aphi rush pdf?

I can't believe that an organization founded to create bonds of sisterhood required that we drop a sister of Beta Delta's biological sister because we exist in a world where simply seeing _________ in our letters might not sufficiently convince a PNM that she needs to wear those letters too.
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I can't believe that the national organization demands this because we demand this.
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I always think about why I did it.
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I think about why I agreed to treat other girls in this way and contribute to a process where worth of young women is quantified almost entirely by appearances. I ask myself why I allowed this to persist instead of refusing to take part in this. I ask myself why I didn't publicize this hidden information, especially since doing so would likely result in repercussions that would force the organization, and others like it, to put an end to this corruption.
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I always say that I agreed to this because I didn't want to be a hypocrite. And I stand by that—it's definitely part of it. A woman with a clipboard once decided that I was pretty enough to be a part of this. She decided that my appearance fit the obscure criteria that defines who is worthy of membership. A woman with a clipboard once decided that my sisters—some of the closest friends I have ever had, people who understand and accept me in ways that I didn't know that friends could, and the first people to show me that friends can actually be as important as family—were worthy of membership too. A woman with a clipboard once decided that we should find each other, that we should learn and love and grow together, and that we should forever change each other's lives for the better.

(Second section)

At large universities such as Michigan—where a class of 7,000 students allows us to meet a vast and diverse range of people, and making friends is so easy that it’s difficult—Greek Life relieves us of that daunting adjustment. As young American women go through sorority rush, meet girls, and build connections, we search for comfort, and we trust the girls whom we like to get along with other girls we will like. We count on them to select a pledge class of sixty-something like-minded individuals who might give us the security that we are so searching for. In a few short weeks, sixty of the 7,000 are cherry-picked for us, and we are hopeful that some of them will become our best friends in this community that innately demands a strong sense of “sisterhood.” This unfamiliar place might start to feel like a second home sooner than we can imagine. It’s enticing, isn’t it?
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And, for some, that temptation is defined by more than that wish for solace and belonging. Sororities recruit similar individuals, and, with that, they gain collective reputations that are then highlighted in red and planted on the foreheads of the individuals who join them. Like any system, there is a hierarchy in those reputations, and we are thus placed us on a level that can help define our feelings about our social worth in the eyes of ourselves and others. Being favorably recognized as a member of a "top" house can make us feel socially regarded as elite or important, and that recognition as part of something good or bad can make us feel good or bad for no good reason at all.​
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_________ was a senior in Beta Delta when I was a freshman. In a sorority of over 200 girls, it takes commitment and interest—that most of us, frankly, cannot be bothered with—to get to know every sister on a personal level. As a freshman, I knew everyone in my own pledge class and most of the girls in the pledge class above me, but, as a busy student, connecting with over 200 girls exceeded my social priority. I would guess that I knew, or at least knew of, a combined total of about forty juniors and seniors in Beta Delta. I would have walked right past _______ on the street.
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I did, however, recognize her name, and I had a positive sentiment towards _________.. She was a sister of my chapter, and, therefore, I could trust that I should feel connected to her in some small way. After all, she and her friends recruited the juniors, who recruited the sophomores, who recruited my friends and me.

It wasn’t until my junior year, however, two years after ______ had graduated, that I was forced to connect with __________ on a personal level. ________ had reached out to the other recruitment chairs of Beta Delta and me to enthusiastically recommend a freshman at the University of Michigan to our chapter: her younger sister, ________.

(Third section.)
We offered immense gratitude and excitement that _______—and two other members of her pledge class, including a former chapter president—had contacted us about (her younger sister), and we assured them that (she) would have an especially wonderful experience while rushing Beta Delta.

