Alumna Initiation - Navane

[navane]

*bump*

[Jill1228]

Well any news?

[MelodyCat]

Warm wishes going your way. *hugs*

[GPhiBLtColonel]

Eh, what's up Doc????

Why are you bumping this thread without sharing any news?

Tsk, tsk...you're being a naughty, naughty girl!

[mshoole]

Originally posted by GPhiBLtColonel
Eh, what's up Doc????

Why are you bumping this thread without sharing any news?

Tsk, tsk...you're being a naughty, naughty girl!

Dont give up...from what i understand it takes a while...If you believe in yourself it will happen....Keep trying you'll get it soon enough

[navane]

hehehe...you all are a funny lot! It's just that I didn't think my thread should be at the bottom of page 2! I thought it should be somewhere on the front page.......


.....Kelly

[tinydancer]

Now that's a fine howdy-do! I thought you had some earth-shaking news for us. I get the feeling, though, that something may be afoot!!

[ms_gwyn]

any news yet?

some of us are waiting on pins and needles for any type of news?

[navane]

Vultures I tell ya! Vultures!




PNAM,

.....Kelly

[navane]

Ok! So if you look to the left, you would see that I’ve been on GreekChat since September 2001 - just over two and a half years. I registered on GC because I was looking to do AI and I was excited to find an actual thread posted here about just that! Over the course of a year or so, I posted my journey for all to see. Unfortunately, GC crashed one day and lots of data was lost - my thread was one of the ones that disappeared. Frankly, because I didn’t feel like trying to retype several years worth of info, I never went back and started my thread agin.

In the long time I have been here, I have seen many a potential alumna initiate come and go. Over the last couple years, I’ve been pretty quiet - after all, not much was moving forward in my AI journey. So, naturally, I seldom posted updates. Now we have loads of “newbies” and no one has a clue about me or where I’ve been. I guess I’m sort of the “AI mystery” around here.

Over the past several months, some newer folks have been asking me to re-tell my story since they weren’t here before the big GC system meltdown. So, due to popular request, and due to the fact that it’s nearly 3am and I can’t sleep, I will re-tell the tale! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, get some popcorn and a soda and have a seat. This is going to get LONG.

In the style of our rushees and other AIs, I will refer to the sororities in my story using the names of Cirque du Soleil shows! The colors chosen and the names of the shows themselves are not meant to convey any secret hints, so don’t bother thinking too hard about them.

.....Kelly

[navane]

Warning: loads of sad personal stuff ahead

I started college as a freshman in Fall 1995 at California State University Long Beach. The sororities didn't advertise much and so I don't recall hearing about rush. Honestly, I don't think I would have gone anyway. Plus, one of my friends is a really liberal thinker and she was really anti-greek and I didn't want to get into it with her.

However, I decided not to form an opinion without seeing for myself so I went to informal recruitment my sophomore year. So, in the Spring of 1997 I rushed during Continuous Open Bidding at CSULB. There are seven sororties at CSULB and all of them were participating in informal recruitment.

Shortly after I arrived home that first night at COB, I received a phone call from the chapter president of Dralion who extended to me an invitation to join. I was quite pleased, and surprised that I would get a bid so quickly! The ladies at Dralion were really diverse, nice and very sincere and I liked them a lot. However, out of fairness to two other sororities I promised to visit, I asked if I could take a couple days to decide. The Dralion President thought that was ok.

Over the weekend, a situation at home caused me to think carefully about whether or not I should join a sorority at all. You see, my mother was an alcoholic who had been sober for several years. Right after I left for college, she relapsed and was not recovering. That semester in particular, her health was getting significantly worse. I realized that weekend that I was beginning to feel a lot of stress from home. Considering that I was already quite involved on campus, I figured that accepting a bid to a sorority might not be the best idea. With that, I sent a note and politely declined my bid to Dralion. It's a good thing that I did. Later that semester, things got so bad for us that I ended up failing all of my classes and earning zero credits. I was put on academic probabtion.

I wanted to rush again in the fall, but I knew I ought to spend my energy on improving my grades - and things were worsening for my mom. (Besides, my GPA at that time was not high enough to qualify for membership anyway). Things just went kinda poorly for the whole of 1998 too. One of those things being that my major got eliminated and I was going to have to start all over on a new major.

In December 1998 my mom was hospitalized for a short while. In February of 1999 my mother passed away unexpectedly in a devastating turn of events. Six weeks later my grandmother (her mom) also passed away. Obviously, I didn't do informal rush that semester, nor did I do formal rush in fall 1999.

It took a lot of perseverence, but I made up my mind to pull myself together and get my grades back up. In no time, I returned to earning the high marks I always knew I was capable of. Within two semesters, I was earning 3.6 GPA semesters - but my overall GPA was still a bit shaky. Then, when I was talking to an academic counselor about my academic probation being lifted, she found out about my sad circumstance. She informed me that the university had a policy whereby the university could have that spring 1997 term (where I failed all my classes) permanently erased from my record if the circumstances warranted it - which she thought mine did. After submitting a petition, the university graciously approved my petition for a "retroactive withdrawl" and my spring 1997 term is no longer on my transcript AT ALL. That put my overall GPA up a little bit.

