Rush isn’t fun for anyone but is worth the trouble
TCU women’s recruitment is ridiculous and frivolous at times, but is the means to an end that we are eventually satisfied with.
COMMENTARY
Lauren Cates

I just want to let you know that we are so excited to have you here. We have been waiting all week for you to get here, and have heard so many great things about you. So, is it hot outside? What’s your major? Where are you living? By the way, what’s your name again?

Above is an abbreviated version of the conversations every womangoing through TCU recruitment has heard for the past week. And it nearly drove me insane. Going through recruitment myself was baffling enough, but it was an utter shock to be on the other side of things these past two years.

What is seemingly a harmless process to acquire a new freshman pledge class has metamorphosed into a cutthroat competition to give any and every woman that walked through our door “a great rush” despite the fact that in no way could we accommodate every woman wanting to join our sorority.

Here’s the secret everyone knows but no one really wants to tell: we don’t know anything about the women going through recruitment besides the information included on their resume and rumors from hometown connections. We know next to nothing about their personalities or what they like or dislike. We don’t even know their hair color if it’s different from the picture they provided us with. Yet we treat them as if they are our new best friends as soon as they walk through our door.

So you ask, how do we make an informed decision about whether or not these perfectly decent people will be right for our sorority? If I knew the answer after two years, I would tell you.

The fact is, the recruitment process is in a way more frustrating for those of us on the other side. The women going through recruitment know next to nothing about the complicated process of which they are a part of.

On our side of things, we deal with the limitations and shortcomings of the entire process. We deal with the arguments and mistakes of the entire sorority trying, in a conversation with a five minute time span, to enumerate the personality and benefits of a group numbering 150.

We would rather go out with the women than try to recruit them. We would rather go see a movie, catch dinner or go to a party and really get to talk them. We would rather do anything but remain on our knees in front of them for six hours a day having conversations of little substance about topics we barely discuss with our best friends.

Women who are normally pretty genuine mutate into their alter rush egos. I developed a strange high pitched giggle that accompanied anything remotely humorous said. Smiles become inevitably fake. Language is censored. In short, recruitment sucks.

However, in all its frivolity the one redeeming quality is the factor that is most important to the members of a sorority: somehow it all works out. Somehow, we end up with the women we want to have and the women who don’t join us end up some place happier.

So although the recruitment process itself is at times revolting and ridiculous, it is a means to an end that will remain intact until someone with a lot of spare time on their hands revolutionizes the entire process. In other words, next year we will, as we did this year and the year before, give any and all women who walk through our doors a “great rush.”

Opinion Editor Lauren Cates is a junior advertising/public relations major from Houston.