1990 Retro Recruitment/Affiliation - LIONS & TIGERS & BEARS, Oh my!!!

[jenidallas]

I decided (after retelling my recruitment story several times this year) to get this all typed out... so sharing it in print here for the first time.

A couple of housekeeping items:

1. The school in question will probably be easy to figure out by the time the story is finished. That's okay if you know it... but please don't post it here, as that's not what this is about.
2. Likewise the chapters in question will be obvious. When you are on a three-sorority campus, it's not hard to figure anyone out, but it's easier to refer to them by their codes.
3. Yes, there are a couple Panhellenic "irregularities" in my story. I promise they happened and were a known issue on that campus for many years.

So... without further explanation or rationalization....

Special snowflake, party of one, your college experience is ready….

[jenidallas]

Before I graduated from high school, I was familiar with Greek life. My mother was a sorority member (charter class at her school!) and I had been reading her sorority magazine since I was young. I often played in her jewelry box and her beautiful pearl badge (with pearl chapter guard) was one of my favorite items, but one I was never allowed to try on as she explained that was a very special privilege. I remember watching her leave the house all dressed up on occasion wearing it though – always going to “help the college girls” or “have tea with her sisters”. It seemed like a very grand thing to aspire to – I knew somehow that being in a sorority made one special.

I grew up in a town with several local universities and knew a lot of girls older than me who had come home from college wearing Greek letters. Others (friends’ mothers and women I babysat for) would all talk about how being in the “right” sorority would determine so much about your adult life (who you might marry, what kinds of organizations you might be invited to join later in life, etc.) and how this big decision would make or break your college social life.

Me? I was an academic “involved” type who was looking to leave my town. I thought I would likely go to a private school somewhere, perhaps one of the all-women’s universities that regularly mailed me brochures or perhaps a prestigious liberal arts university on the east coast. Or the honors program at a state university. My SAT scores were off the charts, I had a 4.0, and my activities were anything but basic (traveling to Russia on a youth ambassador trip in the ‘80s was always a great resume builder!) and I was more concerned with interesting academics for college so I could get into a great law school. I looked at many schools without a Greek system so the thought of membership did not necessary align with my own plans.

Those plans did not come to fruition, perhaps because I had no realistic grasp on whether my family could afford to send me to one of those schools. I did not qualify for financial aid but also due to some other dynamics did not have family resources to pay for any of my college expenses. My parents also told me loans were out of the question, so I settled on a small private liberal arts college near home because they offered me a wonderful scholarship package (four years tuition, room, board, books, and a nice stipend that would pay for activities). They had a small Greek life on their campus – three NPC sororities, two IFC fraternities, one service sorority, and one service fraternity. (All seven functioned as social organizations.)

I will call the sororities Lions, Tigers, and Bears (as I felt a bit like Dorothy going down the Yellow Brick Road and off to college

My mother was on the chapter advisory board for Bears at this campus and they were the only one of the three chapters that I had heard of prior to selecting this university as none of my older friends were in any of these three chapters on their college campus. My admissions counselor was a beautiful woman who had graduated a couple of years prior. While she was recruiting me, she talked quite about Greek life on the campus and showed me photos of all her sisters in Tigers.

[jenidallas]

During the late spring of my senior year, I had the opportunity to attend a campus day at the college. They divided us into groups. We also made friends with an athletic girl from out of town who hoped to be a walk-on for the basketball team and a girl in our group who looked like a pageant queen, who informed me that her older sister was a former president of the Tigers and a past campus queen of everything (homecoming queen, Miss University, student government, fraternity sweetheart, etc.). Our guide for the visit was a Lion who was wearing her chapter letters and did not take well to this news when she found out she knew the older sister and this made things somewhat uncomfortable for us all. I also remember we walked past a group of Tigers all wearing letters having a lovely picnic on the lawn right by where our tour group was walking (I now know that was clearly planned), basket and blankets and all. This also agitated our tour guide and she seemed upset that the Tigers were waving at us as we walked by.

