On a warm September night, a group of male students walked past Gold Coast Lawn, past an outdoor fall concert. One pulled at his jacket as he made his way toward Webster Avenue.
While the evening’s rush parties had just started, for many male students, the process of rushing an Interfraternity Council house began months earlier. Men start to evaluate their surroundings as soon as they step into a fraternity basement, which for some students, is in their first term at the College. Without time constraints, they determine if they like what they see and if they want to be a part of it.
Last winter, 1,165 men and 1,146 women were members of Greek houses, so more than two-thirds of eligible students had rushed. The sheer force of numbers — seen across campus in letters sewn on sweatshirts, imposing architecture of the houses’ physical plants, emails sent to the campus Listserv advertising parties — can convince even the skeptical to participate in the recruitment process.
Rocco Morra ’16 said he wasn’t sure as a freshman if rushing would be the right choice for him, noting that he didn’t drink or go out very much.
“When I saw that so many kids did it I thought maybe I should think about it more before ruling it out,” he said. “I just thought it would be something outside my comfort zone and something that would be worth checking out.”
This process largely occurs outside of formal, organized events. Ben Vihstadt ’16, a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, said he met many SAE members through his sports team as a freshman.
His favorite nights freshman year were Thursdays, when houses didn’t have parties. These low-key nights hanging out with brothers, he said, helped him decide where to rush.
As a freshman, Taylor Watson ’16 said, seniors told him not to worry about rush until the spring, when official events — drinking and hanging out with current members — start. This isn’t too early, he said, as early events are more laid-back and “kids aren’t being sniped for.”
“A lot of people say your first term is adjusting to college life, your second term is adjusting to academic life and your third term is adjusting to social life,” Watson said.
For other men, pre-rush occurs outside of Greek spaces entirely.
Jeff Foster ’16, a member of Alpha Delta fraternity, said he didn’t go to AD at all his freshman year and sparsely in the weeks prior to rush weekend. He joined the rugby team his freshman spring and grew close with many players in AD. Most of his interactions with AD members were outside the house itself.
“I wasn’t trying to meet as many people as possible — that seems kind of fake to me,” Foster said.
When Beta Alpha Omega fraternity starts planning spring rush events, members submit names of freshmen they know and like for an email list, Beta rush chair Joe Geller ’16 said. Many houses do the same.
Those on these email lists are encouraged to bring friends who are not on the list to rush events, he said.
“I guess you could potentially miss out on people who could be good fits,” Geller said. “I don’t know necessarily how to find those guys, but we do our best.”
Identity and Reputations
And as the months pass, as they spend time in Greek spaces, men cross off incompatible houses. Watson said he was turned off by some houses’ high dues. David Bassali ’16 said that he was swayed by the reputations of some houses, cues he had picked up from gossip and hearsay.
“From the very get go I knew that certain houses had certain reputations,” Bassali said. “I found most of them to be not true, but some of them I didn’t stick around enough to realize if they were true or not.”
During freshman year and at rush events, Morra said he paid attention to how his personality meshed with the members in each house — where he clicked and where he didn’t. He notes that this isn’t unique to the Greek system.
“I think that’s true of any social interaction,” he said. “You have people who you get along with really well and people that you don’t.”
From a rural area in Maine, Watson said he noticed that kids from suburbs and cities felt more comfortable in fraternities, wearing bright shorts, snapbacks and button downs, expensive clothing that he said he didn’t relate to much.
“In the spring I took stock of people I did know and where I felt comfortable,” Watson said. “Some of it I guess has to do with little things, how self-conscious I feel about what I’m wearing or whatever. If I go to a house with a bunch of people I don’t know, I might be more inclined to think, ‘Are these people going to judge me?’”
Because most campus-wide parties are held at fraternities, not sororities, freshman women have fewer chances to interact with affiliated women in female-dominated Greek settings.
Many women interviewed by The Dartmouth said they did not know which sororities they preferred prior to Panhellenic Council recruitment. Consequently, stereotypes of sororities can be influential, even for those who go through the process with an open mind, Panhell vice president of recruitment Sara Heard ’15 said.
Women participating in Panhell recruitment must abide by a “silence period” that prohibits communication between potential new members and current members during and immediately before formal recruitment. Rush then depends on quicker judgments made by women rushing and sorority members.
Whether on forums like Bored at Baker or in everyday conversation, whether loudly proclaimed or tacitly implied, students at the College often assign informal rankings to Greek houses.
To Panhell president Rachel Funk ’15, this practice must stop.
“I think we need to stop putting sororities into boxes and saying, ‘This sorority is this kind of sorority.’” Funk said. “Each sorority doesn’t have just one identity to it.”
Funk emphasized that Panhell sororities at Dartmouth are enormous — most have more than 100 members. Students should take recruitment less seriously, she said, especially because women could be happy in several different houses.
