I've been inspired by all of the
retro recruitment threads, so had to add my own. I rushed in the early 90's in the Pacific Northwest...scary to think that some freshman going through rush this year were BORN in 1990. How did I get to be so old???
Anyway, at the time we had 6 sororities
Pi Beta Phi (obviously)
Gamma Phi Beta
Kappa Alpha Theta
Alpha Phi
Kappa Kappa Gamma (closed in 2003, I think)
Delta Delta Delta (closed 1996)
I just spent the weekend with my 2 year old niece, so I'm coding by Sesame Street names...
Elmo
Cookie Monster
Ernie
Bert
Oscar
Big Bird
We rush 2nd semester, but I had 2 really good friends prior to starting who were greek. "Charlotte" was an Elmo, and "Carrie" was a Ernie. Charlotte's freshman roommate and my RA were both Berts. I had visited Charlotte and knew a lot of her Elmo sisters, and really liked them.
We had pretty strict no-contact rules prior to rush (oops, recruitment - it was still rush then, in my defense!), but here were my admittedly pretty superficial ignorant impressions going into rush:
Elmo - Charlotte's house. Thought I would probably be an Elmo. Liked their chapter house when I visited as a high school student. Seemed to be nice gals, good reputation on campus, lots of cheerleaders were Elmo. Not sure why I noticed this as I am not a cheerleader. Wasn't planning to be. But I thought that they were a very "strong" house and I was have been thrilled to be an Elmo. And thought I wanted to be in Charlotte's house. My only concern about the Elmo's were that a lot pretty into one of the campus religious groups, and I'm pretty liberal.
Cookie Monster - By far seen as the "weakest" house on campus. I think this was strictly based on their status as the smallest group. Looking back as an advisor, they were one of the strongest houses until a few years prior to my rush when they got one small pledge class. This is always given me pause because it reminds me that this could happen to any house, including mine. Knew 1 gal from my calculus class who was a Cookie Monster and was really friendly, outgoing, but overall, a few of the other Cookie Monsters that I had met were somewhat socially awkward.
Bert - Charlotte's freshman roommate was a Bert, and I really liked her, although she was kind of quiet and a little more conservative than I am. My RA was also a Bert...and I really did not like my RA. She was not very friendly or outgoing, and she could not stand my group of friends from our floor. Pretty much all of my floormates didn't like her either.
Ernie - If I wasn't an Elmo, I thought I might be an Ernie. My friend Carrie was great, a soccer player, and lots of athletes were Ernies. My only concern was that they were pretty "granola", and I was (and still am) a makeup loving, daily blow-drying, heel-wearing certified girly-girl. Less so as a freshman (hey, it was the 90's - everyone had flannel and birkenstocks), but I still wasn't sure if I'd fit in. Again, thought this was a "top house" and I would have been glad to be an Ernie.
Oscar - I didn't know much about Oscar. Rumored amongst the freshman to be mediocre house, some athletes, otherwise knew nothing about them.
Big Bird - Also a "top house" along with Ernie and Elmo. Had seen them on campus and had one in a class who was a really cool girl, and I liked their pink rush sweatshirts
. They were pretty intimidating as a group, very pretty girls and outgoing. Charlotte and her friends were not fans of the Big Birds. In fact, Charlotte had been very, very good about not dirty-rushing at all, and just being every enouraging about going through rush in general, until we were at New Year's Eve Party, when I opened my big mouth and told her how much I wanted to be an Elmo. She said that she would love me know matter what I did, as long as I didn't become a Big Bird. I said "OMG, I would NEVER be a Big Bird!" (you can already see how this will come around to bite me in the rear end...)
One of my 2 freshman roommates, Samantha, was also rushing, as were most of our good friends on our floor.
We came back in January, ready to start. Recruitment at that time went like this
Day 1 - 6 party/house tours
Day 2 - 1st invites - Max 5 houses
Day 3 - 2nd invites - max 3 houses
Day 4 - Pref (2 houses)
This was also in the days before the ranking systems, so you got invitations (yes, they were actual hand-written, paper invitations) and would choose from them if you got more invitations than max number of houeses you could visit that day.
More to follow if anyone is actually still interested...
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