We toured a residence hall and the room we toured was one of a Lion and Tiger who lived together. It looked like an entire Greek store and the Ralph Lauren catalog had both thrown up in there… letters and generally Southern preppiness everywhere. I decided on the spot that I absolutely needed to be Greek because I wanted a room that looked just like that (yes, seriously… that was my first “I must join a sorority” moment – shallow, right?!). The pageant queen was going to live at home and athletic girl and I decided to change our housing reservations to be roommates, planning over lunch what our own room décor would be. We all three agreed to go through rush together in the fall.

I only met one Bear on my visit – she was a very quiet girl wearing giant glasses (she reminded me of an owl and to this day, which is how I remember her) and was president of the pre-law society as well as president of Bears. I was not left with much of an impression of her other than that and my mother scolded me for judging the chapters based on what she thought were superficial impressions and told me I didn’t see the Bears because they were all off getting ready for their chapter formal that night.

I secured recommendations for Tigers (a friend’s mom was president of the local alumnae) and I was a legacy for Bears but my mother also had two other friends write recs for me. I did not know any Lions and had difficulty finding a Lion via our local alumnae Panhellenic.

[jenidallas]

Over the summer I had an internship and made friends with many other college interns. One day one of the guys was asking if I planned to go through rush at my school and I blurted out that yes, I was and that I thought I would either be a Tiger or a Bear. This was received with some muffled giggles from the other end of the table. “Oh, we will have to introduce you to someone tomorrow!” one of them said with a laugh. The next day, a pretty petite perfect-looking blonde was at our table and the same guy introduced me – “she is president of Tigers on your campus, the sorority you think you might join.” I was mortified as I knew enough to know that you didn’t go around telling people what sorority you thought you would join… but luckily she was very nice. She gave me a bit of information about rush and her impressions of other groups on the campus (which to an impressionable 19 year old stuck with me for a bit). A lot of it was different than what my mother had told me but I soaked it all up anyhow. I went home that night and told my mother about the experience and she did not seem at all impressed and reminded me that I might want to be careful about talking to chapter members so I didn’t do anything to jeopardize my own rush.

I ended up having lunch with her a couple of times a week during the summer but tried to not have my mom find out about it. One day a couple of the women in my department saw us and that afternoon they paid a visit to my desk to ask where I was going to school in the fall. I told them and they smiled and said they were both Lions who had graduated a couple of years prior and they wanted to make sure their sisters got a chance to know me too as I seemed to be spending a lot of time with a certain Tiger. They also both offered to write me recs. Yay! The next week, a few of the Lion girls came to go to lunch with these ladies and they brought them by and introduced them to me. They did not invite me to lunch with them however - they said this would be "breaking the rules" and they didn't want me to get kicked out of Rush. This immediately made me paranoid about everything that had already happened that summer!

I also got invited to join a few of the Tigers one night to do something with them (a summer sisterhood, they called it). I was delighted that my pageant-queen friend was also invited and we made sure to also talk to them about my future roommate too as she lived too far away to come up on a weeknight and we felt bad that we were getting a chance to talk to actives while she was not there. I did tell my mom about that as I wanted to make sure I didn't break any rules. She sighed and told me that it would be the sorority that got in trouble, not me, since we had not even registered for recruitment but to be sure I knew what I was doing.

I met one Bear over the summer but she was a fifth-year senior and told me she was no longer active. She told me that the sorority reputations frequently changed and that “Bears used to be different” when she pledged. I wondered what she meant by that but didn’t think to ask her. I asked my mom who pursed her lips and told me to stop listening to gossip.

[jenidallas]

We moved onto campus about ten days before classes started. Rush would not start for about ten days after that so we had almost three weeks before rush to get to know others on campus. We had three dormitories – one co-ed and one each men’s/women’s. The single-sex dorms were two rooms connected by a shared bathroom. The co-ed dorms had much larger rooms with big closets and moveable furniture but had older communal bathrooms. Most of the people in Greek life lived in the single-sex dorms but there were a couple of Bears and a couple of Lions living in our dorm. All the Tigers lived in the single-sex dorm. The co-ed dorm was largely exchange students and athletes. I found out after getting to campus that the co-ed dorm was NOT the desirable one for several reasons but I enjoyed the opportunity to live with a diverse group of students.

