Informal Rush this Winter
 

I'd like to hear from all of you who are involved in informal rush this winter!:) How will your school be conducting informal?

Also--what would you say to a woman who wants to go through informal? How can she make herself stand out?

My chapter will be holding informal rush but we call it Continuous Open Recruitment. Regarding your question about a woman standing out....I think if she is herself and not being "fake", making a scene, or putting on a show that she will stand out just fine. By being herself she will be able to find the sisterhood in which she fits best instead of trying her hardest to fit in a sisterhood that she night have her heart set on but she may not click with the women of that chapter. Am I making sense? lol I sometimes don't explain myself well. :)

I'm a Gamma Phi Beta from Cal State Bakersfield and we are doing informal rush this winter. we are such a small chapter and we are so excited to rush! this quarter we have 15 potential slots because lots of girls just left. we are doing get together events like pizza parties and crafty stuff. we are so excited and will deinately keep you posted. for girls who want to go through rush this quarter i think the best thing is to just look out for sororities on campus having booths or tables. we are having a table in the main hall in front of our board. just approach the board and find out when and where the rush events are gonna be. also, checking the sororities websites are really helpful! that's how i found out about rush. good luck to everyone!!

I go to Florida Tech and we have a really small Greek system. Most of the girls who come out during informal rush either know someone who is already a sister or see us doing activities and come out to join us. We have four nights of activities with the last night also being when we give out the bids. I really like our spring rush because it shows the girls that we aren't all about rules...that we can make anything fun. But I am a little biased since I joined in the spring.

carnation,

as far as the "standing out" question, are you talking about a structured informal rush that is a lot like formal, or open bid parties? Like oceanphi, most if not all of the women who came to open bid parties were already friends with a sister and that sister tried to get them to meet as many other sisters as possible.

Well Northern Arizona University does informal spring recruitment. The main thing to keep in mind here is that many of the sororities found that if girls did not show an interest on the first night, they stop having parties for the rest of the week. I know though, that we also do have cob events throughout the semester. We do have multiple nights, but what happens is that girls can just wander freely from chapter room to chapter room in the all greek dorm Mt. View. The main thing I say to keep in mind if you are interested in going through recruitment this semester is to try to meet people on your own time. I know you can get contact information from the office of greek life for each of the sororities conducting open recruitment for the semester.

I'd like to hear about both but I'm especially interested in the open bid-party type. Anybody can come to structured informal rush but with the other, you have a hard time even finding out about parties if you don't know any members. There's got to be a way that these girls can let the Greeks know that they're interested!

At big and/or Southern campuses, the open bid parties are more common because most chapters tend to be at total and can't take any more women anyway.

Well for structured informal, I would say basically behave in the same way you would at formal. Except don't go to the parties of a group that you KNOW you aren't interested in unless it's required for the opening round.

I will echo nauadpi on getting to know people on your own time. COB (in my experience at least) was mainly for our friends who were anti-rush but pro-sorority, and those who were only interested in one sorority because of sisters they had gotten to know in a non-rush situation. I agree that it's hard for girls who don't know members to get involved in COB - that's why I prefer structured informal, at least from the rushee's POV. If a sorority is being very close-mouthed about its parties and such, I would take that to mean that they already have an idea of who they want to offer the open spots to and are fairly sure they'll be taken.

My chapter does informal. We are still really small and thus have never reached quota, so we do informal. Our informal is the same set up as formal, meaning we do the same things we do each night during formal but we are the only sorority that does it. We put flyers up all over campus to get girls to come.

The easiest way to stand out is just being yourself. It becomes obivious really quick who is putting on an act and who does not want to be there. If a girl is interested I say go talk to someone you know is greek. All my sisters and myself invite people in our classes or other activities we are involved in. I hope that helps.:)

So carnation is anyone in your household thinking of going through informal???

Maaaaaybe. If I can talk her into it.

I went to a campus where we had a lot of Open Bid parties and there were three ways to find out about them. The first was to approach the Greek Advisor (or have a parent call and find out if the GA is aware who has opportunities). The second was the campus newspaper. We had a sep. Greek newspaper but it was weekly and most groups would advertise their first party round in the daily newspaper in case there were women they were unaware of who were interested in them. Third was through friends/roommates (maybe sisters? -- I don't know if they want ot be in the same house though).

It can be very tough to find out about the parties if the group thinks they already know who they want to pledge in teh Spring but maybe she can use her cheer contacts to sniff around a bit?

I went to a campus where we had a lot of Open Bid parties and there were three ways to find out about them. The first was to approach the Greek Advisor (or have a parent call and find out if the GA is aware who has opportunities). The second was the campus newspaper. We had a sep. Greek newspaper but it was weekly and most groups would advertise their first party round in the daily newspaper in case there were women they were unaware of who were interested in them. Third was through friends/roommates (maybe sisters? -- I don't know if they want ot be in the same house though).

It can be very tough to find out about the parties if the group thinks they already know who they want to pledge in teh Spring but maybe she can use her cheer contacts to sniff around a bit?