First Day of Rush -- Chapter Visits

BigTenGreek11 · #1 07-30-2008, 12:53 AM

Hey everyone, this should be an easy one:

The way our Rush is structured is as follows:
Day 1: PNMs go around to all the fraternity houses for 30 minutes each.
Days 2-4: Fraternities host events each night for about 4 hours that PNMs come to in order to meet the brothers, get more information, and just hang out. PNMs get to choose which houses' events to go to. (Events must be dry and can take place at the house or in town).
Day 5: Preference Night (each PNM invited here gets a bid).

NOW, here's my question/what I need advice on: On Day 1, we see about 13 groups of guys who are passing through from house to house hearing little presentations and meeting a bunch of brothers from each house on campus. Anyone have any ideas as to how we can make our house's presentation stand out from the rest? According to friends of mine who have rushed in the past, each house has music blasting and guys acting really enthusiastically. While I'd love to get my fellow brothers to do something similar, I'd still like to find a way to be DIFFERENT from this norm, but in a good and unique way.

Any ideas are gonna help here!

SoCalGirl · #2 07-30-2008, 12:59 AM

The Kappa Tau scene from the first episode of Greek keeps running through my head.

What does your chapter currently do? When you say the other chapters have "music blasting and guys acting really enthusiastically"; is that the entire time or during a specific presentation? It reminds me of what we did during our Spirit Nights; show a video while screaming and cheering.

BigTenGreek11 · #3 07-30-2008, 01:02 AM

I'm pretty sure it's as they're coming in, the music is blasting and the guys are going nuts and cheering them on. Then they go into a short presentation about their house and their brothers, what they like to do, and then basically just go around talking to the guys there.

According to some of my brothers, last year our house did about the opposite. About 5 guys standing there in front of the groups just talking for about 5-10 minutes, and then having the PNMs just stand around talking to each other. Wasn't planned too well, and obviously didn't go over too well haha. So we're definitely looking for a turn-around here

SoCalGirl · #4 07-30-2008, 01:20 AM

I'm going to leave it to the men of GC to make suggestions regarding how to behave on the first night but I do have two tips.

1) Absolutely make sure that you are true to the chapter's personality. If your members are not the type that would act "really enthusiastically" don't ask them too. PNMs can smell "fake" a mile away and they don't want to pledge a fake chapter.

2) If at all possible before rush starts, or even during the year to brush up for next year, invite a sorority to practice a mock rush with you. I don't think men practice talking to walls like we do; so get some live bodies in front of the guys. You can use a mock rush party as an ice breaker for a real party with a sorority.

CrackerBarrel · #5 07-30-2008, 01:34 AM

Music blasting and guys cheering sounds awful to me. Our rush is structured differently, but we have an alumni speaker for dinner explaining why he chose our house and what it has meant to him, then have refreshments and let brothers chat with rushees at mixers. Combine those two ideas and it sounds a lot better from my point of view than lots of guys cheering with music blasting.

After all, they're rushing, not going to the gay bar or playing arena football, so cheering men and blasting music seem out of place to me.

BigTenGreek11 · #6 07-30-2008, 02:33 PM

SoCal -- that's actually a really good idea... good way to meet with a sorority and it'd probably be more comfortable than talking to a wall, haha. Do you actually practice taking to PNMs with walls? Sounds interesting...

CrackerBarrel -- So bascically, it's more important to get the rushees interested as to why they should join our house instead of just getting them excited and riled up for something they know nothing about. Sounds reasonable... and your comment after that made me laugh haha... so thank you.

Keep the ideas coming everyone! We've got about a month till Formal Recruitment... wanna make it the best one yet.

DEVODUDE · #7 07-30-2008, 02:46 PM

[quote=SoCalGirl;1688196]The Kappa Tau scene from the first episode of Greek keeps running through my head.

Which scene are your referring too...the scene where the Rush Leader dropped off the rushees in front of the Kappa Tau house and then ran off or......the scene where the Kappa Tau brother drops the large knife from the top of the stairs to the ground floor and almost all the rushees ran out of the house... except for 3?