Stereotypes surrounding both recruitment and individual sororities can create a mismatch between potential new members’ expectations and the realities of the houses, a discrepancy that may cause tension.
But perhaps the emotional stress is an inherent part of the process. Heard said many women become very involved with recruitment because underclassmen can view the Greek system as being important to their lives on campus.
Many men interviewed stressed the natural social selection that IFC rush can allow.
“If the Greek system didn’t exist but all the physical buildings still existed and they were leased out by the system used for an off-campus house, there wouldn’t be more than a 25 percent change in residency of these houses,” Watson said. “You would basically have these groups of people who identify with each other, share a lot of common goals, values and personality traits who would want to bequest the house who they thought were cool and who they wanted to be friends with.”
Anthropology professor Nadav Samin, whose research focuses on kinship networks, said that the question of how constructive Greek spaces are is determined by how prestige is measured.
“I mean, are there other forms of association that you can comfortably attach yourselves to if you’ve been excluded from a fraternity or a sorority?” Samin said. “And are these also comparable in their prestige?”
To Samin, if these options exist, there is no harm in having exclusive Greek organizations on campus.
“But if there is a strong sense of hierarchy that emerges out of which group you belong to ... and whether you belong to the elite prestigious fraternity or sorority or not,” he said, “that has certainly exclusionary tendencies.”
When It All Shakes Out
By the end of men’s rush parties, interested members “shake out” before leaving their house of choice, often shaking every house member’s hand.
IFC president Wil Chockley ’15 said that the system’s biggest strength is that rush itself, which lasts one weekend, is quick and stress-free.
“At this point I know people at the houses,” Morra said. “I know where I feel comfortable and it’s really just a formality. All the work, all the social communication has already been done at that point.”
Bassali said transparency in interactions is a difference between men’s and women’s rush. Members of a fraternity will be blunt about one’s chance of receiving a bid as rush approaches, he said.
“I understood my shot at getting into the houses I was interested in,” he said. “If I wasn’t confident I would get in, I was confident that I at least knew my status in the house.”
That’s not to say that the process is straightforward for all houses. Those that receive more than 40 or 50 shakeouts can be more exclusive and selective. Geller said this can be a place where men fall through the cracks.
Some houses compete with other fraternities for the men who might be teetering between houses. Politicking, then, becomes more important. For example, fraternity members tell some men before rush that they are guaranteed bids at one house in hopes to sway their decision.
“There are definitely kids who multiple houses want, kids that are good kids, they are smart, have lots of friends, very involved on campus,” Geller said. “I wouldn’t say houses fight over them, but they definitely feel pressure from friends in all the houses, so [Beta is] very careful to not pressure people.”
Though the three coed fraternities have different rush processes, Coed Council president Noah Cramer ’16 said that their strength is what they have in common — how relaxed it is.
Tabard, for instance, offers any interested party a bid. Interested students sign their names in a book, and then they are officially part of the house. Phi Tau fraternity, meanwhile, has a “rolling rush” process. Students can rush at any time during the term, at which point they express their interest before the current membership deliberates on a potential bid. Alpha Theta fraternity uses a system akin to a relaxed version of men’s rush, Cramer explained, adding that both Phi Tau and Alpha Theta admit a high percentage of rushees.
“You don’t have to dress fancy or spend your whole week at rush events,” Cramer said. “You don’t have to schmooze or have hours of forced conversation. And you are likely to get in. People who come to rush at coeds tend to have a lot of fun there. I think taking a lot of the stress out of the process makes rush at the coeds pretty awesome.”
Most women interviewed characterized their experience before Panhell rush as largely muted, noting little rush-related stress freshmen year.
“During freshman year, I didn’t feel like I had to meet sorority girls or act a certain way so I would get a bid,” Mariel Wallace ’16 said, adding that she knew then that she wanted to rush her sophomore fall. “I felt pretty relaxed about the whole process but knew it was important to me.”
A quiet pre-rush period turns into a recruitment week that many women interviewed characterized as hectic. Round one of Panhell recruitment requires potential new members to spend about an hour at each house.
After each round, women list their top choices and rank their bottom houses, attending additional parties at the sororities that call them back. The whole cycle, which happens early in fall and winter term, lasts about a week.
This fall, out of the 381 women who registered for formal recruitment, 300 women accepted bids at a Panhell sorority. During the same cycle last year, 423 women registered and 298 accepted a bid. PNMs can drop out of rush due to stress, dissatisfaction with callbacks or a realization that they did not want to become affiliated.
Kappa Delta sorority rush chair Lizzy Southwell ’15 said a multi-round format can be one of the most distressing parts of women’s recruitment. Watching options dwindle round by round, she said, can be disheartening.