As a national organization that was founded with values including sisterhood, leadership, loyalty, and character development, it is assumed that those values should be reflected in our recruiting process. We spend weeks planning for recruitment parties to ensure that every young woman going through recruitment at Beta Delta feels important and desired. We know that girls come to us seeking security and development during an unsettling time, and we exist to give them just that. We honor tradition. We honor legacy. We expect that we will always help a fellow sister, and we will always want the best for all sisters of Beta Delta. We care for and look out for each other—especially for those at our own University of Michigan Chapter of Beta Delta.
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We received three letters from girls whom we knew that recommended ____________ to Beta Delta. Her legacy status as an in-house-biological-sister was noted on her recruitment profile and well-ingrained into the brains of the recruitment team at the University of Michigan. However, despite this knowledge, despite _______’s contribution to our sisterhood, and despite the fact that these recommendations for a legacy came from the very girls whom we trusted to find us our own sisters—and thus lead us to the college experience that would bring us so much joy as to inspire us to direct the recruitment process—__________ was not invited back to the third or final rounds of recruitment parties at Beta Delta. And she didn’t just slip through the cracks.
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So, why would we ever intentionally drop __________? Why would we betray a sister for no reason at all? Why would our advisor from Beta Delta’s national organization allow us—or even instruct us—to do so?

Part 2
CHAPTER SCORES
THE NECESSARY LIES.

The rush process is not really something that any freshman girl going through sorority recruitment at the University of Michigan—or a Potential New Member (PNM), as Michigan’s Panhellenic Association calls it—is taught to take lightly. Freshman year, before each round, my roommates and I would spend hours tearing apart our drawers to ensure that we would dress to impress, and, after each round, my cheeks hurt from over-smiling as to seem enthusiastic enough to receive many invitations back to the “desirable” chapters. I understood rush to be a competitive process, and I understood my competition to be well over 1,200 girls from all over the country; I had to ensure that I stood out. I knew that my messy dorm room and my swollen cheeks would be well worth it.

(Ninth section)
Each year, during the Spring semester, Beta Delta's recruitment chairs send an email to the sophomore pledge class that includes a sign up sheet for "Coffee Dates" with the intention of getting the girls excited about recruiting a new pledge class in the Fall. The rush chairs tell the sophomores that they want to meet with them in small groups for about fifteen minutes just to learn more about their experiences with recruitment, how much they enjoyed the process, and, of course, what things they especially liked about Beta Delta's recruitment process or what other houses did better than we did.
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They begin each "Coffee Date" by telling the sisters that everything we discuss there, and all recruitment discussions going forward, must remain confidential within the sisters of Beta Delta.
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As a sophomore, I nodded compliantly. The rush chairs were stern in their demands, and so we let them set the serious yet excited tone to gossip about all things recruitment. They encouraged us to talk about our personal experiences with recruitment and to join in enthusiastically in agreement or disagreement with each other. Their curious eyes lit up as we told them of Zeta Beta Gamma's truffle desserts and Pi Mu's heart-wrenching philanthropy presentation. Their fingers typed furiously as they sat opposite us.
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They whispered through their smiles as we walked away.​

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A year later, it was my turn. And, like everything else, the Coffee Dates were lies and disguises.
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The smiling former recruitment chairs finally let the four of us hear the whispers. They told us of the national policies that we would need to follow in order to be the most desirable chapter on campus. They told us that the superficial scoring—the messed up way in which we determined the value of potential sisters—didn't end upon membership; it just changed.

They told us that we would need to rank the current sisters of Beta Delta on a scale of 1-10 in order to determine their "recruiting strength." 30% of that score would be determined by how personable and outgoing they were and how positive they seemed about the recruitment process in general. 70% percent of that score would be their External Score.
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They were all sisters, and their External Prescores had once been high enough to grant them membership. Their seven-and-above External Scores, however, had been relative to 1,200 PNMs. Now, we would need to score them relative to each other, and they couldn't all be scored highly—they couldn't all be equally worthy of meeting our most desirable recruits. So, we looked at our friends and sisters and belittled their worth into only numbers.
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The Coffee Dates were only a discrete way to ask the vicious questions.
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(Eleventh)

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It wasn't until I saw a matching document that it all started to make sense. No—not make sense, but the pieces just started to fit. It wasn't that I discovered why we were doing all of this, rather, I was just finally forced to visualize it all and see the numbers align.

