Back in the day . . .

[barbino]

Originally Posted by srmom

How about planning/skipping your classes around All My Children, One Life to Live & General Hospital! We all met in the tv room with our lunches (had to sneak them out of the dining room under the nose of the house mom) to watch. I usually would try hard to hang in there for the 1/2 hour Jeapordy episode - you know, intellectual stuff since I was skipping class

Luke & Laura's wedding was a must see.

Thank you for reminding me - I'd almost forgotten. Our house always had those three soap operas on in a row on the TV in the lounge. One semester I was 5 minutes late to a class almost all the time because I wanted to watch the end of "All My Children." I wasn't the only one, and then we'd walk to class together really fast so that the profs wouldn't think that we were coming in too late.

[OldAOPi]

Oh, and when we passed the Loving Cup around, it had real LOVE in it, not grape juice....

And I remember the AMC and GH sagas. I had never watched soaps before then. I never did care for One Life to Live - and it was between those two...we did name one of our son's Tristan - not after Tristan "Scorpio" Rogers, but I did know the name from that! Remember Anna with the plastic scare? She is on one of those makeover shows on Style or one of those channels.

[tallgreekalum]

Thanks for the memory of the 'vous! While I went to UMass, one of my best friends was a DTD at Terptown in the mid-eighties. If we were not in Georgetown at Winston's (watching the staff dance on the bar to the "the Boys are Back In Town!") or at "ChiDi" or Chinese disco, a restaurant that used to be a shag dancing mecca, we would be at the 'vous. Do you remember what the sludge that would build up on the floor? 'Vous goo. of course! "Gatoring in the goo" was a rite of passage for many a UM greek Then, next store for Little Tavern burgers (think White Castle)

Originally Posted by Leslie Anne

Wow….thoughts of back in the day.

Yes, honey, Rush with frills! I get a little sad that Maryland no longer has Formal Rush in the fall….all the sisters lined up outside the chapter houses wearing their matching outfits trying to out-yell each other. (We wore black, straight skirts, white blouses and black bow ties. We probably looked like flight attendants, lol, but I loved it.) The Rushees had to endure rankings from the frat boys who brought their couches out onto their lawns. They’d zero in on a particular girl and hold up big cards, 1 through 10. Rushees took flowers and inspirational hand-written letters with them after Preference. And, yes, real candles.

The main hang out for Greeks was the ‘Vous which was pretty disgusting but had been around forever. It always had at least an inch of gunk on the floor and they only served beer on tap. Very bad, watery beer. I think of the ‘Vous every time I hear “How Soon Is Now?” by The Smiths (often requested by the sillier sorority girls who thought it was a great “party” song – did they ever listen to the lyrics?) Around 1986 or so, they built Sante Fe Café and that became the nicer hang out with food and mixed drinks. The front patio was the place to be seen…in your letters…drinking. The ‘Vous is now gone. Not sure about SFC.

Campus traditions: Monday night serenades by the fraternity men in their coats and ties, stealing composites and plastering them with suggestive phrases cut out of magazines, massive scavenger hunts during Greek Week. Greek Week was just the best. The talent competition was a big highlight. I remember one year the Alpha Phis and whoever they were teamed up with did a Flashdance kinda thing and everyone freaked when they had water splashing down onto all the electrical equipment. That same year I pranced around the stage dressed as Snow White with my sisters as the dwarfs. It’s a hazy memory since I needed a whole lot of alcohol beforehand to get the nerve to dance in front of a few thousand people. We came in second though.

I must have missed the add-a-bead thing. I only remember pearls; lots and lots of pearls that dangled out over turtlenecks…never got the hang of that. Dressing for going out at night was big slouchy belts, big bows in the hair, and lots of bangles. Very Madonna-esqe.

Songs that will always remind me of certain fraternities:

“Blister in the Sun” = Delta Tau Delta
“Margaritaville” = Fiji
“The Wall” = Pike
“Shout!” and “Destination Unknown” = Phi Delt

Did any other campuses do Destination Unknown parties? No one but the presidents and social chairs knew where we were going. We’d just pile into busses and end up in some bizarre place. The first song of the night would, of course, be “Destination Unknown.”

Aww. The memories.

[AOIIalum]

Originally Posted by OldAOPi

Oh, and when we passed the Loving Cup around, it had real LOVE in it, not grape juice....

You owe me a new can of Diet Coke, thankyouverymuch.

[FSUZeta]

diet coke-please.......it was tab and tab alone!

serenades were so much fun-giving them and receiving them. one fraternity even had two of the members accompany them on guitars and the changed the words to "california girls" to sororities on campus and then of course, the chorus was "wish they all could be like the zeta girls" when they sang to us, and then when they got to the next street over, it was the pi phi girls, adpi girls, etc.

rush was full blown with a song and dance in the front yard to welcome the rushees to the house. after each party, the rushee was escorted by her hostess to the ends of the walk and down the steps and when enough sisters had been freed up, we started another song and dance, lining our sidewalk. we always sang the greek alphabet song and the chorus was "let me hear you say, zeta tau alpha, let me hear you say, zeta tau alpha, let ne hear you say, zeta tau alpha"......on and on and on and on! graduating sisters passed down their hideous rush dresses to anyone who needed them-the sorority chapters did not totally revamp recruitment every year.

some of the fraternity members across the street would climb out on their porch roof and give the rushess scores on cards, like the diving judges did at the olympics. it was so cruel, whether they got a "10" or a "1" and it always worried us that some rushees might not see it as an asset to have a fraternity across the street.

certain groups hung out at certain bars. at our hangout, only beer or bottled cokes were served. there were a couple of old pin ball machines(jumbo was one of them) a couple of foosball tables and several pool tables. they always played either,"the women all get prettier at closing time" or "why don't we get drunk and screw" as the bar closed. lovely!

greek week was a big deal and included some competition every night for a week. same with sigma chi derby.

we could get group seating at the football games and fraternities would do their cheers at the game.

