THANKS TO THE last week of boot-camp-like training, the Delta Beta house rose with the dawn, right on schedule—0800 hours: coffee orders delivered by four angelic sisters; 0900 hours: calisthenics in the chapter room; 1100–1400: hair, makeup, and light lunch. By 1500, we were lined up inside the house in a precise, tight formation. I inspected the troops—I mean chapter—from the front door and saw fifty of the finest young women the country had to offer, all dressed in identical JCrew chambray tops tucked into adorable black tartan pencil skirts over black tights and knee-high boots. Freshly tanned from the visiting spray tan salon last night, the ladies were a plucked, whitened, glossy show of ideal, postadolescent womanhood. They made me proud just looking at them.
At 1520, I checked my Michael Kors watch and synced it with my iPhone. I climbed the entry staircase and got the chapter’s attention with the aid of my lucky whistle hung around my neck.
I put a hand over my heart, right where my Delta Beta pin was resting. “Ladies, tonight you will introduce yourselves to a new generation of sorority women. Whether they ultimately pledge our legendary sisterhood, the impression you make will stay with them for a lifetime, invoking their admiration, respect, and fear. Although our chapter has suffered loss and unimaginable pain, you will show not only the Sutton College Greek system, but the world, what Delta Beta women are made of!”
I blew my whistle again. “DO NOT CRY! Think of your mascara!” That brought a giggle out of everyone. I pointed toward the front door of the house. “Tonight, you will meet your new sisters!”
It was a battle cry worthy of Spartacus—the hot, modern version—and the chapter responded appropriately, with cheers and fist pumps and stomping on the floor.
It was an intoxicating feeling. I almost felt high off the energy pulsing through the house, and it wasn’t just the organic herbal No Doz in my system. No, there was a palpable zing running through the air. I’d only felt this way on a few other occasions in my life, right before something magical occurred.
Fifteen minutes later, you could cut the knotted tension with a knife, and when the Panhellenic rush counselor knocked on the door, the chapter let out its collective breath.
It was showtime.
I held my hand up. From my position on the grand stairwell, everyone could see my fingers count down the seconds, three, two, one . . .
The door opened.
The ground shook with fifty determined women stomping the ground in their boot soles, fortified with lead plates. STOMP STOMP STOMP STOMPstompstompstompstompstomp.
“WE’RE FUN WE’RE CUTE WE’RE BACK IN BLACK” The Debs half sang/half screamed their welcome song. The first rushees in line looked terrified. Good. It meant we were intimidating and incredible. They’d never seen anything like a Delta Beta rush.
“YOU’RE FUN YOU’RE CUTE YOU’LL WANNA COME BACK”
Pickups started, like a high-tech German automotive assembly line. Debs moved forward, greeting the next rushee in line with an enthusiastic smile and a shouted name read from their name tags. It didn’t matter that no one could hear over the din of the foyer.
“TO THE BEST HOUSE DEB HOUSE DELTA BETA IS THE BEST HOUSE!”
In seven minutes and six seconds, the front door was closed and all of the rushees accompanied to their designated places. This was the part where bonds were formed, friendships were forged, and lies were fabricated.
There’s a lot to a successful rush. There’s the glitz, the glamour; logistics and legalities; and the hard sell, the salesmanship. We wanted each and every one of these women, when they returned to Panhellenic that night, to rank Delta Beta as their number one choice. That didn’t mean that we were choosing all of them. We had to rank them as well, and sometimes hard decisions had to be made, with impassioned pleas and arguments. Sometimes, this was made easier by the research we’d done before the rushees ever entered the house.
I’m not going to spill all the tricks up the figurative Delta Beta sleeve, but we routinely check [XXXXX] and order [XXXXXX] (redacted to protect Delta Beta trade secrets) before rush, to ensure that anyone we seriously consider offering a bid can comply with our high standards. But, ultimately, rushees made their own cases, providing their transcripts, resumes, and photos to Panhellenic, which helps match them up with sisters who would be a good fit.
For instance, on the southwest corner next to the marble bust of Leticia Baumgardner was McKayla Monroe, a junior biology major. Her hometown was Charleston, and she had been a cheerleader in high school. For this party, she was paired with a girl from Savannah, who had volunteered at a nursing home in high school and was a cheerleader in high school. They should have a lot to talk about; if not, there were conversation prompts that the ladies had memorized.
