AGDee's Retro aka How NOT to do recruitment

[AGDee]

Well, yeah, no real twists, just lots of memories about frilly rush and how crazy I was. I found out later that we borrowed the china from Wayne State every year because we didn't own anything. It also became a problem when our Prefs were the same day! I don't remember how we resolved that. We might have borrowed from U Mich that year?

[susan314]

Originally Posted by AGDee

Well, yeah, no real twists, just lots of memories about frilly rush and how crazy I was. I found out later that we borrowed the china from Wayne State every year because we didn't own anything. It also became a problem when our Prefs were the same day! I don't remember how we resolved that. We might have borrowed from U Mich that year?

You might already know about this, but at Michigan State we had an enormous collection of teacups and saucers with a lot of sentimental meaning. It was a chapter tradition dating back to our founding that when a Chi alumnae married, she came back for a special tea and presented the chapter with a cup/saucer from her wedding china.

Those cups/saucers were gorgeous...so many different patterns/styles representing over 70 years of Chi chapter sisters. We only actually used them at Preference, and it terrified me to handle them...the thought of my clumsy self breaking a special teacup from a long ago sister's wedding china made me incredibly nervous. Thankfully, I don't recall any ever actually breaking...we treated them with the utmost respect!

Such a shame that all those memories are packed away in storage somewhere, now that Chi is closed. Makes me wonder what the heck is going to happen to them if the unthinkable happens and Chi doesn't reopen for a very long time. I hope that they are preserved in a safe place, whatever happens. (Side note - VandalSquirrel's grandmother was a Chi alumnae apparently from the 1920s (? on the year). Makes me wonder if she has a teacup in that collection, but VandalSquirrel suspects now.)

(I never got the chance to present a teacup to the chapter, since I married in 2003...after Chi closed. Of course, I didn't actually register for china anyhow. LOL. But, I had always planned on picking out a teacup/saucer that I liked anyhow and presenting it to the chapter. Perhaps when we reopen, they can host another tea for those of us who got married in the interim and feel like we missed out on a special Chi tradition. )

[VandalSquirrel]

So Dee, do tell, what was the song they sang, I'm guessing Special Family!

I'm not sure if my grandmother came back with a teacup, she married when she was much older, and had my father (an only child) when she was almost forty. Which is completely normal in this day and age, but back then, it was We have teacups at Idaho, but less and less women are registering for china in this day and age.

[susan314]

Originally Posted by VandalSquirrel

So Dee, do tell, what was the song they sang, I'm guessing Special Family!

I still cry to this day every time I hear Special Family. (And I've never even been through Preference! We used it for other stuff too.)

When I found out that you could hear a recording of it on our website, I e-mailed the link to all my chapter sisters just so they could get misty eyed too.


(Yeah, I didn't register for china either...but I would have purchased and presented a nice teacup anyhow, just for tradition's sake. After all, it could be the pattern I "would" have chosen had I felt the need to register for china. )

[UGAalum94]

One of our members was a chapter consultant, and I remember her telling me later about the teacups. It sounded like a wonderful tradition.

I like what using them communicates at pref. in terms of a presenting a unified, elegant overall impression of tradition, while still reflecting the individual characteristics and unique merits of each individual member.

Does anyone else have the teacup tradition?

[VandalSquirrel]

Originally Posted by susan314

I still cry to this day every time I hear Special Family. (And I've never even been through Preference! We used it for other stuff too.)

When I found out that you could hear a recording of it on our website, I e-mailed the link to all my chapter sisters just so they could get misty eyed too.


(Yeah, I didn't register for china either...but I would have purchased and presented a nice teacup anyhow, just for tradition's sake. After all, it could be the pattern I "would" have chosen had I felt the need to register for china. )

Special Family was sang at a recent wedding, and the most recent wedding there was no singing (or it happened after I left, but before the tent blew away), however she did register for china. I lucked out and inherited two sets of silver, but my sister got the china so I'm planning on registering for some. What I don't understand is that she got the china, but registered for more when she was married the second time. I can't tell you how cranky I was when I had to help pack it and move it because she divorced him.

Hi, I'm that dork who has the music downloaded to her Ipod. I know I'm not the only one *cough* OTW *cough*.

[mystikchick]

i love the idea of the china tradition, what a sweet and sentimental and tangible way to link to all the women who came before you! susan, if i were you and i'd had to deal with the fact that all the memories embodied in that china were packed up somewhere in storage, i honestly think i would cry.

