Recently, a fraternity member mentioned how lucky I was to be a girl, because I did not have to go through his rush process. Guys must prove themselves all semester long and endure numerous challenges they would see trouble for if they said out loud. Sororities only hold formal recruitment for one weekend. After that, new girls are immediately accepted, sing songs, and dance towards the sunset together.
Everybody knows fraternity pledging is not exactly peaceful. “No hazing,” the slogan goes, but one way or another, pledges give up a part of themselves or their lives in an undesirable way to prove their worthiness.
Each fraternity is different, but it is common knowledge that those guys have to somehow earn their title as an active. Pledges must be willing to do whatever it takes to whatever degree that may mean for their fraternity. Only then will they be accepted, and only then can they take back whatever it is they had to give up in the first place.
There is a reason rush is like this for guys. Men create identity by proving themselves. They create bonds by proving themselves together, and it often looks rough to the outside eye.
According to Emily Shapiro of ABC News, back in 2017, 18 Beta Theta Pi members from Penn State University faced charges for the death of a rushee due to hazing. We shake our heads and wonder how an organization can promote such brutality and offensiveness, until we shake our heads and realize that it was Hitler who the recruited Nazis for a cause seen so offensively for the modern day. Too bad it was not then.
At the time, men came together for the purpose of making what they believed was something great for themselves and their country. Likewise, fraternities come together to accomplish common goals as a group, just like what Hitler and his followers thought they were doing.
Dakin Andone of CNN states that, “the costs pale in comparison to the potential benefits, which include prestige, a more active social life and a social network that could help students later in life.” So, it should not be fair that sorority rushees only have to go through pain, stress, and life altering for a few days, right?
Sororities promote unconditional acceptance and ensure that they market themselves as such. That is why girls show how desirable they are by making themselves appear so perfect that sororities would be silly not to offer them a bid. It does not matter how willing they are to dedicate themselves, except for how they wear it on their face and speak through their lips, because after all, they only have three days to convince actives of their worth.
Think of it like this: in one scenario, potential new member Susan has all the qualities an active could ask for. It ends up not mattering, because her GPA is a 3.2 and Sally’s is a 3.7, so Susan gets dropped and that is that. Such a vicious cycle dictates the whole weekend.
According to Abigail Sullivan Moore of The New York Times, Indiana University had near 1,800 girls signed up for rush. Of those 1,800 girls, 800 did not end up affiliated. Girls thinking about the perfect sorority cannot get their hopes up. Every rushee hopes for the perfect one too, and tries to be perfect enough to show they are right for it.
An organization’s responsibility is to ask questions and narrow girls down so that they all end up where it best suits them. When girls show up as themselves, they end up exactly where they are meant to. For those that cannot show up as themselves under recruitment’s pressure, they will end up somewhere where they can.
Everything does happen for a reason, even if it looks ugly on the outside. With rush, the grass is always greener on the other side.