The Beta Delta tens would meet the PNM tens. The Beta Delta threes would meet the PNM threes. We told the sisters that they couldn't mess up the lines because scoring would become too difficult between rounds, but the sisters actually couldn't mess up the lines because a PNM with an External Score of eight couldn't be recruited by a Beta Delta with a score of three. We were told that then, maybe, the eight wouldn't want to join Beta Delta, and we couldn't risk that.
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The PNM threes were gone before they walked inside, and the Beta Delta threes were used to entertain them for those twenty-five minutes before we could right click on their cell in the External Prescoring document and press delete.
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The next step was to form the sisters into "bump groups," or groups of girls who would meet the same PNMs and make decisions about them. All of the houses did it, and there was no shame in doing so. After all, everyone wanted to ensure that PNMs got a true feel for each house, and they wouldn't be able to do so after meeting only one sister. At Beta Delta, we told the girls that we grouped them in the way that we did in order to show PNMs that there was no "typical Beta Delta girl," and we were made up of young women from all different backgrounds and with varied interests.
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And that's exactly what we did: we ensured that the girls in each bump group were "different" from each other.
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We ensured that each bump group had a mix of girls from Florida and California and Chicago rather than having a bump group of girls who were all from Michigan. We ensured that each bump group had some louder girls who were fully of personality and also some more laid-back, easygoing girls. We ensured that each bump group had an even ratio of blondes to brunettes.
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But among these "unique differences," there was one way that the girls in each bump group, without question, were exactly the same.
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Bump Group 1 would include only sisters who were scored as nines and tens. Bump Group 14 would include only sisters who were scored as ones and twos.
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And it didn't end there.
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There was more organizing to be done in order to avoid the chaos that is 1,200 girls coming in and out of a sorority house for twenty-five-minute conversations in a span of eight hours. The sisters understood that the literal moving parts of this process had to be systematic as well. Specifically, each bump group would have a predetermined seat in an assigned area of the house so that the sisters and their PNMs would not have to run around in circles looking for an open place to chat. It made methodical sense, just as everything else did.

(Twelfth)
Bump groups 10-14 and their PNMs would sit on the hardwood chairs in the brown, empty dining room. Bump groups 4-9 would sit on the beige rugs and couches in the light, yellow living room.
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Bump groups 1-3 would get comfortable on the couches in the smaller extra living room. The idea was that, in this enclosed space, PNMs would look around at the room full of pretty Beta Delta girls, and the pretty PNMs whom they were rushing, and admire these girls who might all become their sisters.
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The chaos that we worked so hard to control fiercely returned during the ten-minute scoring break between each round. The Living Room Girls would whisper-shout about girls they wanted as their "little sisters," and the Dining Room Girls would stare enviously and whine about how they hadn't met anyone "good" yet. It didn't take more than a few rounds for the Dining Room Girls to figure out that they had not met and might not meet a single girl who "reminded them of their current sisters."
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It didn't take more than a few rounds for them to figure out that no one whom they would speak to would be invited back to the next round.
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They noticed that if and when they did have the opportunity to recruit girls who might become sisters of Beta Delta, it was only when the lines got messed up, and they picked up the wrong girl.

Part 6
FLAGGING
LET'S JUST DOUBLE CHECK.
You thought it ended there, didn't you?
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It couldn't possibly get any more calculated or ridiculous or laughably shallow. But it can. It always can.
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That brings me to "Flagging." Yes—another dumb name for another dumb process. Another euphemism. Like "Coffee Dates." Or "External Score."
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Or "Does she remind you of your current sisters?"
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As PNMs entered the loud house full of screaming and cheering sisters, ___ From Nationals stood behind the chanting sisters with her clipboard and completed the nationally-ordered process of Flagging. The clipboard had a list of the names of all the girls who were coming that party, and as they walked through the door, ___looked at their faces and their name tags and took notes next to their names: " ," "CG," or "MG." Those labeled as "stars" were classified as beautiful, deserving of receiving a bid, and in need of meeting our strongest recruiters. Those labeled as "CG" were not "bad-looking" and "Could Go" if enough PNMs were prettier, and thus more deserving of an invitation to the next round. Those labeled as "MG" absolutely "Must Go." No questions asked.
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During the parties, there were so many things going on, and everyone was invested in their own conversations and obligations. No one would ever notice. I surely didn't until I had to.
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The twisted idea behind this process, like the others, is that people often present their best selves online, and sometimes, girls look different in person. Therefore, External Scores based on Facebook profiles are not always the most accurate way of judging appearances.

