By Jeffrey Carl
It occurs to me now that topical humor from college campuses nearly 30 years ago does not age well. I’m sure it was absolutely hilarious at the time, though. Enjoy!
A lot of people do a lot of complaining about Rush, the process by which fraternities and sororities accept new members. It seems that the University’s administration is perpetually changing the rules or whatever and nobody’s sure if it’s dry or if they’re allowed to put lemon flavoring in the kegs or what.
Well, I, for one, really dig Rush. I firmly believe that Rush is one of the best things you can do with your time and that it isn’t in the least an enormous hokey waste of time or something like that.
In fact, I think that it shouldn’t be just Greek organizations, but that all campus organizations of any kind should have a Rush. Imagine the benefits to society in general.
Rush is usually composed of several nights of schmoozing events, followed by an invitation-only or preference party and then a day when invitations to join (bids) are given out. For example, my fraternity’s Rush schedule this year looked pretty much like this:
Day 1: Get-Really-Drunk-And-Forget-Everybody’s-Name-You-Met-Last-Night Party, 8:00 P.M.
Day 2: Acoustic Night with a depressing folk singer, 9:00 P.M.
Day 3: Meet the Brotherhood Awkward Conversation/Binge Drinking Party, 8:00 P.M.
Day 4: Guys-Only Invitational Sausage Party, 4:00 P.M.
Day 5: Bids Extended/Frenzied consideration about whether we were telling you the truth about pledging just being our putting stuff on your doors and buying you presents or if we were really pulling your leg
Or something like that, anyway. This truncated membership induction process is obviously the scientifically-concluded optimum way to meet new members, or else the administration wouldn’t have mandated it. So why doesn’t everybody do it? What might it be like if everybody had a Rush?
BETA BETA BETA (Biology Honor Society) RUSH:
Day 1: Special Lab Section: Can You Break Down the Amino Acids in Taco Bell?, 12:00 A.M.
Day 2: Dissection Night with Milwaukee’s Beast, 11:00 P.M.
Day 3: Karaoke Night, 9:00 P.M.
Day 4: Bids Extended/Lab Reports Due
“THE WEB” (YEARBOOK) RUSH:
Day 1: Get-Crazy-with-a-Keg-of-Shasta Party, 4:00 P.M.
Day 2: Karaoke Night, 9:00 P.M.
Day 3: Rock with Web house band, “The Typos” 6:30 P.M.
Day 4: Bids Extended
Day 9: Bids Received
UR WRITING CENTER RUSH:
Day 1: Meet the Third Person Plural Construction Cookout, 2:00 P.M.
Day 2: Karaoke Night, 9:00 P.M.
Day 3: Acoustic Night with Writing Center house band, “The Passive Voice” 3:00 P.M.
Day 4: Bids extended/Spelling and grammar mistakes corrected and returned
UNIVERSITY COMPUTING RUSH:
Day 1: Karaoke with Herbie Hancock Night, 3:00 P.M.
Day 2: Guess-Where-in-the-United-States-are-the-Macintosh-Parts-You-Ordered-Six-Weeks-Ago Party, 5:00 P.M.
Day 3: Get-Zany-with-a-Keg-of-Intel-80486-33MHz-Microprocessors Party, 1:00 A.M.
Day 4: Bids E-Mailed
JEPSON SCHOOL OF LEADERSHIP STUDIES RUSH:
Day 1: Invitational Karaoke Night, 9:00 P.M.
Day 2: We-Have-the-Most-Expensive-Lodge-On-Campus Party with Jepson house band “The Rolling Stones” 7:30 P.M.
Day 3: Drinkin’ Malt Liquor with Norman Schwarzkopf Party, 3:00 A.M.
Day 4: Bid Applications Due
CAB (CAMPUS ACTIVITIES BOARD) RUSH
Day 1: Karaoke Night, 8:00 P.M.
Day 2: Acoustic Karaoke Night, 8:00 P.M.
Day 3: Zydeco Swamp Music: Okeefenokee Karaoke Night, 8:00 P.M.
Day 4: Bids Extended by Karaoke
WILL (WOMEN INVOLVED IN LEARNING AND LIVING) RUSH:
Day 1: Equal-Rights-Does-Not-Necessarily-Mean-Mandatory-Castration Cookout, 2:00 P.M.
Day 2: Acoustic Night with depressing feminist poets, 8:00 P.M.
Day 3: Karaoke Mixer with VCU Men’s Studies Department, 8:30 P.M.
Day 4: Bids Extended/Information and Bitc … I mean, Complaint Session
INTERVARSITY CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP RUSH:
Day 1: Meet Your Maker cookout, 4:30 P.M.
Day 2: Fish and Loaves picnic, 2:00 P.M.
Day 3: I-Found-the-Lord-and-Lost-my-Talent: Christian Rock Night, 7:00 P.M.*
Day 4: Bids extended by the Angel of Death
Day 7: Day of Rest
Wouldn’t life be much more exciting? I suspected as much. The point of all this being that Rush is a really fantastic thing and I don’t think that it’s possible to take it too seriously and it is obviously something everybody should do all the time or at least complain about profusely. Seriously. I’m not kidding.
Well, maybe I’m kidding a little.
*Special thanks to P.J. O’Rourke