With green and red painted chests, members of Delta Sigma Phi ran shouting through the Heart of Campus on Tuesday evening, celebrating the end of recruitment week.
All fraternities and sororities gathered in the middle of campus Tuesday to welcome their new members for Bid Day.
“Today every fraternity formally introduces their pledge class and then they go back to their own house,” said junior Ryan Nguyen, head of recruiting for Sigma Phi Epsilon. “Really it’s all about what we’re doing right now, which is getting all the pledges into one room, educating them, and getting them excited about Greek life.”
The event also served to inform fraternity members about appropriate hazing techniques.
“The head of Greek life tells them about hazing and what they should not let us do,” senior Kyle Evensen said. “They tell them the rules and what’s okay and what’s not.”
Waiting on Gerlinger Lawn, the sorority pledges didn’t know what house they were heading to at the end of the night as the chapter members organized them into groups.
“They gave them their bid cards and counted to five. They all had to wait and hold them for awhile – it’s a terrible suspense,” Gamma Phi Beta member Crystel Kinnee said.
“I was trying to peer into my envelope and see who it was, but I couldn’t tell,” said junior Molly Matson of her own Bid Day experience last year, which resulted in her acceptance into Phi Beta Phi.
After the pledges opened their envelopes, they erupted in screams and the girls ran to her respective chapters to hug their new sisters before they all then ran to their sorority houses.
“This is by far the best week since I’ve been here,” Kinnee said.
“At the very end we find that members are a majority of the time probably 95- to 96-percent happy with where they go,” Greek Leadership Advisor Amy Long said.
“Numbers are up overall; we started higher than we did last year,” Long said. “We’re very excited about it.”
Students prepare to enter Greek life on Bid Day
Daily Emerald
October 11, 2006
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