“How are you liking Sutton College?”
“What was your favorite class last semester?”
“Do you like to go to basketball games?”
All of these topics were thoughtfully worded and vetted through the conversation subcommittee to ensure maximum conversation success. As anyone who has ever been involved in a sorority recruitment process could tell you, it’s the conversations that make you fall in love with a house. And their well-styled hair.
I checked the time on my phone. One minute until bumping. I watched the extra women start to nonchalantly make their way through the crowds, a smile here, a hand on a shoulder there. It looked like they were just mingling, casually strolling through a crowd of a hundred, very cute, very-pulled-together collegiate women, where half the people were dressed alike.
Five . . . four . . . three . . . two. . . . one. I hit a button on a remote hidden inside my skirt pocket, specifically added for just this accessory. The lights in the house dimmed ever so slightly. Only two or three rushees noticed, blinking for a second, before returning to their fascinating description on how freshman geology totally wasn’t what she thought it was. Then there were bumps.
The bumpers politely inserted themselves into conversations as we’d practiced, over and over during the practices. “Hi! [insert name here] I couldn’t wait to come talk to you!” With enough sincerity and cheer, the rushee would never notice that all over the room, sisters were introducing themselves in the exact same way. The first sister excused herself and went and found her second station and on and on. Like a Rube Goldberg machine that the mechanical-engineering nerds insisted on building every nice day in the George Klooney (with a K, not a C, unfortunately) Quad at the student center on campus, the bumping process was both technical and beautiful in its simple, effective choreography.
Delta Betas flowed through the room, going from rushee to rushee with an ease and graciousness that I was sure could not be matched at any other sorority house on Greek Row. I watched it all from the staircase, and when it was time to wind down the party, I dimmed the lights to give a five-minute warning, then again to give a two-minute warning. The women who were currently not holding conversations about the basketball record of the Sutton Saints lined up at the door and began to clap and sing.
“WE’RE FUN WE’RE CUTE WE’RE BACK IN BLACK—”
Soon, all the potential new members had been ushered through the front door, and the chapter as a whole finished singing Monday’s signature ditty.
“YOU’RE FUN YOU’RE CUTE YOU’LL WANNA COME BACK—
TO THE BEST HOUSE THE DEB HOUSE DELTA BETA IS THE BEST HOUSE!”
The front door slammed, and a roar rose, shaking the house to its foundation. We had done it. First party done. Four more to go. In five . . . four . . . three . . .
BY NINE O’CLOCK that night, the door closed on the final party of the first day of rush. This time when the door closed, the resulting roar probably formed a seismic fault line deep in the crust under North Carolina. The chapter had, quite simply, kicked major ass.
Everything had gone off without a hitch. No emergencies had occurred, no wardrobe malfunctions, no lipstick on teeth, no one had gotten on the floor and pretended to be a cow (there was an incident my junior year—let’s just say certain people were locked in their rooms for the rest of the week).
“We did it!” I hooted. I ran down the stairs into the celebrating throng, grabbed several sisters by the neck, and gave them huge bear hugs. I spun around and saw Ginnifer and raised my hand to give her a high five, which she ignored. Denied.
It was as if I heard a giant set of brakes squealing to a halt. “What’s wrong?”
The Gineral was not celebrating. Women around me started to notice, alarmed by the steam coming out of her ears.
“THIS!” She smacked a piece of paper into her other palm. “The rush counselor just slid it under the door.”
I reached for it and uncrinkled the single sheet. The message was short and to the point.
Again, it was probably a sign that I needed to get more than forty-five minutes of sleep that night that I started to laugh hysterically. This got the attention of the rest of the chapter, who hadn’t sobered up, watching the Gineral snort fire.
I held up the paper. “LADIES!” I yelled, even though we were all pressed pretty close together in the entry way. “Panhellenic has issued a new regulation in response to recent events on Greek Row!”
Lowering the paper to my face, I read the pronouncement slowly and clearly. “From this point on, all Panhellenic sororities shall NOT employ, dispatch, detour, or otherwise engage live animals during recruitment.”
Another roar rose through the house, this time of laughter. I didn’t look at my inner circle, but I did see Ginnifer out of the corner of my eye and wondered why she was taking this so seriously. After all, there was no proof that Delta Beta had anything to do with a baby lion wandering through sorority row. None whatsoever.