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Old 07-30-2016, 02:39 PM
austingammaphi austingammaphi is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2015
Posts: 40
I went through recruitment at UT-Austin in 1982. I came from a suburban high school in the Austin area with a reputation for excellent academics. My mom was a Chi Omega at Centenary College in Louisiana, and a lot of my high school friends were going through with me, so even though I was pretty shy, I felt pretty confident about my chances at finding a Greek home.

UT had summer rush at the time. Up to four actives could invite up to four PNMs out for lunch, dinner, pool party, or anything fun that didn't involve alcohol. The two rush dates I remember most vividly were the Chi Os who drove four of us down to San Antonio for dinner on the Riverwalk, and the Gamma Phi Beta ice cream party at an alum's house near the UT campus. One of my high school acquaintances was part of the San Antonio trip, and everything was going well until we got to the restaurant. I was starving and ordered a burger and fries--and everyone else ordered salad. Oops. The ice cream party was actually the first party I went to where I didn't know anyone--and I had a wonderful time. A cute redhead named Julie was my GPB date for the evening, and everyone was down to earth and fun.

So. Back then, each of the twelve houses at UT sent out their individual invitations through the Panhellenic office. (DPhiE, SDT, and AEPhi still had a semi-separate rush for Jewish PNMs.) No open houses. First round consisted of up to eight houses, back-to-back, for two days--you went to each house each day. If you received more than eight invitations, you had to figure out which invitations to decline--without knowing much about the houses beyond any summer rush dates you might have had, or girls you already knew in the houses.

I got ten invitations: AXiD, Alpha Phi, Chi O, TriDelt, Theta, Zeta, Gamma Phi, KD, AChiO, and DG. AXiD was an easy cut--I didn't know anyone in the house, I didn't know any alums, and they hadn't invited me to any rush parties. The second cut was hard. Four of the Big Six (and I'm sorry to say that this mattered to me) invited me, and although I didn't know anyone in some of those houses, either, I wasn't going to cut them. That left Alpha Phi (my best friend's house--and she REALLY wanted me there!), KD (another close friend's house), Gamma Phi (the fun summer rush group, and two awesome family friends who had written me alumna recs), DG (two friends from high school there), and AChiO (where I actually had THREE friends from high school). Based on what and who I knew, I made the difficult decision to cut Gamma Phi--largely because I didn't think that the girls I'd met that summer would be enough support to see me through. I felt really bad about it, though, and it kept nagging at me as I got ready to move into my dorm and start recruitment.

I lived in a private dorm with some very connected girls. My new roommate's mom wasn't very impressed with me--she'd apparently spent years laying the groundwork for her daughter to pledge a Big Six, preferably Pi Phi, which at UT was, and still is, incredibly legacy-heavy. Roomie would be the first sorority woman in the family, and even I knew that the odds were not in her favor--but mom spent a LOT of time in our room during rush making sure that Roomie knew what to wear and who to talk to at each house. One of the girls next door to us was a third-generation Theta legacy, and her roomie was the non-legacy daughter of two doctors who had moved here from Germany when she was a baby. And one of the girls down the hall was a mega-legacy--mom, both grandmothers, all her aunts, and all six of her older sisters were Thetas. She was determined to make her own choice and go a different direction if she felt like it, though.

More to come later--stay tuned!
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