Okay, Okay, carnation's retro rush thread (ie, how not to do recruitment)

[aephi alum]

It was a mainframe, using SORUSH v1.0, which was programmed in COBOL.

OK, carnation, I'll stop making you feel old, provided you update soon!

[Denise_DPhiE]

Originally Posted by AlphaFrog

I wonder where she'll end up...

I'm looking forward to this rush thread not unlike my anticipation of the Soprano's finale, BTW, the gas station Phil was "clipped" at is near my house in NJ!!

~end hijack

[carnation]

..so my roommate and I are trying to stay up that night and the invites don't come and we finally drop off to sleep around 11. The phone rings at 11:30!-but it's not the counselor, it's Coach Broyles who wants the freshman and sophomore cheerleaders to show up at some pep rally for the JV team.

Somewhere in the middle of the night, the counselor shows up in our room with invitations. I sit up groggily, look at the invitations, nope don't really like those, tell the counselor to drop me from rush, and go back to sleep.

[Ocalagirl]

WHAT?!? OMG wow!!

[dgdramadawg]

Originally Posted by carnation

Somewhere in the middle of the night, the counselor shows up in our room with invitations. I sit up groggily, look at the invitations, nope don't really like those, tell the counselor to drop me from rush, and go back to sleep.

Wow!!!

[AlwaysSAI]

I love threads where that happens in the first couple of posts! It makes for such great twists and turns.

KEEP GOING CARNATION!!! Cuz, I have to work until 10p....

[KSUViolet06]

Originally Posted by carnation

This recruitmen begins at the University of Arkansas, where women couldn't rush until their sophomore year. Also, UA had "bed rush", where the new pledges moved immediately into their new house so each house could only pledge as many women as they had beds for. This meant that hundreds of women rushed and only a fraction got bids.

Is this the same system that Indiana currently uses?

And about the cigarettes. I'm not sure that would fly even now. I can't imagine offering PNMs cigarettes. I mean, why?

[carnation]

The next day I had to go over to Housing to arrange for a dorm; you see, you didn't register for housing if you were rushing because you hoped you'd be moving into a sorority house that week. As you can imagine, there were many women in line. The girl who asked if people were ever cut by everybody the first day and was told no was indeed cut by everybody. I got to know her at Student Senate during the year and never could figure out why that happened because she was attractive, certainly no skank, and had good grades.

Many people had only gotten invited to Uno or Ocho and refused to take those options. The thing was, since over 500 people were rushing and there were less than half of those spaces open for pledges, the sororities could be very choosy so many fabulous women were lost to the Greek system forever.

Debbie (the other cheerleader) and Cathy (my roommate) went to their favorite 4 for Skits and their favorite 2 for Prefs. It looked like Cathy, a legacy, would be getting a bid for sure.

[CZAXOTerp]

Originally Posted by carnation

The next day I had to go over to Housing to arrange for a dorm; you see, you didn't register for housing if you were rushing because you hoped you'd be moving into a sorority house that week. As you can imagine, there were many women in line. The girl who asked if people were ever cut by everybody the first day and was told no was indeed cut by everybody.

I don't really follow this?

a lot of ppl dropped out because they were cut by everyone or they weren't happy w/ where they got invited back to right???

[Ocalagirl]

Wow so I am still waiting to see what happened. This is getting interesting!!

[Faith4Keep]

Originally Posted by CZAXOTerp

I don't really follow this?

The girl was told by a rho chi "no, you can't be cut by every chapter" and indeed she was call from all the chapters.

[carnation]

Originally Posted by CZAXOTerp

I don't really follow this?

a lot of ppl dropped out because they were cut by everyone or they weren't happy w/ where they got invited back to right???

A few were cut by everybody but it seemed that most who were in line at Housing had dropped out of rush because they were unhappy with their invitations. I thought it was ironic that the girl asked if anyone was ever cut by everyone the first day did have that happen to her. Well, tough for the sororities--she ended up being a great campus leader!

KSUViolet, I don't know why they offered cigarettes. It would have been really low class to smoke them during rush! I've heard of a few houses offering them at various schools, though.

[gogreekmom]

I love this thread!!

[AnchorAlumna]

Originally Posted by AZ-AlphaXi

Oh OH ... I worked on those ... when I went thru rush in 1970 I worked in the computer center and got to help run the invitation acceptances thru the sorter. But man it was nasty cleaning up after those little dinos

Ha Ha, you and I are the same age! I don't think U of Ala. used computers back then...the earth was still molton lava and it was too hot!!

[carnation]

So we come to Bid Day. I had planned to be elsewhere when the bids were given out but surprise! The computers acted up again and the bids were late so I was caught in traffic on Sorority Row when the happy NMs were spilling down the street. That was hard.

Debbie didn't get a bid from either sorority she preffed.

Cathy didn't get a bid from either sorority she preffed, including her mother's group, so I guess that sororities didn't have the rule then that legacies who go to Prefs must be put on the first bid list.

I still wanted to be Greek very much but I could see that with cheer duties vs. pledge duties, it'd be next to impossible. Then I found out that if I wanted to continue in my major, I would have to transfer because Arkansas was dropping it so I put Greek life on the back burner. I got an open rush bid but turned it down. I had plans for my next recruitment.