Retro Fraternity Rush from the Midwest

[robrun]

The first round of rush was organized that every dorm floor(s) had two rho chis assigned to them and led the same group around to every house first round. First round took two days, 6 houses on Sunday and 5 houses on Monday...this being the Sunday before and Monday of the first day of classes, when everybody is busy anyway and most of campus comes down sick from exhaustion.

Anyway, the houses I visited the first night were

Braves
Cardinals
Giants
Yankees
Indians
Twins

All I knew going into first round was that each section at each house would be half an hour long.

Sunday night started at Braves, which was conveniently the house furthest away from my dorm. At first it was really weird for me to see all of the guys in the house come line up outside and form what would become a line of handshakes. Just about every house did this, and I didn't really see the point because the line moved very quickly and the handshakes were superficial at just about every house with the brothers saying "Hi, robrun" or "Welcome to Braves". As I said, this happened at every house first round.

After the line of handshakes we came upon a food table which had really good beef kebabs. We were then seated in their formal room which was weird because all of the rushees and all of the brothers only took up half of their formal room; Braves was the smallest fraternity after Twins. It became more weird when the brother surrounded all of the rushees and started clapping and doing this weird non-sensical chant that didn't talk about the house at all. Then what happened at this house and just about every other was a speech about why Braves was the best house and how they liked to party. The speech was interesting, mostly because the president of the house was not a very good public speaker.

I was then taken to a room by a brother whom I introduced and when I told him where I was from the brother "just so happened" to be from a town close by. The conversation was pretty superficial stuff about school although the guy did seem pretty chill but before too much longer it was time to go and we were whisked out of the house because there were steep fines for going over the half hour time limit. Overall, the two or three guys I talked to seemed nice and I decided that I wanted to get to know this house more before I would cut them.

Next was Cardinals. Just like at Braves, there was a line of handshakes then getting some food (chicken strips and cheese sticks) and then hearing about how Cardinals like to party hard all of the time which struck me as weird because I knew that they didn't party near as much as they said they did in their presentation.

During and after the one-on-one (or actually 2-on-1) at Cardinals I guessed that they really wanted me in their house because the president and the ex-president both talked to me about how Cardinals was such a great house and how they could see me in the house, although it was kind of awkward when they asked me what I thought about rush when this was only the second house I had visited, and rushees were strictly forbidden to talk about what happened at other houses during rush rounds. Overall though, the conversation was pretty good and I thought I could really see myself in this house.

Then the same routine as before, whisked out of the house to avoid the time penalty yada yada yada and it was off to Giants.

I could tell from the moment I stepped in at Giants I wouldn't fit in there. During their opening presentation they talked about how they took hazing very seriously and said that they didn't haze at all, which I would have believed if not for some of the brothers smirking or laughing during this bit. During the one-on-one it was pretty much me in a room with someone who I had never seen before and would probably never see again, although we both understood that there was no chance in hell I'd join this house so we had a civil although somewhat half-hearted conversation. This house definitely had the loudest chanting as the rush group left the house.

Next was Yankees, the football house. This was probably the funniest presentation because all of the presenters were very, very drunk and the presentation itself was filled with lots of innuendoes (two curvaceous hills right next to each other? what they could possibly be talking about?) and jokes about the brothers themselves. The one-on-ones here were pretty funny and laid-back too as it turned out everybody in the house was drunk (breaking rush rules, btw) wich led to fun moments. Although I could tell I probably wouldn't join this house, the guys were still pretty chill and nice.

This was followed by Indians. Indians' house was kind of close to my dorm so I knew quite a bit about the house. I came in with the stereotype that this was THE house, but I ended up disappointed. The guy doing the opening presentation wasn't near as funny as he thought he was and the 70 or so guys in the house made an effort to surround the rush group of 18 which was pretty weird, as they all had stern and serious looks on their faces during a presentation which was supposed to be funny. The presentation talked about how great the house was and that being a member of Indians would immediately put you on top of the social ladder and that you could get any girl you wanted, as well as that everybody in every other house wished that they could have been in Indians. The one-on-one was weird too as I was paired with the house president and the rush chair, they really didn't talk to me as much as talk at me telling me about why Indians was such a great house, pretty much repeating what the presenter had talked about earlier.

Last on Sunday night was Twins. By this point I was getting tired; this round started at aroudn 10:30. Twins was hurting for members it was not hard to tell. The presentation talked about the great experiences that a certain brother had at Twins and how Twins was not like the other houses and how the stereotype of their house wasn't true. Unlike most of the other presenters, this speaker actually seemed sincere and earnest which was a definite plus. I was paired with with someone who I knew very well in the house who gave me a house tour even though I had visited the house on multiple occasions which didn't make very much sense to me.

By the time I had gotten to Twins, all of the different food that the houses had started running together as three different houses had some form of cheese sticks or fast food. I made the mistake of not pacing myself and getting sick which led to a visit to the restroom at Twins. The guy giving me the house tour actually handled this pretty well and used it as an opportunity to show off the newly remodeled bathroom which made the situation funny more than anything else. Overall, Twins seemed like they were genuinely interested in me

After the first night of rush, I ranked the 6 houses I had visited so far as follows:

Cardinals (easily #1 so far)
Twins (Impressive, but not as impressive as Cardinals)
Braves (From what I learned about the house, I could see myself in it but I really didn't know that much about the house)
Indians (I got the impression they were interested in me, but I wasn't very interested in them)
Giants & Yankees (there was no chance I would ever fit into either of these houses, and they realized this too)