skit or no skit?

[Little E]

Rush is stressful enough without organizing skits. Tensions are high and people are tired. I agree with the senitment that if its not broken, why fix it? Video or power point would be great, polished, classy and all that good stuff. If you interact with the media presentation, it would make it much more personal. Besides what is more fun, photos of what you are really going to be doing in a sorority or college women dressed up like the wizard of oz (I can't stand that theme!)?

[suwhitestl]

I love skits! They are fun and show that a chapter can get it together. That is if it is polished. A Skit must show something more about the heart of the chapter to be effective. It is time consuming, can be expensive and always stressful. If not done well -- skits are cheesy and a turnoff. If done well it will show the PNM's how your sisters interact with each other. It can be very telling of your sisterhood.

If your chapter is on the fence -- it may be better not to do a skit. If you are ready to put your heart into it -- it will show.

Regarding slideshows / powerpoint presentations and videos: Remember when you were 18 (or even now) did you want to sit and look at pictures of people you didn't know? Probably not - since most people don't enjoy this. (Like your Aunt Ruth's vacation pictures of the grand canyon?) It is good as a conversation starter, but not a productive use of your limited time for conversation during recruitment events.

Always ask these questions when you are making recruitment decisions: Will this help the PNM make a decision? Will this help the PNM choose my sorority?

[kandy36]

i think the whole make it or break it point at the skits is all after or before the skits when sisters have to conversate with pnm's. i honestly was a rho chi last semester during spring rush but i noticed that when one house got to the know the girls and had the cheesiest of skits they got the most girls. its all about gettin to know the girls

[UCLAblondeGPhiB]

Every chapter at my school does a skit, so it's pretty mandatory. Our rush days look like this for most houses:

Day 1: Philanthropy during conversation(and some do house tours as well) ~ 11 parties
Day 2: Skit ~ 8 parties
Day 3: Slideshow ~ 4 parties
Day 4: Pref ~ 2 parties

The biggest question on our campus is which day to have skit/slideshow. A couple of houses do slideshow on Day 2, but I think that's generally becaues they have a weaker skit/stronger slideshow (and Day 2 cuts are the first 50% cuts). We also do a lot of singing and choreographed dancing to our slideshow throughout; we take newish songs and re-do the lyrics, it's pretty exhausting for the whole chapter.

I've always been of the opinion that showing PNMs a slideshow too early in recruitment runs the risk of boring them with pictures of GIRLS THEY DON'T KNOW YET. An interactive video/slideshow would be a better bet, and you can incorporate a mini-skit into the video to make it more entertaining. I think funny and entertaining is key.

For skits, if you have a good theme and funny skit, I think you'll see that girls really respond to that. Also, if you have a couple of really good dancers, that will influence the dancer PNMs a lot!! I've seen this over and over at my school, that the dancers going through rush are HUGELY impressed by the houses that display their amazing dancers: it's just a matter of similar interests.

SO... since time is running out, I would contact the rush chairs of your other chapters ASAP to get a hold of their skit scripts. Why try to write out a script now and stress yourself when I'm sure you have several chapters who will gladly give you their awesome and time-tested skits. You can look through them and see if any of them convey a message that fits your chapter, and you can always do a sizable amount of editing in a single evening as long as you have a base to work with.


Good luck!

[adpiucf]

At UCF, we down-sized and went from skits to videos. The videos are amazing and you can incorporate a theme, as well as footage of events on campus and in Greek Life. One of my favorite parts is that our video at ADPI included sister testimonials-- putting a "face" to the sisters. We still dressed and decorated under our theme and did the door songs, but more time was spent learning how to make effective conversation and get to know they girls during our pre-recruitment workshops-- so when recruitment rolled around we were really prepared and able to help carry conversation.