Cute Article About Sophomore Rushees @ Kansas State

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Rush week is different experience for returning K-Staters
Published on Monday, August 16, 2004


Joanna Rubick
Kansas State Collegian


Old high school friends Sally Maddock and Jessica Silfverberg embraced when they discovered both would be pledging the same sorority, Kappa Alpha Theta.
"I was worried when I went to tell you, because I didn't know if you got it, but I had to tell you," Silfverberg said to Maddock on Bid Day Saturday.

Anxiety is a common feeling during Rush Week, but for Maddock and Silfverberg, that anxiety came with a twist.

They're upperclassmen at K-State.

Maddock and Silfverberg were two out of more than 20 sophomores and juniors who rushed, said Gabrianna Hall, Panhellenic recruitment coordinator.

With about 575 women in attendance, nearly 550 were asked to join a sorority, she said.

Hall said about 50 percent of the upperclassmen were asked to pledge.

"Overall it is hard for upperclassmen, because they are in the minority," she said.

Maddock, sophomore in architecture, found this to be true.

"It's a lot harder to get in if you're sophomores," she said.

Silfverberg, sophomore in music, said she did not go through Rush before her freshman year because she didn't want to overload herself as a freshman.

"I didn't know a lot about K-State before I came here," she said. "I didn't know if I would have enough time."

Maddock said she had similar reasons as her friend, but ultimately her parents talked her out of attending last year.

Maddock and Silfverberg along with all the other attendees went through four rounds during Rush Week before finding out whether or not they were asked to join a sorority on Bid Day.

First came an open house, where all the rushers go to all 11 sororities.

The service and leadership day came next, which allows the rushers to find out about the service and philanthropy projects the houses do.

The third round, sisterhoods, is where each house performed certain skills.

Lastly, the privilege round allowed rushers to visit their top three choices.

With each round the girls visited fewer houses, Hall saild.

This year Rush Week was somewhat different than previous years through use of a computer program, Inter-Collegiate Solutions, for the first time, she said.

"Everything was done on the computer versus filling everything out on bubble sheets," Hall said. "Everything was processed with 30 seconds to a minute. It used to take a few hours."

The program allowed sororities to choose which rushers they would like to ask back, and if the rushers had more than the maximum number, they would choose which sororities they would like to visit again, she said.

Hall said the week went as smooth as can be expected.

"We had about 75 more girls than last year, so with the larger amount of girls everything went as well as it could," she said.

Maddock and Silfverberg said they found the week to be stressful.

"It was a lot of running around, and there was a lot of downtime, also," Maddock said.

"It's like the best and worst week of your like," Silfverberg said.

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