A VERY Retro Recruitment!

[1964Alum]

Yes, VERY retro as I recently received a Happy Anniversary card from my GLO to celebrate me on my 50th Anniversary as a sister. It's hard to even believe that it has been that long. A quick reality check is to look at the silver-haired lady looking back at me in my mirror!

I stumbled onto GC when having to keep off my feet to let a sprained foot heal. After many hours of reading Recruitment Stories, I was struck by how much things had changed as well as how much they had remained the same since I went through rush (as we called it) in September of 1963, to be initiated on 1964. Please bear with me as this is my first post!

Things that have changed: No philanthropy party; no ranking; we received invitations to the next round of parties and could accept the prescribed number for each round; and NO casual dress i.e. shorts. No Rho Gammas. No RFM. We went to the largest auditorium on campus to pick up our invitation envelopes which were given out alphabetically by silent members of Panhellenic sitting behind a long table. Sororities at my campus had no mixers with the fraternities nor they with us. Unless it was for a local philanthropic event or homecoming, and then it was very task oriented. I never understood how that determination was made as we were never paired with a fraternity we had the most connection with. No Jewish members of the NPC sororities nor were any minorities ever pledged. Or even went through rush at my school. I'm sure I will remember more as my story progresses from my aging memory!

A characteristic of my school that most of us didn't appreciate then as much as we appreciate it now is that rush was deferred an entire year. So all but a very few upperclassmen rushed as Sophomores. This was a very large school with an undergrad population of about 14,000 (HUGE now) and the GLOs were a very small percentage of the student population but essentially dominated virtually all the campus organizations, elected officers, as well as many of the honorary societies. So while there was definitely life on this campus outside of the GLOs, and one could have a very satisfying college experience without being a Greek, for those of us who wanted to get involved in campus life, being a Greek seemed to be the best way to go about that.

Having this long period of deferment gave the six sororities more time to get to know us as well as we, them. Looking back on my formal rush, I don't know how I possibly could have made a decision on the basis of rush alone! And I truly admire those on both sides of rush now who are able to make good choices for the long haul during what is truly a hectic and nerve-wracking if exciting whirl of events.

By the second semester of my Freshman year, the various general personalities of the six were emerging for me. And rush actually started for me the second semester of my Freshman year. Let me explain. As soon as grades for the first semester came out and coeds became members of one national honor society (Alpha Lambda Delta) and an even more selective local one, actives in the GLOs took notice. (Or I should say the ones that placed a high value on scholarship.) I had been elected to both, and was an elected officer of the local one. As I had placed out of Freshman English into the honors program, I was also allowed to take a few courses normally reserved for Sophomores. So I found myself in a class or two with active members on my campus as well as a couple of other women who had pledged as Freshmen at another very large school who had transferred but had not affiliated with the local chapters. They were very proud of their letters and wore their badges regularly. And of course talked up their groups!

So I started getting calls inviting me to breakfast, go have pizza, and the like. Cold calls, except from one lovely woman I had a class with. I will call her Elizabeth here. Freshman class officers, yearbook beauties, and other Freshmen met on campus or known from her home town and/or high school started receiving invitations to these unstructured "rush functions" as we called them. These were small groups, usually not more than about 8-10 women at a time, which afforded all of us an opportunity to get to know each other better. I met many wonderful ladies, including some who would be going through rush with me come September.

This continued over the summer as well, although I couldn't accept many invitations as I spent most of the summer visiting family who were quite far away. I took my yearbook with me and used this time to really, really check out the members of my favorites, as I wanted to see where they were involved on campus outside of their sororities. So many truly impressive women! With formal rush approaching, I also started getting advice from cousins who were already active members of their sororities, none of which were on my campus. My mother had died in a very tragic accident when I was 15, so many of the adult women in my world stepped in from time to time to see how I was doing and give me motherly guidance on the many things that can trouble a teenage girl. The summer before formal recruitment I started getting calls from my doctor's wife, the family lawyer's wife, as well as other friends of my parents or mothers of friends from high school. All talking about my upcoming rush. Very dizzying!!!

Recommendations were very "hush hush" back then, and it was very bad form to solicit one. Soliciting one pretty much guaranteed that you wouldn't get one. Nor did alumnae tell you they were writing a rec for you. But from the questions I was being asked, I knew something was up! And I did know which sororities they were members of. My mother's legacy chapter did not have a chapter on my campus, nor did several of the other mothers I was in close contact with and who had known me for years and years. I had no idea which, if any, of my teachers had been Greeks at college, but I suspect that some had been.

At long last formal rush and school was about to start. And I had been notified that I had been selected to be one of two Sophomore girls to participate in the formal welcoming ceremony for all Freshmen women on campus. For that I needed to buy a full length white ball gown. Add to that my being named as a Freshman Orientation panelist and my head was spinning. We were on campus two days before formal rush (and the start of Silence) and I also went to breakfast with my two favorite groups.

After this long preamble, I will continue with formal rush in my next installment. As much as I remember, that is!