My roommate and I quickly became friends with two other girls down the hall. Both had been competitive cheerleaders in high school so I’ll refer to them as the cheerleaders. One of them dated a basketball player who lived upstairs. My roommate was friends with a baseball player from high school. Those guys plus their teammate/roommates became our little clique… the eight of us ate all our meals together in the one dining hall for the university and hung out together at all of the campus activities. We noticed similar cliques forming as we navigated campus – there was a clique of six girls from the women’s dorm too. I knew three of the girls (two went to my high school and one had gone to Russia with me) and so we talked to them often. The lived in the same wing of their hall (four were suitemates and the other two across the hall) and were all going through rush too. They would often make comments about being a “package deal” for whichever sorority they would join. This worried me as it was a small campus where quota would likely be somewhere between 6 and 12.

The men were already having fraternity rush and we were often invited to their events. The president of Tigers was the sweetheart of one fraternity and encouraged us to go to some of their parties the last time we talked to her before summer ended – and sure enough, invitations to various parties addressed to me started arriving in my mailbox. Silence started with campus move-in so we would see sorority women but they could not speak to us. They would do ridiculous things though like say things very loudly that they would hope we would hear (like they were talking to us in the third person) or tell someone else (usually one of the guys) to tell us something. It reminded me of junior high.

At fraternity events, I saw lots of Tigers and Lions but never any Bears. In fact, I still rarely saw Bears. This, my mother said, was because they actually followed Rush rules and were busy doing sisterhood things. I did not have a good impression of Bears though because I only had seen two of them – the owl-glassed president and a very awkward one who lived on my hall who always seemed to make awkward comments around us.

We started classes and registered for recruitment which would start at the end of the second week of classes. We would have Open House parties (20 minutes each) on a Friday afternoon, Skit parties (30 minutes each) on a Saturday afternoon, and Preference parties (45 minutes each) on a Sunday afternoon. Our university allowed up to three parties per round so it was possible for a rushee to never be released from a house. The chapters did not have specific numbers that the chapters had to release either. They also would allow rushees to decline any invitation after the first round so women could decide not to go back to a house or drop out of rush entirely. The bid list would be posted at noon on Monday and bid day would start at 4 pm.

My mom had been appointed chapter advisor of Bears over the summer so we agreed that we would not talk from the start of rush until Bid Day unless I saw her at a party so no one thought we were breaking rush rules.

[jenidallas]

The first round started with an orientation – we went over rules for the weekend - our guides (six of them, two from each chapter) did a skit about the rules. They explained to us how invitations would work each day, what to wear for the rest of the week etc. The first round was casual dress – my roommate wore a t-shirt and shorts with cute sandals. I wore a t-shirt with a denim wrap skirt and cute sandals. I saw jeans, shorts, skirts, and even a couple of girls in work dresses (I later found out they were commuters who had “real” jobs and attended night classes.) As the university was small, the guides chapters were “known” and they would be allowed to join their chapters for the parties each round so their identities were not a secret. They divided us into three groups (based on alphabetical order) so I was split from all but one of my friends. Each group rotated to the parties (which were in classrooms on three separate floors of a building).

My first party was Lions. They greeted us with a loud chant and I remember being overwhelmed by the clapping and chanting as I did not expect it. Their room was decorated and they were all wearing matching t-shirts and athletic shorts - they seemed very sporty. I realized that several women I had already met on campus were Lions but didn’t realize it. They had lemonade and I was impressed that the cups and napkins were their colors. I talked to a few different girls and heard a lot about their social calendar. They kept telling me about how they were the favorite sorority of the fraternity where I’d been hanging out and that those guys preferred them to all others. I remember this bothering me. The party was over quickly and we left to them doing the same chant.

My second party was Bears. Their room was a lot calmer and there was no singing or chanting here. I was shocked because so many of the Bears were drop dead gorgeous. They did not have matching outfits but they were all wearing letters of different types. I swear I had never seen most of these women but they were all polished and mature. I recall having soda here in generic plastic cups. The only thing I remember about the conversation I had was that it three of us rushees talking to two women and they mostly only talked to us about national things (their colors, their symbol, their conventions). I also remember one of the other girls who was a rushee was VERY rude to them and kept making inappropriate comments. She was a junior who was going through rush for the first time. My mother was in the corner during the party and I was trying hard not to make eye contact with her.

