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

[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.

[jenidallas]

That night, we went to a campus “luau” and the sorority women were everywhere and again doing the loud talking very near us without talking to us. At one point, the Lions and Bears got in an argument about it and it was rather uncomfortable for all the rushees so a bunch of us decided to leave and go play cards back at the men’s dorm.

There seems to be a lot of talking and a lot of the sophomores and juniors seem to have very set opinions about where they want to be (usually Lions or Tigers). There is also a girl on our floor who has said she will be devastated if she is not a Tiger. I’m not sure why none of my friends are talking about Bears much. One of the cheerleaders disliked Lions because she had a very uncomfortable conversation there that she said personally embarrassed her.

At the end of the first day, I love Tigers and feel like I could easily see myself there as they are what I pictured Greek life looking like. I like Bears and Lions and think I need more time to get to know them as I’m not sure how I fit yet.

[jenidallas]

I checked my mailbox early in the morning and was thrilled to find out that I had a full schedule for day two. The cheerleader who didn’t like Lions got released by them but didn’t seem at all upset. My roommate commented that if we all had to stick together that only Bears or Tigers were still on the table. I wasn’t sure how I felt about all the talk about sticking together though… what if my favorite in the end was not the same as theirs?

I don’t remember the order of the parties but I remember I wore a blue dress with a white collar. (So strange that I remember this.) Here are my impressions:

Lions – same catchy chant as the first round. (I will say that 23 years later, that damn chant is STILL stuck in my head and I’ve used it as an example in recruitment schools with chapters of how effective chants can be.) Their skit was corny but showed definite sisterhood and I remember thinking that their style of dress that day was so NOT me. I had a couple of great conversations but I was not feeling very connected – the women were a lot more “home” oriented than I was (many were education majors and kept talking about things that made them seem more like wives and mothers than women a couple of years older than me). I felt like I might have to change to fit in here. I remember they had sugar cookies shaped like their symbol.

Tigers – more chanting and cute matching outfits. I swear, these girls always look like they walked straight out of a catalog. They seem like the popular girls in high school and I wonder if I would always be trying hard if I were here. Their skit was not very funny but everyone laughed a lot – it was really polished , but I felt like a lot of it was inside jokes and I was not sure if I was in on the joke. I was super impressed that they had monogrammed cups and napkins and everything seemed so grown-up. I also noticed that they had removed all the normal classroom chairs and brought in nice white rental chairs that looked fancy.

Bears – again, the Bears party seemed different than the other parties but I couldn’t figure out why. Instead of a skit, they did a funny song with parts that talked about activities. At one point the song discussed fraternities that were not on our campus and how they had mixers with them. That really confused me. I noticed that only the super pretty girls were participating and the others were sitting out with us and that made me uncomfortable as I wondered if you had to be pretty to be in the skit. I talked to another fabulous woman who I really connected with. I was really feeling a Jekyll and Hyde feeling about this chapter. Also, I’ve agreed to not talk to my mom that weekend as we were not sure if it would violate a rush rule but I’m just so confused right now as to what was going on as it seemed like two different chapters were present.

After the last party, the rush guides gathered us all together and told us that we would receive our preference schedules in our mailboxes by 10 am the next day. One of them also emphasized that it was critical that we check our mailboxes after dinner that night as there might be important communication coming our way. She winked at a couple of us when she said that and I didn’t understand what that might mean.

Then they told us that it was important that we know that it was “possible” that a sorority could be using members from another chapter and/or young alumnae to help with recruitment that weekend and that only chapter members/advisors would be present at preference the next day so we needed to keep an open mind as to what we had actually experienced during rounds one and two as that would be more representative of what a full chapter would be like. This confused a lot of the women and there was a lot of chatter. Several folks said it was Bears and they had bussed women in from another big chapter. Others said it was Lions and they were using women who had just graduated and passing them off as chapter members. Someone even said that Tigers had women who traveled around who were perfect and hired just to do rush parties. I tried not to listen to the talk but my mind was racing.

