Greek Life: Part I

Greek life is a very hard topic to talk about in one blog post because there is so much information to share, so I decided to break down the topic into part I - about Greek life, part II - rushing at Miami, and part III - being a pledge.

Ever since I started high school I always wanted to go Greek. I went to an all-girl's high school and loved the closeness and "sisterhood" that had developed between my class and girls in other grades. I wanted to continue to form close bonds with my new friends, I wanted to be able to participate in fun Greek events, and I wanted to continue in the philanthropy work that I had done in high school.

I was looking for a college with a big Greek system... but I was also nervous that I wasn't going to get into one, so I wanted the campus to also have lots of non-Greek students... and that is another reason why Miami appealed to me so much!

Miami's campus is composed of over 50 Greek chapters... these sororities and fraternities focus on learning, leadership, philanthropy, community, scholarship, and brotherhood/sisterhood. To learn more about the Greek system visit: http://www.units.muohio.edu/saf/GRA/

The nice thing about Miami Greek recruitment is that rush is not the first week of school... so many of my friends had to deal with not only entering a new and strange environment, but they also had to deal with the pressures of rush. The first formal introduction to Greek life at Miami is through the Greek Mega-Fair which took place in October.

After the long trek down to Millett Hall we were able to visit all the sororities (and fraternities). They set up booths around the outside of the basketball arena and we could chat with girls (boys) from the sororities (fraternities). It was nice to be able to talk to girls who had gone through the recruitment process the year before. I found myself asking thousands of questions about the different rounds, and I got more and more confused as they attempted to explain the hectic week of girls rush.

Throughout the fall we attended things called "sprite dates." These were informal parties that took place in the sororities suites. They had cute themes like "Desserts with DG" or "Fondue with Fuzzie" and it gave us the opportunity to check out their suite, get to know the personality of the sorority, and meet girls in the sorority that we could talk to.

The boys did a similar sort of informal introduction... these events were called "coke dates." Many of them took place at the fraternity house, but some of them were at other places and required an invitation.
One thing that both boys and girls had in common was a Greek Life Guide. A GLG was assigned to each corridor in each dorm. He/She was our guide to the Greek world. We had meetings once a week where they would go through the ENTIRE recruitment process and answer all of the thousands of questions that we threw at her. The nice thing about the GLG was that we didn't know which sorority she was in... this allowed us to ask questions without worrying about her feelings. She did a great job at answering questions without giving us biased answers like "MY SORORITY IS THE BEST!!!!"

The boys attended open house before they left for Christmas break. Open house was on Saturday and Sunday of one weekend, and the GLG led the boys to each house to visit for 15 minutes. When the boys returned from Christmas vacation they spent Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights revisiting the houses that they liked.
Us girls on the other hand... [insert chuckle here] we had QUITE a different experience...