Ok I am a senior at Mizzou and this is the second time since I've been here that greek life has decided to change the rules about courting.
My freshman year honestly there were rules, but nobody knew them and no one followed them. One house had a LIVE TIGER in their skit, another house rented out a bar and took the fraternity there to perform their skit, one house had cage dancers (girls in their house were the dancers), another house sent strippers to a fraternity house, another house decorated the same fraternity with thongs. It was wild and out of control, and fun to an extent.
You could at this point still table someone on the first night of serenades, so like if 3 houses serenaded you the first night or something, you could put one aside for later, but not eliminate them totally, hard to explain, but they got rid of that.
Now though there is a budget for courting which no one, that I know of anyway, actually follows but the courting is certainly not AS scandalous as it used to be. But still, the sororities just make it less obvious than they used to. Fraternities courting sororities however has never been such a big deal, for whatever reason.
Also if you are serenading someone greek life lets you know who is competing against you and you can choose then if you'd like to go somewhere else.
I don't mind the way it is now, seems to work better than it did freshman year, but I know last year there was a sorority who went to serenade the fraternity behind them and the fraternity's president called the sorority's president and told them to not even bother coming, none of their guys were going to show up for the serenade. With the changed system, if you are only serenaded by one house on the first night of serenades you HAVE to choose that house. This fraternity is one of the larger more popular ones on campus but for some reason no one was going there except for this really small sorority. The guys were pissed and said that if they had to be with them, they just wouldn't show up or help out at all.
That's the only thing I can think of as to why they're changing the system again. But that sorority has since left campus so I don't know why they're doing it now.
Needless to say I am glad I'm graduating b/c this new way sounds really stupid to me, courting is one of the more fun things to do with serenades.