[alum]

Tab was the only diet drink on the market for my first couple of years of college.

Theta gave out live goldfish at their Pref Night....much harder to deal with a fishbowl than a flower.

One of the Kappa moms made beautiful blue and white chocolate owl lollipops for our Pref Round. She drove them up from NC to Pittsburgh to hand-deliver them to our chapter so they wouldn't break.

[SWTXBelle]

Aren't moms the greatest during rush?

[jon1856]

FSU;
You just had to bring up rush
As my chapter house was on the corner, we had three Sorority houses all around us.
And well we did not have numbers, we sort of talked among our selfs about that subject.
The one thing that to this day I remember is one Sorority's clapping and song

[Zillini]

Mid '80's at the U of Illinois

Big, big hair and shoulder pads. You could buy shoulder pads seperately to put them in a top that didn't have any or you just wanted to make them bigger. I remember wearing bright colored tank tops, a matching patterned big shirt over it with a wide drop belt. Skinny jeans or leggings tucked into scrunch boots with socks peeking out that matched the top. Neon was big too thanks to Wham's "Wake me up before you go-go".

Guys went for the Sonny Crockett look. Pastel shirts with a jacket. No socks and a couple of days worth of beard. Speaking of Miami Vice, Friday night watching was a mandatory event. Big groups of guys and girls would gather at fraternity houses to watch before heading out.

Pin attire meant hose & heels. The hose matched your outfit too so there were some pretty funky colors. Monday night's were Chapter meetings. You'd see tons of well dressed young women and men walking all over campus to their meetings. That was actually rather nice to see.

Pledge Walkouts. Drunken road trips to another campus that had a chapter of your GLO, often whichever football team you were playing that weekend. We'd bring sleeping bags and crash in their living rooms. There was a competition to see who could steal the most items with fraternity letters.

Monday nights meant Quarter Beers at O'Malleys. You could get smashed on only a few bucks. Every table tried to get the tallest stack of empty plastic cups. They played cheesy oldies and the whole place would sing along. Midnight meant it was time for "American Pie" and it was a badge of honor if you knew all the words.

[alum]

I forgot about television!

In the 80s: Hill Street Blues, Cheers, LA Law were all on. All of these shows had graduates from our CFA Drama Department either in front of or behind the camera so it was somewhat obligatory to watch. The big thing was when Blair Underwood (who was a dramat who took a leave of absence for Hollywood ) was cast as a boyfriend of Denice from the Cosby Show. Even the most nerdiest of us Tartans(and there were a lot who vied for that spot) watched that.

My H was both a cadet and a professor at West Point. When he was a student, the drinking age was lower in NY and consequently Ike Hall was the place to be for plebes through cows, complete with sticky floors. When we were there during his professor year in the late 90s, Ike Hall was dead.

I went to my daughter's college Parents Weekend last fall. This school's PW is bizarre in that parents actually go to fraternity parties on Friday and Saturday night. I hadn't experienced sticky floors in some time but the memories came flooding back.

[honeychile]

*Hoping there's a nursing home for greeks!*

I just want to say, "I remember that!" to so many things!

FSUZeta, that's how we sang the alphabet song, too - I think. Did it have a kind of beat to it, almost like an island beat? We used to do it with Jamacain accents at times. I've heard it sung/chanted a lot of ways, but that one's still my favorite.

Did anyone else have to do the "half clap"? Maybe it's because everyone clapping would have been much too loud in a suite, so about half the chapter clapped with 3 fingers lightly hitting the other palm.

When did Chapter Meetings go to Sundays, as opposed to Mondays? I miss that still.

[nittanyalum]

Originally Posted by Zillini

Pledge Walkouts. Drunken road trips to another campus that had a chapter of your GLO

We called these "bolts". They were the best! We'd kidnap our pledge master and some seniors (pulling them out of bed without notice, no hair, no makeup just straight onto the bus) and bolt! We'd also leave the suite and chapter floor a mess and be gone the entire weekend.

[FSUZeta]

Originally Posted by jon1856

FSU;
You just had to bring up rush
As my chapter house was on the corner, we had three Sorority houses all around us.
And well we did not have numbers, we sort of talked among our selfs about that subject.
The one thing that to this day I remember is one Sorority's clapping and song

oh yes, the guys across the street from us knew all our rush songs and dances and on the friday of work week(when we had about had it with the rush chairman and all our sisters) we come tripping out of the front doors and the french doors, busby berkley style, to spy the guys across the street doing the exact same thing-well not the exact same thing, because they just had a single front door-but it was priceless and was just what we needed at that time, when all our nerves were frazzled and we were hating everything about rush.

and ya know something-they were pretty good!

[FSUZeta]

honey, no caribbean beat, but a definate beat (almost like a cadence), thru the alphabet part. it was a good choice for rush because it would definately stick in your head(and would not go away!)

[RaggedyAnn]

Phone chains and calendars.

No email. No cell phones.