[AGDee]

Alpha Beta (Michigan) has the teacup tradition also.

It wasn't Special Family. I had never heard that song until the mid 90's when my chapter started using it and I cried then. I love that song.

There were actually two .. AGD and Our Time is Short that made me cry at that Pref. I was thinking about AGD but then I remembered Our Time is Short after I posted it. Next post time...

[AGDee]

The tradition at EMU back then was that the sororities would break up into groups and go to the women’s dorms to pick them up. There would be 5 or 6 sisters per group and they would be singing their sorority songs at the top of their lungs as they traveled from dorm to dorm. Commuters usually waited at a friend’s dorm room until they got word. Thing was, there were two of us on my floor who had gone through rush! NOW, I was suddenly really, really nervous. I was pacing around my dorm room! There was no way of knowing, when I heard “I Just Wanna Be An Alpha Gamma Delta, I just want to wear fourteen pearls” coming down the hall whether they were coming for me or Renee! It was only 6:30, so it was still possible that I could get “the phone call”. But NO! They stopped at my door and sang until I opened the door. Sherri had my bid in her hand and as she handed it to me said “The sisters of the Zeta Alpha Chapter of Alpha Gamma Delta would like you to join their sisterhood”. She and I hugged and I started to cry (happy tears, of course). They had a big bouquet of red, buff and green balloons for me and they decorated my door while I got my coat and called Rich and Michael really fast and screamed “I’m an Alpha Gam!” (They said “We told you so!”).

I was the first one they picked up and I knew the song already because I had been singing it all week in my head, so I was singing it as loudly as they were as we went to each dorm. I saw the Alpha Xi’s heading up to Renee’s room as I was leaving. She had gotten a bid to Labrador, her favorite.

We picked up LIBBY! I was so excited! Libby was going to be one of my sisters! I think I forgot to mention that she was also dating a TKE. At that time, a lot of Alpha Gams were dating TKEs, but that changed to Lambda Chis the next year. We also picked up Sue, who I had gotten to know a little bit during rush and really liked. It was the perfect night, running through the streets, singing Fourteen Pearls at the top of our lungs and picking up new sisters. We went back to the house where we had cake and punch. We just hung out and socialized all evening. It was our first time at the house because it wasn’t used during rush at all, to keep things fair. They taught us songs, both internet worthy and NOT. I lost my voice the next day from singing so loudly!


The next day, we had Pledge Presentation where all the Panhellenic groups met in the ballroom of the student union and announced their new pledges. This is where the Panhellenic officers and rush counselors also re-affiliated into their groups. I was so happy to see Elisa, the Panhellenic President, join the Alpha Gams. Campus leaders with great grades but who were still down to earth and not at all pretentious surrounded me, and I was very, very happy. We all sang the Greek Alphabet Song and then each chapter sang a couple chapter specific songs for the other groups. It was really nice. They gave us MORE roses too.

In retrospect, I would have been very happy to be a Sigma Kappa (the Russian Tea Terriers) and I should have given them a chance. A lot of the rushees whom I really liked during recruitment chose Sigma Kappa and the chapter grew by a lot. They became very visible and much stronger with that one pledge class. Also, one of my best friends from high school became a Sigma Kappa at the University of Michigan.

Ironically, due to a rift that the newest members weren’t privy to, our chapter was cut in half over the summer. A lot of women quit over something that had happened in the house. I never knew the whole story, but we came back with only 15 members and 9 of them were my pledge class. I instantaneously became the Rush Chair and did ALL that prep, with much help from my sisters. The invitations, the nametags, the favors, the pref pillows, food, wow! It was so much work. AND we did it twice a year, crazy! We more than doubled our chapter size that year though, taking 19 in the fall and another 9 in the winter and still kept the highest GPA on campus!

I wouldn’t have fit in with the Poodles (Tri Sigmas), I still maintain to this day. They just weren’t a good fit for me. Everybody who knew me beforehand thought that I would go Tri Sigma because I was crazy about the color purple. I had purple everything! But now, I bleed red, buff and green. They were a super strong chapter, biggest on campus, always won Greek Week, very popular with the fraternities, but they just weren’t me. I probably would’ve been happy as a Labrador (Alpha Xi Delta) because they were a lot of fun and very nice, I just didn’t get to know them until after rush. I’m sure I just fell through the rotation cracks somehow during that party, but I didn’t even know what rotation was, so I didn’t know what to think at the time.