My last party was Tigers. Oh my gosh… they greeted us with a fun song and their room was just amazing. They all had fancy matching shirt and hairbows with denim skirts and looked perfect. Their room reminded me of that dorm room I saw during my campus visit – paraphernalia everywhere! They also did this fun clapping paddy-cake kind of song in a big circle where they went around and said all of their names. I met a lot of their officers including their rush chair who was the university president’s daughter (and a girl I knew of growing up locally and always admired as she had done similar things in high school to me and was on the same professional career path as the one I wanted to pursue). This party went by so fast that I can’t remember who else I talked to and I’m pretty sure I had to be forced to leave the room.

We were told to not talk until we got back to the library where we were told we’d receive our schedules in our mailboxes by 10 am the next day. Our rush guides reminded us to not talk to sorority women or we could be released from recruitment.

[Sen's Revenge]

This was a phenomenal story. I really enjoyed it.

[carnation]

Great story, jenidallas!

Is the Lions chapter the only NPC group left there? And the 2 cheerleaders who later got a bid--did they go to Bid Day and find an empty envelope?

[jenidallas]

Bears is the only NPC group left on campus. This year was their first year to do fall recruitment alone.

This school has a lot of commuters so before the days of guaranteed-bid-if-options-maximized, they didn't want to make people wait around so they posted a list of names who received a bid. The cheerleaders would not be receiving a matched bid so by the list, they should have stayed home. But the sororities were ready with blank COB bids so by showing up, the chapter they had ISPed picked them up with a COB bid right after everyone else got their bid cards.

I have to say, I know later they said they felt so strange standing there with no envelope and then getting an envelope shoved in their hands 30 seconds later... both eventually dropped out right before initiation. One said she could never get over knowing she was not "first choice". The other one went back through recruitment again the next year (and was rushed hard by Bears... she's ironically the one who dropped them the first time, but ended up pledging Tigers AGAIN... and initiating that time!)

[ADPiEE]

This was a great story--I really enjoyed reading it!
I know the campus you transferred to because that's mine--but I have no idea the campus you were initiated at? So they only have one NPC now?

[jenidallas]

Originally Posted by ADPiEE

This was a great story--I really enjoyed reading it!
I know the campus you transferred to because that's mine--but I have no idea the campus you were initiated at? So they only have one NPC now?

Correct... just Bears.

[FSUZeta]

Loved your story JeniDallas!

[MaryPoppins]

Thank you for sharing your story! I really enjoyed it.

[DeltaBetaBaby]

Did you SIP? Is that why your friends were surprised?

[jenidallas]

Originally Posted by DeltaBetaBaby

Did you SIP? Is that why your friends were surprised?

I did SIP. So did my roommate.

I will admit that I knew enough about the Greek system at that point to know that all the chapters would still be below total (which back then was 40... but no chapter had been above the low 30s in years) and that COB would be a possibility.

I still think back and wonder what would have happened if I had not gotten a bid initially. That happened to three girls and they all got bids at 4:01 pm. I think my 18 year old self would have accepted it but my 41 year old self wonders if I would have felt bad about myself knowing I was not that high in the bid list? (And now being WAY involved on the other end having watched manual bid matching, I very fully understand why it's never a great idea for bid ranking to be seen by too many eyes!)

I wonder if I might have been persuaded to join Bears but I don't think so. Funny, but today my mom days she just cannot picture me being in her sorority at all. (She always says this like its going to offend me somehow!). I remember that my perceptions changed a bit as I grew older but I never came around to feeling a bond. It's funny too - their ladies would often be over at our house during the summer when I was home from college (my mom was later their Rush Advisor) so i'd help them paint banners and listen to Greek life stories but I never did feel any "click" like I'd fit in with them. The two girls from my high school were super-popular so high school friends thought I was crazy not to pledge them. And the girl who I'd gone to Russia with eventually became my "sister" when she married my step-brother. Funny, huh?!