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V. Rush
Rush was a totally new experience for me, as I am sure it was to most of you. The gentleman at Gamma Zeta literally opened up their house and their hearts to us when rush was taking place.
At Umass during the late 90's, rush basically consisted of throwing big parties early in the semester and hoping guys liked the parties and girls enough to want to become a member. I'll admit, being part of the fraternity, the cool guys with their own rooms during the party, the guys with the hot sorority girls hanging on them, acting like they were god-like in their house, going to other fraternity's parties and just walking past the line of 50 other kids waiting to get in and automatically getting a beer was a pretty big incentive for me and alot of other pledges, both in Gamma Zeta and all the other fraternitys. We were all 18 at one time and all thought the same.
There is an image that people have of fraternities. Many guys become interested because of movies like Animal House. Other guys think it's an easy way of getting drunk and getting laid. And yeah, it is. If you joined a fraternity at Umass and was a somewhat decent looking guy (ie: no hump or three eyes) you could get laid if you were in a fraternity with no problem.
I'll tell ya, part of the reason I continued with rush was because I saw the guys having a good time. It wasn't the only reason, as I have stated above, but what other 18-19 year old with newly found freedom, hot girls around them, wouldn't want an easy way to have fun and get laid?
But I would have to say, Gamma Zeta was pretty good at weeding out the guys that ONLY wanted to get laid and drunk. I can say that all the guys in the fraternity, either drunks, druggies, nerds, etc., had that something extra about them that showed that they wanted to be there other than getting drunk, etc. Hell, if you really wanted to it was easy enough to get drunk in the dorm rooms and get laid.
When I was rushing alot of my friends would say the classic "so you're just going to buy your friends" and "you're just going to be a clone." etc.
I thought about that alot and never really had a good answer to that until about last year. Part of the answer relies on Rush. Rushing and looking into fraternities is all about seeing where you fit in and are most comfortable. Some people went to dozens of rush events at many different frats and never joined. It's about finding a match.
So when you are thinking about joining a fraternity, you really have to go through two questions to find the right one:
1. Do you agree with and like the ultimate goal of the fraternity?
2. Do you get along with and like the men in the fraternity?
I say that because as I stated above, I think that fraternities are people coming together for a common goal/cause, and forging relationships through the pursuit of that common goal/cause.
So if you were a heavy pot smoker, there was a fraternity at Umass for you (no it wasn't Gamma Zeta). And chances are you would fit right in if you were a pot smoker. If you were a body builder/jock there was a fraternity at Umass for you (again, not Gamma Zeta) And chances are you would fit right in if you were a body builder/jock.
The common goal of Gamma Zeta, at least in my opinion, was both the physical house (I will go into later, but you will see how important a role it played) and I think an even fraternal experience. It was a place for a jewish guy that might not have been all about what the jewish fraternities stood for. It was a place for the military guy that didn't conform to the strict regulations of ROTC. It was a place for the drunk that wanted more than just "drinking buddies." Many other fraternities and their brothers simply conformed to their stereotype and accepted it as who they were and what they did. Not Gamma Zeta, these were men that knew better than to limit themselves. These were men that knew there was so much more out there in a fraternal experience, although they may not have known it right away. It is those types of people, maybe on some sort of sub-conscience level, that attract other people like that.
As for the rest of my rush, it was pretty low key, many times just BBQ'ing, watching tv, maybe a road trip here and there. As an alumni of LXA, and a brother during the transition of the international fraternity to focus more on recruiting, I don't think I would have joined if they sold me on LCA as some of the recruiters instructed us to do when I was a brother. It was too much like a sales pitch. If I want a sales pitch for a product, I'll go down to my local Circuit City. You can't sell a fraternity like it's a "product" or some moveable good. You have to sell it like it's an experience, an experience like nothing else to last your whole life. Honestly, I didn't care about associate versus pledge. I didn't care about our no hazing policy, hell I was expecting it and didn't care if they did do it (it happened in my high school with our sports teams all the time and was nothing new to me, although I didn't like it and there was NO "hazing" at GZ, so let's just get that out of the way right now). I didn't care about the opportunity to go to General Assembly or regional conferences. All those points are great and constructive, I'll admit, but the one thing I noticed that the recruiters didn't instruct or advise...was to sell the PEOPLE of Lambda Chi. I joined because they were good PEOPLE, not because they had good POLICIES. And when you join because of people you trust and respect, you won't worry about pledge v. associate or hazing or conferences, because if they are good people they won't do that to you and they will treat you with the proper respect and and adhere to your boundaries. I know that the methods of hq DO work at other college's, but each college and their recruitment is more different than the next. I would really like to see a more personalized attempt from HQ to focus more on the individual campus in recruitment. I've worked with recruiters that had wonderful ideas and success stories, great methods that I knew would 100% work.....except at Umass. It wasn't the recruiters fault, they went well above giving 110% of their time and effort. But colleges and universities are all different. Can you really compare Texas Chrisitan University to Umass, or Boston University, or Southern Florida? The ethnicity, size, economic status, academic focus, heck even the weather, all make each place unique and the students even more different.
Ok, I seem to have lost focus of my rush experience and just went on a ramble, sorry. To some up my rush; BBQ's, fun, good people.
NEXT: My first step to becoming a brother.
*guys, this is going to be a long thread over a couple of weeks. I'm going to try to go as in depth as possible from now on to really get into the mental aspect of what went on in our chapter. I guess I'm doing this for two reasons:
1. to clear up the name of Gamma Zeta and ALL the brothers in it. To set the record straight about what happened so that many of you may understand a little more and not be so "pissed off" about us losing our first house.
2. So it doesn't happen again and everyone can learn from it.
I hope at this point you kind of get a feeling about the greek system at Umass and understand the student body a little bit. The most important thing to understanding the future events and downfall of GZ is to know about the ENVIRONMENT that we were in. At that time Amherst and Umass was pretty hostile to the greek system, in 2000 I really thought that fraternities/sororities were going to be kicked off campus, and that is coming up soon as well.
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