Dirty Rush

[adpiucf]

Scenario: Your campus has deferred recruitment and you are a PNM. What would you do if a group of sorority members from one sorority asked you out to dinner and it was well-known that this was a chapter that had been routinely taking PNMs out for meals? What would you say without making it seem like you were giving them the brush-off and in the interests of a fair recruitment?

[texgal]

If they are buying PNMs dinner, that constitutes as gifts which should be against Panhellenic rules. So it's dirty rushing. Tell the Panhellenic advisor.

[UGAalum94]

My school did rush even before classes started. I don't know much about rush rules with deferred rush.

What are the rules about contact before rush begins? Do greek women basically not talk to frosh until rush is over? Is it only a problem if it's a group of women exclusively from one sorority spending time with a group of women likely to go through rush?

The question is tough. I don't think I would have been able to turn in a group that I was interested in joining; I'm also afraid that I wouldn't have had the strength of character to turn down the invitation either.

[PeppyGPhiB]

I'm playing the Devil's Advocate here, but honestly I think a lot of PNMs would love to be in that spot of being asked to dinner by a sorority they might be interested in. If that were the case, I doubt they'd report it. Most likely to report something like this are PNMs who are not being asked to dinner, and sororities that are playing by the rules.

For those of you that do deferred recruitment, how do you handle dirty rushing at things like parties? It happened on my campus with only a few weeks before the start of classes and rush, so I imagine with a whole semester/two quarters of classes it must be close to unavoidable.

Originally Posted by PeppyGPhiB

I'm playing the Devil's Advocate here, but honestly I think a lot of PNMs would love to be in that spot of being asked to dinner by a sorority they might be interested in. If that were the case, I doubt they'd report it. Most likely to report something like this are PNMs who are not being asked to dinner, and sororities that are playing by the rules.

What's the likelihood that the PNM will even know what dirty rushing is?

If I were the PNM, I'd be flattered if a sorority took me out. Dirty rushing would be the least of my worries if it meant that I'd have a better chance of getting a bid from them.

[ADqtPiMel]

My school does deferred recruitment, but we don't have any contact rules. Each sorority does two informal "sprite dates" during first semester, which are big events that any interested PNM can attend (my chapter has done a group fitness class, a midnight movie and a non-alcoholic tailgate before a football game). Additionally, sorority members can invite PNMs out to dinner, etc. on a more informal basis. My younger sister is rushing at my campus, and I know she's been out to dinner and hanging out with members of my chapter.

[PeppyGPhiB]

Originally Posted by OTW

What's the likelihood that the PNM will even know what dirty rushing is?

If I were the PNM, I'd be flattered if a sorority took me out. Dirty rushing would be the least of my worries if it meant that I'd have a better chance of getting a bid from them.

Agreed, I would've been flattered too, and would basically think, "It's up to the other sororities to worry about this stuff, not me!"

But, we did actually know what the sorority members were allowed to do and not-do, but only after meeting with our recruitment counselors for the first time. They explained it to us so we wouldn't be confused if the girls that had been so friendly to us one night basically ignored us when we saw them the next morning.

Honestly, the way it happened on my campus when I was there: up until the couple weeks before rush, pretty much everything was fair game. Members would chat girls up at parties, go to places on/off campus that they knew were freshman hangouts, talk to any PNMs in their classes, etc. I think panhellenic has cracked down on this a little, but I'm sure some of this stuff still goes on.

[blackngoldengrl]

At my school, the deferred rush is until a person is a sophomore. So going to dinner as a freshman is okay. Going to parties with freshmen women or inviting them to a closed party would probably be looked at as dirty rushing, but for the most part that is still allowed technically. I think the official silent period begins on the first day of school or first day back on campus where you could be spotted!
I know for a fact that there was a sorority on my campus that took freshmen to the bars, and most of them were on the same sports team.

[blackngoldengrl]

Originally Posted by adpiucf

Scenario: Your campus has deferred recruitment and you are a PNM. What would you do if a group of sorority members from one sorority asked you out to dinner and it was well-known that this was a chapter that had been routinely taking PNMs out for meals? What would you say without making it seem like you were giving them the brush-off and in the interests of a fair recruitment?

