Funny-in-retrospect Recruitment stories

[TrevorG]

I was wondering if anyone has any humorous stories from Recruitments past, possibly ones that weren't so funny really at the time...

I'll start off:

Until recently (as a result of this incident) we had been permitting our brothers to wear their letters out to the bar. This was allowed because we've never had any problems with the current brotherhood regarding disruptive behavior/fights/ect while out at the bar. The logic was that the mere act of drinking in your letters wasn't disrespecting them, it was how you behaved. Since we were all very well behaved (especially in letters), we didn't see a reason to make people change after jersey day, which is on the same day we always go out to the bar.

All of this worked out fine until my Son (little brother) Laki and I made a stupid mistake. A guy named Josh who is a friend of Laki's had rushed our "rival" fraternity (nicknamed the Digs), and was regretting it. Also, his girlfriend loved us to death and was pushing him to drop shirt and join us instead. This guy confided in Laki that he was planning to drop the Digs. With this knowledge, we voted to shirt him if he did. Sure enough, a few days later he tells Laki that he's dropped them, so Laki and I decide to shirt him when we all go out later that night. Laki puts the shirt in his pocket.

We're at this nice, calm little outdoor restaurant/bar hanging together with a ton of Sig Nus and various girls, and Josh tells us how cool it is we can wear out letters out to the bar and represent. Laki takes this cue and says "Yeah, we love doing it. You should too!" and tosses the shirt to Josh. It was a great moment.

Later that night we are all getting ready to leave this other place, and suddenly like 15 Digs show up outside like a lynch mob. Someone had seen Josh wearing our shirt and told them, and they were beyond pissed and mostly wasted. Turns out, Josh hadn't actually told them he was dropping shirt, so this was the first they heard of it. We had about equal numbers, and they were up in our faces trying to get us to fight, but I managed to calm things down by appealing to the less antagonistic guys.

After that, we re instituted the ban on wearing letters to the bar, and banned shirting there too obviously. On another note, if the guy who was 2 inches from my face the whole time ever does that again, i'm going to break his jaw.

[Kevin]

Nice.

In retrospect, when we were a colony, we were completely retarded with our Rush. We were unhoused, so we'd do NOTHING prior to formal rush, then we'd get a room in the University Center, and I'm not joking, we'd have a movie night where guys would dress like movie characters.

Another time, we set up a fake casino. We sucked at recruitment back then. That's probably why it took us 3 years to get our charter

It's almost embarrassing to admit that stuff, but it's 7 years in the past.

The guys running the show these days have really been top notch though. As alums, I think we all learned a lot from our mistakes.

[banditone]

I've never heard of this Jersey'ing a guy. Pretty interesting stuff!

[TrevorG]

Originally Posted by banditone

I've never heard of this Jersey'ing a guy. Pretty interesting stuff!

Its not really a jersey, its a black tshirt with our letters on the front and "Snake" on the back. We give them to candidates before they get real jerseys.

"Shirting" means bidding someone outside of formal recruitment. After Fall Rush is over, you can "shirt" someone by giving them one of these shirts and formally asking them to join. This is used to pickup guys who didn't sign up for formal rush, or weren't sure they wanted to join until they saw their friends did, latecomers, ect. Spring recruitment is entirely unorganized by IFC and is 100% shirting.

We have a pretty strange IFC at Stetson. Its funny because Panhellenic rush rules are straight out of Soviet Russia, while IFC rules are extremely relaxed.

[SnuKnight172]

We have always called that "Snap Bidding." Our chapter doesn't let guys wear, have stickers on cars or even write the letters until they are Knighted. Even on the shirts that then Candidate Class designs they have to spell out: S I G M A N U... If it happens that we are going to have shirts or something for Greek Week, etc... we simply provide them with shirts that are the same color so they will match.

I think the only chapter in So Cal that allows their new guys to wear letters prior to Knighting is CSULA and they only allow it for a few days prior to Knighting. We keep them from wearing anything with letter because it eliminates confussion when they visit Sigma Nu houses on other campuses.

(The only exception to using the letters prior to initiation is the paddles the Candidates give to their big bros or the gift they give to chapter.)

[banditone]

WE did the same with letters. Our bid day shirts had Sig Nu spelled out on them. Big Bro's would get the letter shirts about a week out from initiation.