Ruminations on College Life

Welcome back! I hope everyone had a nice vacation because thefun starts all over again. Don’t you love the all-nighters,the tests, the homework, the reading, the writing, the researchingand the cramming? No? How about the drinking, the partying, theyacking, the hangovers and the hookups?

Besides a four-day trip to Georgia, I spent 100 percent of mybreak in total nothingness. Now I know what men feel like. Overall,it was a good vacation- all two and a half weeks of it.

Wait don’t we get four weeks of winter break? Oh,that’s right. There’s a little thing called”formal recruitment week,” or rush week …whatever.

Guys have it good. Don’t think I don’t know what youguys do during rush week. I would choose to get drunk and seestrippers over making crafts and small talk any day. Lots of beerand booty — I think that’s the reason guys bond muchbetter.

When I went through formal “recruitment,” I learneda few things. I learned that when they said, “Wearcomfortable clothes,” what they really meant was, “Lookyour best.” And when they said, “Wear comfortableshoes,” what they really meant was, “Wear the mostuncomfortable shoes you own.” The cuter the better, and itgoes without saying that the cuter the ensemble, the moreuncomfortable it will be.

For the entire week of recruitment that year, a Zip-Lock bagserved as a purse. What were they thinking? Those bags were made tosustain sandwiches — not keys, lipstick, ID cards, gum,feminine products, powder, Tylenol, mirrors, hair clips andwatches.

There were some things I never learned, included the names ofthe sorority girls I met each day. There were just too many. I hadto cheat and look at the nametags, and only pretend to know theirnames. I found it peculiar to walk into a house and have everysorority girl seem to know who I was and where I was from.

I don’t know about you, but I liked having to line up inalphabetical order in front of each house, each day, in 50-degreeweather. And you got the feeling that the girls were inside lookingout at you, evaluating you like pieces of meat.

Every day of recruitment started off with small talk. Everyconversation consisted of the same questions: “How areyou?” “Where are you from?” “How did yoursemester go?” “What’s your major?””Where do you live?”

Hi, can we be any more creative?

By the end of the day, I would go back to my room, tired, hungryand cranky. And just when I thought the day was over, when Ididn’t have to hear another house chant, I step outside thehall to hear some of the girls recapping the day with chants,trying to identify which chant belongs to which house.

Rush used to be one big fashion show, but this year, Panhellenichas done so much to turn that around, along with many otherpreconceived notions about rush at SMU. Kudos to the women of thePanhellenic Council.

In addition, the university has some brains working for them upthere. They strategically planned it so that transfer studentorientation and recruitment would land on the same week. As aresult, you have 500 girls who look their best, filing out of thestudent center past all of the new students. You could hear everyguy say, “I knew I picked this school for areason.”

What does it mean to be “greek”? I have a friend whois actually from Greece, and she will not let me get away withsaying that I am “greek” without using fingerquotations.

My stepbrother and a couple of his friends at UT thought aboutstarting a fraternity of their own. They would be known as KappaKappa Kappa, whose founders are an Asian guy, a black guy and aJewish guy.

I’d like to start one: Alpha Sigma Sigma. I’d wearmy letters just for kicks. That way, wearing shorts with theletters across the butt would actually mean something.

I think Aaron Karo, author of Ruminations on College Life,summed it up best when he said, “Sororities are a bunch ofgirls who hate each other, organized to travel in herds and fightover frat boys. Fraternities are a bunch of guys who love eachother, organized to get wasted faster and cheaper and hook up withsorority girls.”

Welcome, new members!

Anne Truong is a columnist for The Daily Campus. She canbe reached at [email protected].