Every year, in the winter time, the female students in Greek organizations at Lehigh University go through the grueling process that is sorority recruitment. For days we practice to perfect the ways in which we will appear to the youngest members of the school's community, be it through appearance, conversation, and the like. The idea behind recruitment itself is genuine; wanting to speak to girls to get to know some that perhaps would make a good fit as your "sisters." But there is something that is entirely lost in this recruitment process: genuineness.
During this period of rush, sororities promote themselves through the values presented by their national headquarters in an attempt to align girls to those values, and to the chapter as a whole. And while some may believe that, due to the goodness of their hearts and their self-proclaimed abilities to perfectly judge character, this process is pure and results in the best of women becoming a wonderful addition to their family. Quite frankly, this mindset is bullshit.
What can you really gauge from someone by learning simple facts such as their hometown, their major, and their dorm? Perhaps you can learn about some of their interests, but that doesn't delve into the core of who they are. There is no opportunity to casually "hang out" with these women with the ease that fraternity members do. There are too many barriers that disallow us from actually getting to know these girls, from being able to pinpoint exactly what it is about them that will make them an excellent member of your respective chapter, and that's an extremely important missed connection that is presented on behalf of the restrictions of sorority recruitment.
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I am asked time and again whether or not I "enjoy going through rush," and my answer is always "no, I hate it." I don't hate the effort that I put into figuring out who will best fit my chapter and leave behind a legacy that I can say I helped to create. I hate that the superficiality of sorority recruitment gets in the way of my being proud of an accomplishment such as that, trivial as it may seem. I want to come back to my chapter 10 years from now knowing that I will be able to have a connection with the women who currently hold positions within the house and around campus, confident that they still uphold the same values I did when I was in their position. I firmly believe that, with the way sorority recruitment plays out now, this will not be a reality, and that's not what I want for my chapter, and for chapters across this campus. The materialism and lack of substance needs to end, the only true matter as of right now is how?
