The Wonderful Wizard of OR: An Oregon Recruitment Story

[TweedleDee199]

I stumbled upon Greek Chat sometime last spring when senioritis set in and I was more interested in researching GLO’s than dealing with those last dregs of homework. I was in love. I learned as much as any PNM can hope to know going into recruitment from advice threads, and eagerly awaited the day I could contribute my own recruitment thread. Now it’s the day of orientation and my recruitment journey is FINALLY about to begin. I’m beyond excited.
I gave up on trying to conceal my university, since the number of sororities and time of recruitment probably makes it pretty obvious. At Oregon we have 9 NPC sororities:
Alpha Chi Omega
Alpha Phi
Chi Omega
Delta Delta Delta
Delta Gamma
Gamma Phi Beta
Kappa Delta
Kappa Kappa Gamma
Pi Beta Phi
From what I understand the addition of Tri-Delt last year raised the maximum number of groups we can visit per round. We’ll visit all 9 over the first two days, up to 7 on day 3, up to 5 on day 4, and up to 3 for preference [I’m only 80% sure of this, I’ll revise after orientation if those numbers are incorrect]. After thinking long and hard [perhaps too long and too hard] I decided on a Wizard of Oz theme for my thread. It seemed fitting as recruitment will be a journey to find my way home filled with strange new customs I’ve never encountered and I imagine, many wonderful new friends. The sororities will be known as
Auntie Em
Uncle Henry
Dorothy
Toto
Scarecrow
Tin Man
Lion
Glinda
Elphaba [ok so that’s technically a Wicked reference and not WOZ, but I just didn’t feel right identifying any house as “the wicked witches” or “the munchkins”]

Greek life has been growing steadily here at Oregon and it seems that every girl I’ve met has told me she signed up for recruitment. I’m a little nervous on that count, and I’m starting to wish I had put more effort into securing recommendations. The only one I was able to get is to Uncle Henry. 3 other girls from my hall are going through recruitment, and for purposes of this thread will be known as Stewie, Duey, and Louie. Stewie is from a Greek family, though her legacy organizations aren’t on campus. She signed up for rush last minute on Monday, seemingly at the behest of her mother. She seems very apprehensive and isn’t sure she’ll accept a bid anywhere. Duey has the same attitude and even considered dropping out of recruitment because of the time commitment. Louie on the other hand has an older sister who is a VP at Tinman and is thrilled for recruitment. She’s pretty sure she’ll end up a Tinman as well, but is quick to point out that she knows having a sister in the group doesn’t guarantee her a bid and she is approaching the week with an open mind. As for me, my attitude has done a complete 180 over the last few months. I signed up for recruitment in July with the mindset that there were only a few appealing houses on campus and I knew exactly where I wanted to end up. Yeah I know, I do a facepalm thinking about that too. Now however, after reading other PNM’s recruitment stories and doing further research into my school’s organizations locally and nationally I’m in awe of how anyone ever chooses. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that some chapters are already standing out to me more than others after interacting with actives around campus [there was a huge info fair this past weekend, a few are in my classes, girls I know from high school, etc.], but I’m going in with an open mind and when I picture myself ripping into a bid envelope [knock on wood] next Tuesday I can’t even imagine what it will say. Since I identified my school, I’ll be delaying my posts a day or so just to be safe. Now to start looking for those ruby slippers…