[_RushPuppies_]

Recruitment, Take Two (omg please don't compare me to pink sequins!! that lady was crazy)

I was thrilled to be starting off a new year at a new school. I had loved this college since the first time that I stepped on campus and was feeling overwhelmingly positive about a new beginning in the right place. I was assigned a roommate and moved in the day before recruitment was due to begin. It was actually pleasant outside for early January for the first few days - high fifties and sunny without a single snowflake frozen to the ground. We had meetings with our recruitment counselors that night and I met the majority of the girls who lived in my hallway after we came back from those. I even went out to get ice cream with a few girls that night (but the McDonald’s ice cream machine was broken, so we went to the Walmart next door and grabbed pints of Ben and Jerry’s). Nights like this are some of the most fun in college - just relaxing with your girls and eating Phish Food on the floor of a dorm room.

We started recruitment bright and early the next morning. Some of the girls in my hallway offered to “give me the lowdown” about each of the sororities before we left for parties that morning. I tried to shrug it off as an advantage that I could really be bias-free as I went through recruitment, since I didn’t know a single soul in a sorority at this new school, and asked them for the “lowdown” about the fraternities instead.

There are seven sororities at my school. In keeping with the theme of my Spanish major, I’ll give them names of Latin dances (I debated naming them after foods, but I decided that reading about "Preference round at Burrito" might just be a little too weird):

Cha Cha Cha
Merengue
Rumba
Mambo
Plena
Salsa
Tango

The first party in my day was at Cha Cha Cha. I was excited to actually see inside the gorgeous homes that line Greek Row, since I had only seen the exteriors on campus tours. This house was a positive start to my day. I started off with a Cha Cha that was in one of my majors. She was extremely down-to-earth and relaxed and carrying on a conversation with her was fairly easy. She was an international student who was spending all four years at my new school and I loved asking her questions about her home country. The second girl I talked to was less prepared when it came to conversations. Cha Cha had set up a small game for sisters and PNMs to play to keep the conversations going, but this girl would draw a question, answer it for herself, and then draw another one. It was like watching someone play solitaire, but eventually I got a few questions in.

My next party was at Merengue. The inside of this house is absolutely stunning and very unlike the other chapters, which was helpful as a little thing to remember. I talked to three girls here: the first was a student in our school’s biggest and most competitive program who loved Merengue because it allowed her to balance school and fun by providing her with sisters both inside and outside of her major, the second was a vivacious girl from a nearby big city who reminded me of one of my awesome older cousins, and the third was a girl from way out on the East Coast who loved Merengue because it really got her engaged in campus life. The three were very different from each other but it was cool to see a house where the girls were less cookie-cutter.

The third house that I visited was a different dynamic. Rumba reminded me of Panama from my previous school - they were a little more aggressive in their recruiting style. I was seated in the kitchen/dining room (Sorry! We just call them kitchens here hahaha) with one woman and four other women came up at various times throughout the conversation. Each looked practically identical to the one before, and with each I had the exact same conversation. The girl who was sitting with me had asked if I liked to travel and what my favorite country that I had been to was, and each time that a girl would come over and introduce herself, the girl would say “Oh, this is _RushPuppies_ and her favorite place is Switzerland!” and the other Rumba sister would say, oh, what did you like about it, we would chat about it for a second, and she would leave. This happened four times and I left Rumba feeling like I had been running around in a revolving door for thirty minutes.

The fourth chapter was Mambo. Right away, I got the feeling that this was a quieter chapter. I talked to three different girls and we watched three different videos from their national organization about the sorority. It was all pretty day-one in conversation; lots of what’s your major, where are you from, why did you transfer, et cetera. The girls seemed friendly but not as outgoing as the other three chapters that I had visited, but having done it before, I knew that anything could change throughout the week.

We all had a lunch break, which was so welcome - after fourteen sororities at my previous school, I wasn’t sure why I was so worn out after four, but luck was on my side and there was a break party built into everyone’s day. The break was between Mambo and Plena for everyone, so we all had different breaks based on rotation, but mine was right after lunch so I had two hours to eat and relax before finishing up the first day!

Party five was at Plena, which had a gorgeous exterior, so I was ready to see what was inside. We broke off into small groups of four sisters and four PNMs and squished into the various bedrooms in the house. We played icebreaker type games as a group, which was something that I hadn’t really been prepared for - how were these girls judging us based off of one-word answers to goofy questions? After a handful of rounds, we split up and had one-on-one conversations. We ended up standing along the walls in a room that had been cleared of furniture to talk, which just struck me as odd, and we stood the whole time, so I was glad that I had worn comfy boots. The girl that I talked to seemed funny and ambitious and I left Plena feeling like there was definitely potential here.

Salsa was one that I had girls say over lunch that they were enjoying, so I was eager to see if my experience was the same. The girls here seemed very peppy and type-A; they were very polished in their conversations and did a good job of not repeating the basic questions. I don’t remember too much from this day, but I remembered that everyone in the house just seemed to genuinely enjoy being there and they seemed to like each other a lot. I left with a smile on my face.

Last of the day was Tango. This party was wildly different from any of the others in terms of energy and appearances. The girls reminded me more of the girls at the first school - they had definitely been coached on how to prepare for recruitment in terms of makeup, clothes, and conversations. It didn’t seem terribly genuine at first, but they did do a great job at asking unusual questions to keep a conversation fresh, and they seemed like they were having oodles of fun doing it. They asked me all kinds of things about myself and kept the mood light. I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about Tango yet, but I decided that I would like to know more about them.

We met with our recruitment counselors that night - mine was a soft-spoken but fun junior who was extremely caring. She asked me if I needed anything or had any questions about my new school and promised to be a completely open book with me if I needed it because everyone else had gotten a semester to size up the chapters and decide if going through recruitment was the right thing for them and I just kind of dropped in and said “let’s do it”. She was a great resource throughout the week and made it fun for the girls who were waiting while she talked in the hall with individual PNMs, which just made the week that much easier.

We were allowed to attend six parties the next day, so I ranked mine accordingly:
1s: Cha Cha Cha, Merengue, Rumba, Plena, Salsa, and Tango
2: Mambo

I was SOOOOOOO ready for bed after having moved the day prior and spending the day traipsing along Greek Row. Some of the girls in my hall were all hanging out in each other’s rooms but I decided that I would sleep now and socialize later (and I didn’t want to hear any tent talk!!!).