Right before rush week, each woman rushing receives a recruitment counselor who temporarily disaffiliates from her sorority to guide women through the process. During the first round, members of individual sororities will dress up in themed clothing to create a more fun and identifiable atmosphere.
This fall, few women said they were unhappy or stressed following round one. However, when women received callbacks two days later — the day of round two — the stress level heightened. On the morning of Sept. 26, a group of women stood on the Green and in King Arthur Flour cafe, rapidly texting other friends about what callbacks they did and did not receive.
Carene Mekertichyan ’16 said she went into the fall recruitment cycle with an open mind because she did not know much about any house.
Despite her largely positive experience, she described the fall rush week as “crazy,” “kind of insane” and “hectic,” owing to the rapid-fire pace of meeting sorority members and going from party to party.
Describing her recruitment experience as very positive, Morgan McCalmon ’16, who rushed in the winter, said she was surprised that she had genuine conversations at sorority houses. She said she felt sisters in each house made real efforts to create a comfortable atmosphere, but also acknowledged that other students may not feel that way.
After each night’s activities ended, Late Night Collis and the Courtyard Cafe flooded with hungry women who had not eaten for hours, as several parties stretched through dinner. Late on Friday night, after shaking out, men trickled in, too.
“Their Experiences Matter”
In a Sept. 19 panel held the weekend before Panhell recruitment, several women described their disillusionment with sorority life, citing superficiality and inertia as major problems.
The panel followed six months of very public debate on Panhell rush. This past January, last year’s Panhell executives sent a campus-wide email detailing a “call to action.” Five of nine executives abstained from winter recruitment.
“While in theory no member of the sophomore class in good standing is barred from the Recruitment process,” the email read, “in practice, the Recruitment process stratifies the Dartmouth community along race, class, gender and sexual orientation, where those individuals who better approximate a narrow sorority ideal receive preferential treatment.”
In the announcement’s immediate wake, sorority presidents announced changes to winter recruitment, including relaxed dress code expectations, financial aid presentations and anonymous question-and-answer sessions.
“Many women view recruitment as a time to forge connections with other women they usually do not have a chance to interact with. I’m glad that many individuals find this at least to some degree,” then-Panhell president Eliana Piper ’14 said in a recent interview. “However, pointing to several positive aspects of recruitment often diverts us from looking deeply at the disadvantages faced by the many women who are marginalized by the process — whether because of their socioeconomic status, their sexual orientation, their nationality or their skin color. The Greek system, as the predominant social system on campus, has a responsibility to these women. Their experiences matter just as much as the positive ones.”
This January, Katie Wheeler ’15 criticized Panhell recruitment in a column in The Dartmouth, saying that members of her sorority used “terms like NGB — ‘nice girl but’ — to describe a woman who was perfectly nice but, for an unsaid reason (typically a superficial quality), would not fit into the house.” She concluded that “it is hurtful, limiting and completely unnecessary to institutionalize and hierarchize large cliques of people through an artificial judgment process.”
This year’s Panhell continued reforming the system. After recruitment, all students rushing received a survey that collected information such as race and ethnicity, financial aid status and other questions.
Panhell public relations vice president Jessica Ke ’15 said Panhell plans to release a report of their survey findings later this year, and that the Office of Pluralism and Leadership approved the questionnaire’s content.
Several Panhell executives described increasing financial accessibility to sorority life as a top priority.
“Cost is a huge elephant in the room,” Funk said.
Last year, dues for new Panhellenic sorority members ranged from $345 to $647. Dues for subsequent terms averaged around $300. This fall, the council introduced a fully need-based scholarship system so that no Panhell sorority will require its members to work for financial aid for membership dues.
Panhell executives stressed increasing transparency as a major goal for the upcoming year.
Sociology professor Janice McCabe, whose research specializes in youth social networks and college culture, said that Panhell recruitment might give more women information about different houses, while IFC recruitment may pigeonhole men toward stereotypes that they believe fit them.
“I think the organization of it is related to the possible inequalities of the system,” she said.Speaking generally, Mekertichyan said “the biggest stress that’s unique to girls’ rush is the feeling that it’s not in your hands. Like you’re not in control.”
Although she acknowledged several avenues of potential improvement — and has changed the system in ways that she said she believes will lessen these imperfections — Funk said that criticizing the sorority system is “too easy.” Women’s recruitment prioritizes inclusivity, she said, emphasizing that any woman who sticks through the process in good faith will be guaranteed a spot in a sorority.
Southwell said that stereotypes applied to women’s recruitment, at least from her experience in KD, are often false. Unlike what many students may think, she said the sorority values traits like respectfulness, excitement and leadership potential over more superficial details.
“I very much trust the recruitment process,” Southwell said, “which seems ridiculous to the PNM, because it seems so brutal, this idea of being judged really hard.”
Geller is a member of The Dartmouth opinion staff.
