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A new school
Despite the safety/budget things going on at Umass in 2001/2002, it wasn’t an easy decision for me to leave. Over the previous semesters I’d made some great friends and really enjoyed the atmosphere. But in the light of the fact I was primarily there to get an education in a safe environment, with the help of my parents I decided to transfer. The school I ended up choosing was a very small Catholic (Augustinian) liberal arts school north of Boston, Merrimack College. MC was pretty much the opposite of “ZooMass” in every way. There were only 2100 students and pretty much everyone lived on the enclosed campus. Although it’s quite liberal for a Catholic school, it was still Catholic and Campus Ministry was a large presence. Having grown up in an EXTREMELY lapsed Catholic family and attending public school my entire life until that point, I was afraid that I was in for a bit of a culture shock. Before going to MC, I had never considered that my boyfriend (the same guy from before) wouldn’t be able to stay in my room when he came to visit and I was shocked to learn that the underclass dorms were dry.
During the summer of 2002 I started to get REALLY nervous about the move the MC. It was just so different after the uber-liberal large state school environment at Umass. Would I be able to make friends as a sophomore/junior or would everyone at this small school be settled into their cliques already? Would I chafe unbearably under the rules? What was I thinking? As the summer drew to a close, some of my fears were allayed. I found out that although MC has some traditional Catholic school rules on the books (dry, single sex dorms), they’re not very strongly enforced and the overall campus culture is quite liberal. It is still Massachusetts, after all. In spite of this, I was still anxious about the prospect of making new friends. Most upperclassmen live in on campus apartments & townhouses, but because I was considered a sophomore because of transferring, I was assigned to a sophomore dorm.
Just before school started, I received a mailing from the Office of Student Activities promoting Greek Life at MC. Until then, I hadn’t really considered the prospect that Greek Life might still be an option for me but I began to see it as a way to open doors and help me make friends in this new and somewhat foreign environment. I became determined to at least check out what Greek Life was like at MC, in spite of my boyfriends’ reservations.
Upon moving onto campus that fall, I realized I hadn’t been housed in a sophomore dorm, so much as in a hall filled almost entirely of transfer students. Much to my delight, many of the other girls were also interested in Greek Life. Although I really liked the girls on my floor, I wasn’t going to let my friendship with them stop me from becoming involved, the way I had at Umass. I refused to become complacent so early in the school year again.
From the beginning of the year informal recruitment signs were all over campus. At MC there is informal recruitment in the fall for transfers & upperclassmen where the chapters can bid to total and formal deferred recruitment for freshman is held in the spring. There are three NPC chapters at Merrimack:
Alpha Sigma Tau
Theta Phi Alpha
Zeta Tau Alpha
Since I am getting excited to see the new Harry Potter movie and don’t want to give away the ending to my story too early (even though you already know where I end up), I’ll give them code names after Harry Potter characters. In no order:
Hermione Granger
Harry Potter
Ron Weasley
Time to do some work. Next update I’ll explain the way recruitment works at Merrimack and the various other girls from my floor who participated with me. I'll try to keep this moving a brisk pace, I know how frustrating it is when these drag on. Thanks for reading!
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QFA
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