So my school just finished rush week and I've decided to write my first blog post ranting about it.
Rush week directly follows welcome week, which for those of you that don't know, is pretty crazy. Freshmen have just moved into the dorms and go nuts being on their own for the first time in their lives. Pretty much every house on frat row throws a party to entice the freshmen to rush and make them believe that they are the best house on campus. The guys in the houses are extra nice to freshmen guys (aptly named "potentials), giving them shots, introducing them to girls, and overall making sure that they are having the best time possible.
When attempting to recruit a potential, you have to seem extra nice/fake and ask about (and pretend to be interested in) their hometown, major, sports, high school, college life so far, etc. I often like to think of is as flirting, with the end goal is for him to think you are really cool and hopefully get his phone number so you can hang out in the future. We compete to see who can get the most numbers and coolest guys. Super fratastic.
During the actual rush week events, we hold an open house and bbq for any potentials interested in our house. Each night we have a different sorority come to make us look cooler and to give us their imput on certain guys. These events are mandatorily sober, which makes being fake and extra nice an even harder task.
Now the judging criteria gets even worse. We look to see if they're confident, can easily talk to girls, overall appearance, etc. During the voting (to see if each guy will get a bid), we sit around with a picture of the guy on the tv and voice our oppinions. For those of you that have seen Animal House, it's exactly like that. "He looks stupid", "He's from San Diego, so he must be cool", "He didn't play any sports in high school, what a dork" are pretty familiar phrases muttered during this session, and due to the fact that I want to keep this blog PG, I've held a lot back.
What is even a stranger part of this week is the polarity between this week and the following. Once they get bids, and become pledges, all fake/nice attitudes are gone and replaced with arrogance and power tripping cold shoulders.
Though I hate this week and all the events that come along with it, I wouldn't trade it for anything, so I guess I must be fratastic as well.