Either way both scenes were funny!!!!!

SoCalGirl · #8 07-30-2008, 03:12 PM

When the knife is dropped and most of the guys run out. Followed by the "secret" party.

And yes, we practiced talking to walls, pillows, and trees. If you can talk to a wall, you can talk to a shy/silent PNM.

Elephant Walk · #9 07-30-2008, 03:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BigTenGreek11

Hey everyone, this should be an easy one:

The way our Rush is structured is as follows:
Day 1: PNMs go around to all the fraternity houses for 30 minutes each.
Days 2-4: Fraternities host events each night for about 4 hours that PNMs come to in order to meet the brothers, get more information, and just hang out. PNMs get to choose which houses' events to go to. (Events must be dry and can take place at the house or in town).
Day 5: Preference Night (each PNM invited here gets a bid).

NOW, here's my question/what I need advice on: On Day 1, we see about 13 groups of guys who are passing through from house to house hearing little presentations and meeting a bunch of brothers from each house on campus. Anyone have any ideas as to how we can make our house's presentation stand out from the rest? According to friends of mine who have rushed in the past, each house has music blasting and guys acting really enthusiastically. While I'd love to get my fellow brothers to do something similar, I'd still like to find a way to be DIFFERENT from this norm, but in a good and unique way.

Any ideas are gonna help here!

Ours is similar to this, so maybe I'll be able to help some.

First off, CB was right...getting an alumni to come in and say something about how much the chapter means to him works out really well. To be quite honest on the 1st 2 nights (which are in the same round but whatever) it's fairly common to have "sob stories" (we're men, so no one cries...but a girl would), where an alumni tells how he lost someone in his family years after he graduated and the whole fraternity showed up at the funeral and so forth.

One chapter a couple years ago had every rushee seated in the middle of the room, he gave a speech for a little while concerning alumni/parties/makin money and then said "now stand up and meet my brothers" and the guys were all waiting in different rooms behind closed doors and they just burst through all the doors yellin and throwing shit everywhere.

Common for the University of Arkansas, the rush chair has them all sit down in chairs in the middle of the room and all the guys stand around. Rush chair talks about parties and famous alumni from our chapter and so forth and then tells them to stand up and meet my brothers.

FSUZeta · #10 07-30-2008, 03:31 PM

do the brothers then walk up to the rushees and introduce themselves or do they wait to see which rushees will go up and introduce themselves to the brothers?

Elephant Walk · #11 07-30-2008, 03:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FSUZeta

do the brothers then walk up to the rushees and introduce themselves or do they wait to see which rushees will go up and introduce themselves to the brothers?

Yeah. Well it's sort of "First come/first talk" Since there's about fifty chairs all stuffed together it takes 'em a bit to file on out, but the brothers go ahead and start meeting people.

FSUZeta · #12 07-30-2008, 03:37 PM

thanks elephantwalk.

BigTenGreek11 · #13 07-31-2008, 01:44 PM

so i just watched the first episode of greek to remember what you (SoCal) were referring to, and the beginning of the kappa tau visit pretty much sums it up. unfortunately, the huge party that followed was not a part of it haha. then again, we dont have that kind of enormous arena in the back of our house to host such a party lol. but yeah, watching that episode further just made it seem like chill conversation with the PNMs makes for the best way to recruit (as long as they don't make up their entire lives like that one guy did at each house lol)

Canadian · #14 08-06-2008, 12:05 AM

We show them a video from HQ, then give them pizza and pop. We also arrange for the meeting to be in the bowels of the university, and after a few minutes of chatting with each other, we bring in some alumnus and active brothers, to chat about what the fraternity has done for them. We do about 3 of these events every Rush and it's a big draw.

We also got busted by security for dorm storming. Essentially we'd go from dorm room to room and hand out flyers, but we busted into a girl's dorm and got in deep trouble. So no fraternity can do that anymore.

Thomas