[jenidallas]

After dinner I checked my mailbox as instructed and found a white envelope inviting me to a top secret off-campus party that night. With all the fraternity rush parties going on, maybe this was for them? But I felt weird about this being so hush-hush (isn't that how hazing happens?!) and I didn’t have a car so I wasn’t sure what to do. My roommate got the same invitation as did one of the cheerleaders. The other cheerleader did not get invited but we told her to come with us anyway and decided it was worth driving to go see what this was about.

We got to an off campus apartment about 9 pm to find a party full of various guys we knew and a few of the members of Tigers along with a bunch of other women I did not know. Of course, silence was still in effect and they were doing that same talking near us but not with us thing. In addition to the four of us, there were two upperclasswomen rushees (including the one who was so rude to the Bears on day one) and a few of the rushees from the all-girls dorm who had said they were a “package deal”.

One of the girls there (I didn’t recognize her and had not seen her at any of the sorority events) very loudly asked one of the guys why someone would come who was not invited. The cheerleader who wasn’t invited ran out of the apartment thinking they were talking about her. The girl then laughed and said “I wasn’t talking about her” and then pointed to another girl – the one who lived down the hall from us. I found out later than only a few of us were invited and it seemed to me to be like some kind of test to see if we would follow instructions or something. In any case, the men as well as the women I didn’t recognize were all drinking and my friends and I decided to leave as it seemed like an uncomfortable situation. Technically based on the rules of how the rush rules were written I don’t think they broke a campus rule but it still seemed like dirty rushing and inappropriate for the night before Preference. (I also found out also that night that there were a couple other similar parties and that it was a campus norm back then – other chapters were also involved, not that it made it okay – some people got invited to more than one party as we found out from other girls as we were leaving the one we had been at - they were coming from a party with Lions.)

I didn’t sleep well as I was so conflicted… was Bears the sorority I met or a chapter on another campus? What should I do about being a legacy? Did Lions not inviting me to their secret party mean they didn’t like me at all? Were Tigers great girls or rule-breakers? What was going to happen if my clique ended up in different houses?

[jenidallas]

I was very nervous the morning of preference and went for a walk to clear my head. When I came back to get ready our schedules were in our boxes.

There was wailing and sobbing coming from my floor when I walked back up the stairs. The girl at the end of the hall (the one who was set on Tigers and who was spoken to rudely the night before at the secret party) had only been invited back to Lions. My roommate and I both still had full schedules. The cheerleader who had been cut by Lions the day before was going back to Bears and Tigers. The other cheerleader had a full schedule but had decided she did not want to revisit Bears. Our pageant queen friend was only invited back to Tigers and Bears as well. So it looked like unless we all went Tigers we would not be in the same chapter.

I was starting to get irritated by this day especially by all the talk back and forth and decided to only talk to my roommate and pageant queen as we got ready. This apparently upset one of the cheerleaders (the one who was not invited to the secret party but got the full schedule) and she said something nasty to me as we were leaving to go to pref parties. For preference, we all met in a central location on campus. Women who were not going to parties for a particular block had to sit in silence there. Each chapter held two parties so the PNMs were split in groups – there were on average 6-11 women per party. We were told there were 31 women remaining in recruitment all together. I remember seeing the rude rushee there and she told us that she was ONLY going to Tigers as her boyfriend was vice president of one of the fraternities so she knew that was the only “socially acceptable” choice and therefore she was not going to waste her time elsewhere so had turned down invitations to the others. A lot of women had decided not to go to Bears.

My first party was Lions. It was a lovely party in an old house on the campus. It felt very southern-feeling and old-fashioned. I remember all the girls were wearing matching pastel dresses and they reminded me of a show choir in all that taffeta. They all kept talking about finding their fiancés and I remember in my head thinking they were the MRS degree chapter. This seemed like the kind of chapter I’d go into if I were ready to settle down after college and something about the chapter to me seemed like they were very set on their campus identity. Their ceremony was moving but I looked around and had trouble imagining myself spending four years there. Lots of girls cried but I didn’t quite understand what there was to cry about.

