didn't care about anyone else, the PNMs or the other chapters at their school, as long as they got quota. I'm talking a chapter having 3-4-5 times quota at their pref parties when recommendations were 2.5 times quota invited to prefs back then. Yes, it happened and no, it's not pretty for anyone in the big scope of things. It's not fair to those young women who wish to join sororities, and I hate that it may still be happening in places today. However, that's a different rant for a different thread so I'll shush now.
Christin