Rushing and college constraints

[33girl]

I’d like to comment on some of the things Josh and Mikki were discussing in the “Anti-Hazing Has Gone Out of Control” thread (since the thread itself was getting a little long & out of control).

I know what Josh is talking about in saying a lot of people who would make the best members are turned off by the phoniness of rush, especially at the more “regimented” campuses. I know our chapter always sucked at formal rush, but we were wonderful at recruiting friends of members and open-bid parties.

However, Mikki is right in saying that the college wants the students to go to the Greeks and if it happens the other way around, God forbid. There are a lot of ways other than rush that students learn about Greeks. For example, I remember when I was a freshman in the dorm, there were people who were pledging and had their Zeta bunnies (or whatever their mascot was) and door tags hung up outside the door. It made you interested and curious to know what it was about. But guess what, you can’t do that anymore. The school banned it for some dumb-ass reason or another. They have also banned chanting in public places and pledge pickup (going around to the dorms and picking up the girls at their rooms). It infringes on the other students’ rights to privacy or something. I guess the ROTC dudes yelling at 5 AM is OK though.

We also used to be able to give an open bid that was good for a calendar year – they could pledge the semester they were given the bid or the next semester. Now that is considered hazing. They have to begin pledging right away, which has pretty much ended the (successful) practice of giving staggered open bids.

It seems no matter what you do these days, you are going to miss out on good prospective members one way or another. The walking on eggshells thing is enough to make anyone’s numbers plummet.