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The biggest challenge OPhiA faced on my campus was that few college students had ever heard of a service sorority before they stumbled across us. So our starting point was just basic PR to introduce the concept of a service sorority. We posted fliers, hung hand-painted banners, put ads in the school newspaper and (in more recent years) used electronic media like Facebook, etc. to raise awareness of who we are.
I discovered OPhiA quite by accident when I was donating blood at the semesterly campus blood drive. The girl assigned to chat with me while I was donating (to keep my mind off the needle) and escort me to the cookie / juice table afterward was an OPA sister. They co-sponsored this big event every semester, which impressed me. The next semester I kept an eye out for their rush advertisements and I joined then.
The chapter where I pledged had a long-standing tradition of a casual rush where they served ice cream. They called it "Banana Splits and Blue Jeans". I think they were deliberately emphasizing the laid back personality of OPA to contrast it with a perception on our campus that sororities were very pearls-and-high-heels. That's the only event I remember, but I think they held it two different days during the same week. PNMs could come to either day, but weren't expected to come to both. I seriously don't remember a single incidence of a pledge juggling our pledge program and that of another GLO. It just didn't happen. But social Greeks were not very prominent on that campus at that time.
Later, I was a member of another chapter and we were much more aware of the social sororities. We never scheduled our rush at the same time as theirs! We advertised in the same way as my first chapter but had several rush events, one of which was always a hands-on service project. Although we had some members who held dual memberships, they almost always joined the social first (as first semester freshmen) and then joined us later. I remember only one time when there was a conflict: a PNM tried to pledge us and APO at the same time. We tried to discourage her, but she was adament that she could handle both. She wound up dropping from both. So sad!
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