Do Sororities Rush to Judgment?

Rush for 2008 is finally over, and after a long week of emotional upheavals, every young lady who went through the process has either been offered a bid or has been dropped altogether.  The first day of classes for this semester was met with tired eyes and sore throats as half the female student body dragged themselves to lecture.  There is a lot of drama that surrounds the Panhellenic recruitment system, and a lot of secrecy as well.  What really goes on behind the scenes?  As a junior in the Greek system, there are a lot of things I can tell you… and a lot that remains a mystery to me.

First and foremost, I would like to say that I love my house and the sisters in it.  My best friends at Vanderbilt are Greek, and there is an interesting bond that occurs between members of the Greek community.  I can’t speak for fraternities, but sororities on our campus tend to pull many kinds of women, and it’s certain that there will be at least one person in a house of over 150 people with whom you can find something in common.  The rush process, though, turns into a fierce competition between houses; and while each house will cite that their members are involved in over 100 organizations on campus, there is still this need to force some type of house identity down the throats of potential new members.  As a result, girls going through recruitment seem to lose sight of the fact that every house is just an amalgam of people who all happened to be sorted into a common organization.  Yes, the houses will each have their respective sisterhood bonding events.  But at the end of the day, it’s just a group of women with a variety of interests.  So what is the need for house identity?

The only answer I have been able to come up with in the last two years is competition in the rush process.  With ten houses, every house wants to make the best impression on potential new members as possible.  Each house wants to be the first pick of every girl that walks through the door.  Why?  Not because the houses want to win a popularity contest.  It’s because it allows the houses to select their own members, rather than having members select them.  Essentially, a house can pick the top girls that come through; the “top” being defined by what comes about through series of ten-minute conversations, of course. In the big picture, almost nobody that goes through recruitment is unkind, untalented, or unintelligent (they would not be at Vanderbilt if this were the case); but houses are forced to rank girls based on snap judgments, and so the “top” becomes those potential new members lucky enough to have a conversation that was interesting, stimulating, and memorable to the sister.  On the flip side, the houses have to show off in order to retain as many girls as possible so that they can be eliminated one by one as necessary.  Frankly, the entire process is brutal on both sides.

For the houses, the showmanship that goes into rush is nothing short of a spectacle.  Every year, I am reminded of the scene in Chicago where Billy Flynn describes the courtroom as a circus; if you can “razzle dazzle ‘em,” you’ll have the jury in your pocket.  In the case of rush, you have to put on a good show to be able to compete with the other houses.  Over the years, there has been a bit of a slippery-slope effect, in which each house feels like it has to top all the others.  If a house has a creative idea one year, the next year all the other houses will incorporate that idea as well.  It has culminated in entertainment rounds with full stages, mood lighting, dance breaks, and fabric-draped walls to create a theater effect.  And that’s just one round out of a total of four.  From a practical standpoint, sororities now have to start planning many months in advance for those four days.  Most houses start planning as soon as the new pledge class has come in.  It seriously takes that long.

This brings me to my final question: has rush dominated sororities to the point where they simply exist to sustain themselves?  In way, the answer is yes.  If you do not like at least some aspects of recruitment, there’s a good chance you won’t like sorority life.  On the other hand, the sisterhood that houses all advertise to potential new members is sustained by rush more so than any other activity.  Yes, all of the houses host large philanthropy events, they all have parties, and they all have house-wide activities.  But rush is the only time of the year where you are locked in a house with your sisters for days on end.  Through the mutual exhaustion and teamwork, you can’t help but make friends with someone.  And therein lies the best-kept secret of sorority rush: it’s not just for the girls going through recruitment.  It affects the active sisters more than anyone.