My second party was Tigers. I was picked up by the president of Panhellenic who I’d met earlier in the week. She made me so comfortable and asked me if the party the night before had thrown me off as she thought we seemed a bit bewildered and that perhaps no one had told me that might happen. She said they wanted so badly for the group of us to know we were wanted since other chapters had done those parties in the past which I thought was a plausible explanation. During the party several officers stopped by to talk to me and I felt very special. Their ceremony was beautiful and two of their songs were to tunes I knew from camp so it made me feel warm and fuzzy. I felt like I wanted this chapter because of who I envisioned myself becoming but was not sure if it fit me today – they were all so much more polished and popular than I was in high school but that was who I wanted to be in college and I felt special that they liked me.

My last party was Bears. I looked around and immediately knew there was something wrong… all the girls I had met were gone. I didn’t see a single one when the door opened. I saw the owl-eyed president and the awkward girl from my hall and a couple others and that was it. Period. I was double-preffed (me plus another rushee) and the awkward girl picked us up. She started by telling us we could be on exec as soon as we were initiated if we pledged them and then recited a list of reasons why we should give them a chance. Then she turned to me and told me that I was a legacy so they were counting on me to be loyal to that. “Your relationship with your mother will never quite be the same if you don’t pledge Bears – you can’t do that to your mother or she will never feel the same about you” she told me. This smacked me in the face because I hadn't really thought about my mother in all this and she had told me to keep an open mind... but to hear all this made me question whether she really meant it! And at this point all my confusion and lack of sleep caught up to me and I started sobbing. My mom saw this from across the room and came rushing over and asked if I wanted to sit in the corner and talk. And boy, did I ever. I told her want the girl had said and how my week had been going and she said “jenidallas, I love you no matter what… and while I’d be honored to have you as my sister, I want YOU to be happy… and I think you’d make a great member, wherever you are - if you want to be a Tiger, you'd fit in fine. But if you want to come here, you'll have a home too... but you have to follow your heart and make the decision that is going to help YOU become the better woman. This is your campus, not mine. And whatever you do, you need to be ready to do it for life.”. Hearing her say that and thinking of what she taught me, I suddenly knew exactly what I needed to do. The preference ceremony was starting so she grabbed my hand and let me over. And I smiled because suddenly my path was clear and I knew what I actually wanted to do.

After the last party, we went one by one into the Student Life Office. There were two doors – you walked in one and closed the door, signed your card, and the walked out the other. My friends agreed to wait on the other side so we could all walk back to the dorm together. Pageant queen walked out and we all started discussing what we had done. Rude rushee walked out behind her and overheard me telling them what I had done and looked at me like I was an idiot and said “well, I hope that wasn’t a stupid choice on your part” and then walked off. We all actually were very happy with what we had done and decided to go have dinner off campus to celebrate rush being almost over!

[jenidallas]

The four of us found our friend pageant queen and all went to check the bid list to see if our names were on it.


My roommate and pageant queen and I were all listed which meant we had bids. (And, because of legacy policies and/or how we each filled out our card, we were 99% certain we knew what our cards would say.)


Neither of the cheerleaders received a bid… it turned out they had both decided to SIP the only sorority they both preffed (Tiger). Both started crying but the Panhellenic president (a Tiger) came out of the student life and told them to be available for a phone call that afternoon as one sorority did not make quota and would be snap bidding. And if not, to come to the student union at 4 pm anyway because none of the sororities was at total and therefore they would likely all be handing out COB bids. Quota was 10 and we counted 25 names on the bid list – so from what she said, two sororities took quota and one took 5.


At 4 pm I stood with my friends and opened my bid to....

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Tigers




Otherwise known as


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Gamma Phi Beta

[jenidallas]

I know some of you are thinking... "wait, WHAT?!"

Yes, I decided that jumping into my legacy chapter and doing all that hard work was NOT what I wanted to do. I wanted to go somewhere that everything was already exactly the way envisioned it.

But more on that in a moment... back to the story....