I'd probably tell them that I would love to go to dinner, but I didn't want to get them in trouble by being seen with them. I'd voice my concerns to them and see how they reacted. But as a PNM, I'd probably end up going b/c of the reasons listed above and I definitely would not have known as a freshman that this was not allowed.

[KDMafia]

Well if it was the entire sorority having dinner with one freshman I think it would be considered a rush event, which would be dirty rushing. I know that at my campus silence between actives and PNMs started in october-novemberish. There was no harm with people hanging out with freshman before that as long as it didn't come across like a formal invitation from teh sorority. So a sister could invite a freshman to dinner with her a couple girls, but a freshman couldn't get an email from the sorority recruitment chair asking her over to watch movies with the chapter.

As far as dirty rushing, it happened at my undergrad but ti's hard to catch. Often time the girls that get dirty rushed dont tell cause they're happy with their bid, and girls that feel they were dirty rushed and didn't get a bid are too embarassed. The one time a sorority got caught talking badly about another sorority in their pref night occurred because they said it too a girl they thought was all about them but was really all about the sororoity they were trashing.

There also is a very fine line between being excellent rushers who make every girl feel like they're welcome and loved and blatantly leading a girl on to believe she will get a bid.

[PenguinTrax]

It all depends on what the contact rules are for PNMs and chapters.

[33girl]

Well it depends on a lot of things...

Are they taking her out for some super expensive meal, or just TGIFriday's or the like?

Is it THE WHOLE sorority on one freshman, or a mixed group of people - some freshmen, some guys, some sorority girls?

Does at least one person in the sorority group know the girl before the invite is given from class or dorms or something, or do they come up to the girl out of the blue and say "hey! Go to dinner with us!"

Deferred rush is supposed to encourage normal social interaction and it would be a shame if that was cut out (although as is very clear from a lot of the posts on here, there are MANY campuses and Panhellenics that don't understand that at all), but rush or not, if a bunch of girls I'd never met came up to me and asked me to go to Morton's for dinner, I'd seriously wonder WTF was up with that and probably say no.

[WVU alpha phi]

I absolutely hate when girls dirty rush. I was dirty rushed when I went through recruitment, and I had no idea it was against the rules. I later found out the chapter who dirty rushed me BUILT INTO THEIR DUES enough money to cover rush fines. Panhellenic finally got wind of it this year and they were forced to stop doing that.
Now, being on the other side of rush, I can't stand when other sororities dirty rush girls. My chapter is ridiculously strict about it- our VP Recruitment will individually call us out if we get fined for something like this. I was livid last night when I was looking at a girl's facebook profile who I rushed the day before and absolutely LOVED. She's torn between us and another sorority on campus- the one we always compete with during rush because we're so similar. I saw numerous postings on her wall from members of the other sorority. I turned them into our VP Recruitment, who said she'd been filling out rush infraction forms all night for those girls. It just sucks because the PNMs are told by their Rho Chis that this is against the rules, but I'm sure they don't think ike that. I know I would've been realy flattered going through rush if a sorority I liked wrote all over my wall.

Ahhhh dirty rushing.

[33girl]

Originally Posted by OtterXO

It seems like there needs to be a bigger penalty for violating the rules so that chapters won't do things like build the infractions into dues, etc.

The only thing I could think of would be losing pledges or campus social privileges. The first isn't permitted by the Green Book and the second - if these girls have the $$$ to build in for infraction fines, they have the $$$ and means to get around social probation.

Plus if (as is often the case, sadly) the group infractioning is one of the more popular on campus and Panhel forbids them from having mixers or such, it just makes the other sororities look like jealous bitches to the guys, cause guys don't understand the whole infraction thing.

[PinkandGreenJ]

I was dirty rushed and frankly it was fun. I ended up at a top house and never complained, not that I would really have thought to or thought that it wsa "dirty" anyway.