(Thirteenth)
We were taught to think of Flagging as "double checking."
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It worked both ways. Sometimes, girls looked better in person than they did online, and we needed to take notes to ensure that those girls were "saved" and rushed "harder" in rounds going forward. Flagging was our way of saving the pretty girls from the dining room and ensuring that everyone in the living room was worthy of being there.
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"Saving" the "worthy" PNMs wasn't always as simple as bumping a star's External Score up to where it belonged and vowing to rush her like the queen that her appearance suggested that she was.
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The matching process failed us one or two out of every five recruitment parties. We could never figure out why it was so difficult for the sisters to know their correct places in the lines and meet the right girl.
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But that's when it became our responsibility to "save" the "good" PNMs from the detrimental experience that would be ending up with the wrong sister in the dining room.
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As the recruitment team, we had to ensure that the star PNMs would have the best recruitment experience possible. They had to meet our strongest recruiters, and as the rush team, it was our responsibility to meet all star PNMs and make final decisions about them. If a star had been picked up by the wrong sister, it was especially important that we invade their conversation, force our "favorable" energy into what was thought to be an unfavorable situation, and avert the "crisis" that was a four recruiting a nine.
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Sisters were often flattered when we wanted to come and join their conversations. Very few actually realized how incredibly offensive it often was.
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Flagging was a little easier to deal with because I wasn't the one doing it; this one was entirely in the hands of nationals.

But that's mostly because they didn't trust us and feared that our moral judgment could allow us to manipulate this part of the process. Rightfully so.
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This was the once place where nationals could catch us if we had discreetly changed a PNM's Prescore in the Google Doc because we had heard great things about her and wanted to push her through even though she was thought to be externally unworthy of an invitation.
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And that's just what we did, and nationals definitely caught it.
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_______ was on Michigan's women's soccer team. Two of her closest friends from high school had joined Beta Delta during their freshman year at Michigan, but ________ hadn't yet rushed because she wasn't sure if it would work with her athletic schedule.

(Nineteenth)
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I can't believe that we require the sisters to share the link to the Beta Delta Tumblr across their social media profiles, telling their "friends" to "Check out [their] awesome sisters!" I can't believe that the Tumblr includes hundreds of pictures of our sisters posing alone rather than together. I can't believe that those pictures are not from sorority-affiliated sisterhood or philanthropic events. I can't believe that our Tumblr does not ask that viewers look at the great things that we are achieving together but rather that they just look at us, individually. I can't believe that, that alone can make girls yearn to join us.
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I can't believe that we send a PowerPoint to the fraternities to introduce them to the new pledge class each year. I can't believe that, that PowerPoint includes sixty-something slides solely of names and photos of our new members and no other information about them. I can't believe that the four of us and ___ From Nationals spent hours crafting that PowerPoint, carefully selecting the best photo of each new member to show off to our world. I can't believe that, that PowerPoint of nothing but head shots and names gets responses that Beta Delta "got the 'best' pledge class" and "is the 'best' sorority."
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I can't believe that desirability is defined in this ridiculous way. I can't believe that women value themselves and each other by how attractive they are to others and soak up that attraction and vie for that reputation. I can't believe that an organization founded to create bonds of sisterhood required that we drop a sister of Beta Delta's biological sister because we exist in a world where simply seeing __________ in our letters might not sufficiently convince a PNM that she needs to wear those letters too.
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I can't believe that the national organization demands this because we demand this.
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