The year 1999 - 2000 was more about healing and moving on than it was about rushing a sorority...so I didn't even consider it then. However, my last year, 2000 - 2001, I was feeling positive about my life and I decided to take a chance and try for fall 2000 formal recruitment. I figured they'd just laugh at me for being a 5th year super-duper-senior, but I wanted to go for it anyway.

Unfortunately, my rush counselor didn't seem to care about me at all. I couldn't go to the informational night as I just could not get out of work from my on-campus job. Though, I managed to take my lunch break right at the start of that event and went over to the student union to meet with my rush counselor. She was completely unprepared and simply didn't have any of my paperwork ready. She didn't even have a schedule to give me. She told me she would call me that night to tell me when the first round was starting the next day. She didn't call and I missed it. Then, when I did finally get a hold of her, she pretty much encouraged me to drop out! So, no sorority then either.

[navane]

I heard about COB for the spring 2001 and, thought I knew it was a total long shot...I wanted to give it a go. You probably think I sound like a lame person, but I'm not! This time not all of the sororities were participating in informal recruitment - but Dralion was one of them. I spoke to the new member educator from Dralion and briefly explained to her my situation and asked if being a senior would be held against me. She was really positive and reassured me that I definitely had a chance. She was encouraging and, of course, she invited me to attend the events.

I did indeed go around to a few of their events. To my shock and surprise, the [current] girls were not very nice to me at all. I don’t really want to say too much about that other than to say that it was a very uncomfortable situation.

Eventually, the board told me that they thought I was cool, and that they would have liked to give me a bid, but that they felt bad that I would have to pay so much money and only be an active for a couple weeks [before graduating]. I accepted that graciously. They seemed really sad to have to give me the bad news. The idea of alumna initiation came up and they said they would ask their alum members about it for me because they thought that might be a better option.

When I ran into a few of the girls at a pizza place a few weeks later, they completely blew me off in a really rude fashion. It just broke my heart. I wondered, "If this is the way they treat potential members, how do they treat their sisters?" I was very disappointed and even hurt. As I left the pizza place, I almost felt like crying.

[navane]

As an undergrad, I studied Human Development with a minor in Human Resource Management. To complete my major, I had to do a semester of fieldwork. Since my career goal is to work in Student Development in Higher Education (university administration, campus life, greek life, new student orientation and so on...), I decided to take a placement on campus in the student center in spring 2001. One of my assignments was to visit other sites; so, I went to a “nearby” university to see their student center.

While visiting, noticed that university’s panhellenic had just finished a recruitment event in the campus plaza - though, I wasn’t familiar with the sororities on that campus. Even though I had just had a sad recruitment experience, I was still in “Greek mode” if you will and was curious about these unknown groups.

Out of curiosity, I looked up the groups on the internet. One of them, Saltimbanco, caught my attention. As I read about the sorority, something about them just struck me in my heart. I thought, "Err! I like this group! How come there wasn't a chapter at my college?!" Unfortunately, not only was there no chapter of Saltimbanco at my university, but I was about to graduate! Ah well, I still had a fondness for Dralion and was waiting on hearing back from their local alumnae association.

Nothing happened.

Even though I had the backing of Dralion's HQ, we couldn’t get the local alums to respond even after some 6-7 months. At that point I figured that I knew how to take a hint and decided to give up on Dralion. Just then, I remembered Saltimbanco. Wondering if they might have a similar program, I inquired of their HQ. They responded right away and told me that they did! They instructed me to contact the alumnae chapters nearest to me to get things rolling.

I e-mailed and followed up several times with the area associations and got no response. So, I decided on a whim to e-mail the collegiate chapter president of a different chapter (from the campus I had visited) to see if she had any advice. Would you believe it? Her first response to me was that they’d love to have me as an AI! She went on to say that they were preparing to alum initiate several of their girls’ mothers in a few weeks time and that she was certain they could pop me in with that group. All I had to do was show up to one of their chapter meetings so they could find a girl to sponsor me. Woah! Ok, so in theory that’s really good news, right? However, I was kind thinking that was almost too good. I mean, didn’t they want to really get to know me first? Plus, I lived a few hours away from their chapter.

Realizing that maybe I should affiliate with the chapter that was closer to me (the one I did my assignment on), my contact recommended I talk to the other collegiate chapter president. No problem! I was happy to do so! I went about e-mailing that collegiate president and even tried the alum association again. Several more weeks went by. No response.

I figured that everyone must be really busy with midterms and holidays or something and decided to sit back and be patient.

Then, wouldn't you know it, after being AWOL for about 7 months....



...Dralion came a knocking.




Ha ha! To be continued tomorrow! Methinks you have enough to read at the moment....

[hannahgirl]

Oh thats not nice!

......waiting until you post again......

pacing around my house.....

[mshoole]

navane ~
That is such a sad story...I cant wait to hear the rest and thank you for sharing.

MS