We’ve been waiting for you all summer and we’re so glad you’re finally here [Applause] it’s that time of year again it’s rush week Young women all over the country right now are basically speed dating each other to get a spot in a new house or get the girls that they want in their houses it is chaotic as it sounds doesn’t matter if you’re rushing or not you can be a beautiful goddamn independent who
Has no interest in this way of life but i know there is a surge in curiosity because there’s a lot of sorority stuff and rush week things going viral on tick tock right now rush daisy hey y’all so it’s the last round of sisterhood tomorrow’s bid day so excited You’re seeing lots of yelling lots of chance lots of hair flipping quite literally looks like there are some girls who are spraining their necks what is going on as a black woman who rushed a predominantly white sorority i do happen to have the inside scoop and i
Never thought i’d be talking about it but i do so you know i’d be honored to give you the good the bad and the ugly about rush week so why do people even rush to begin with it seems as if to an outsider that you might be paying for
Friends and technically you are right the dues could be anywhere like on average around four thousand dollars a semester okay that’s a lot of money so already there this is gonna be an exclusive group of people because not everybody can afford that and that’s just the reality of the situation
But what are some pros to actually joining a sorority well i asked you guys and i also included some of my own because i liked being in a sorority for the most part there were definitely some things that weren’t great it wasn’t perfect but i did have a good experience
And obviously the sisterhood is a big part of that having a support system and community of people around you is a huge win normally these girls in these houses have massive pride in their house which makes it so fun to be obsessed with all things like whatever sorority you’re in
I mean i love the sisterhood aspect but if i’m being honest with you guys the partying was really where it was at for me i’m gonna get in more specifically to my personal experience because it is a little bit unique to me but yeah partying was a huge incentive it’s
Included in your dues so you’re invited to all the parties that your sorority throws and then of course the socialization there’s a lot of opportunities to do activities with other people in the house around homecoming there’s a lot of things that you get to do with your sisters so it’s
Really fun to kind of get together and get to know each other through these activities and that’s honestly where a lot of the bonding was for me a lot of sororities make philanthropy a priority a lot of them choose something very specific and they will work on that throughout the year there’s
Opportunities to show up sign up donate your time to organizations and causes which i think is really great to start doing like especially in college when you’re starting to do things on your own the networking is also a really good opportunity as well because oftentimes houses will set up these networking
Opportunities for you and then there’s people who have been in your house that maybe can help you down the road land a job connections are everything in life honestly like the most valuable piece of information i got is it’s not what you know it’s who you know and that’s so
Cliche but the first day of my freshman year my very first class the professor walks in and he says i just want you guys to know everything you learn from this point on doesn’t matter but what does matter is who you know so meet the
Person next to you and after that i was like man i’m in a lot of student debt so take that as you will but the networking is really great connections are everything and that’s just how the world works and i would also like to add that a massive benefit was the academic help
I probably would not have passed half the test that i did if it weren’t for the academic help that was offered up to me whether that was like working with an older girl who already took the course and still had some curriculum and could help me or just partnering up with
Someone in my sorority that also had classes with me and we would study together i really think that helped boost my gpa so those were some pros now let’s get into the cons of joining a sorority because it’s not perfect okay anytime you put hundreds of girls in a
Room together you guys there’s gonna be cattiness and naturally within those houses there are going to be girls that click up together and so of course if you’re not someone that really finds yourself within a click you can kind of be one of the floaters who doesn’t
Really feel like they have a place and that can be uncomfortable in itself depending on who you are but that’s just the nature of a lot of these houses sorority rules are extensive like there are a lot of regulations and restrictions around what you can post on
Social media and everything like that so if that is a problem for you you might not want to join a sorority because they’re probably going to tell you to take that aspect down you’re not going to be able to post bikini pics the bottom line is when you join a sorority
You are technically agreeing to the terms that they’ve put in place so if that is something that you’re not down with then it is what it is but i will say depending on what house you are in sometimes these rules seem to be a little bit generalized and not
Specific enough sometimes it can seem like there are other girls who are more targeted than some i’ve personally had friends have some encounters with standards where i really didn’t understand what the issue was and it does seem like they can pick at times it’s really catty and you have to
Remember these organizations are technically run by college kids they have alum who oversee things but quite literally guys you have like a sophomore who might be managing millions of dollars of the house money when i was 19 years old i was given access to several bank accounts with millions of dollars
We would throw an 80 000 party on a tuesday like it not a problem i used to walk around campus with checks for like half a million dollars in my backpack like i’m just bopping around the quad there are stories of people who were on the board of these sororities
Embezzling money because it’s college kids managing everything sometimes those personalities get in the way of you know being fair on top of that the obvious one i mentioned earlier that dues at some places could be 4 000 a semester uh some schools it’s 6 000 it really
Depends where you go some schools can be 500 and like i said i think it’s a con because this does exclude a lot of people who may want to rush and just won’t be able to do so because they don’t have the means and the funds to do
That college is already expensive so if you’re able to do a sorority or fraternity you are very privileged i got to do that so i know that i was very privileged to do so and i’m so thankful to my parents that they put me through
All that because i had no job i think an obvious one is that a lot of these sororities lack diversity i went to a very southern school i started out in the midwest and i’ll talk about it later but then i went to a southern school so
The difference was big for me but i will say the further down you go the worse it gets i don’t know what sorority life is like in you know as you go further north or on the coast so if you can speak to those experiences i would really love to
Hear them in the comments but yeah huge lack of diversity it’s almost like it is unspoken for the most part but then it’s like it’s not depending on what school you go to some of them are pretty upfront that they don’t allow black people to join their sororities i
Don’t know if you guys remember this video being leaked not so long ago i was still in college when this happened but the fraternity sae leaked a video and they had this little jingle that they sang and we’ll just play it for you here fraternity brothers seen on
Video engaging in a racist chant [Applause] the greek letters have been stripped off the frat house this morning and the young men who once proudly wore them have been stripped of their pride are you embarrassed extremely you guys took the time to make a whole song about it
So like racism is not just something that’s like at the foundation of your institution racism is a part of like your identity like you guys bond over racism to the point that you sit around like a campfire bonfire vibes and you sing a [ __ ] song about it that’s
[ __ ] disgusting i don’t know how that doesn’t raise a red flag like maybe i shouldn’t be in something like this maybe this is actually [ __ ] evil that i’m giving my money to continue this kind of behavior did anyone ever think about it i don’t know i don’t know
On the female side of this as it relates to sororities i have never experienced overt racism sure there were plenty of microaggressions but we’ll get there later but in terms of what i experienced it was never overt racism like i feel the men had within fraternities and i only wanted to
Touch on this for a second because i noticed such a big difference between it like guys had no shame in being so public about being racist i had walked into fraternity houses i had seen confederate flags everywhere i had seen so many offensive things that i tried to
Just like ignore so that i could have a decent college experience and not have to worry that people there probably hated my guts but what was i gonna do like i literally was one of very few people who were black at this school but also within my sorority so it was
Hard for me to to cope with like what what is the best thing for me to do and there were many times where i thought that i should maybe just not do a sorority um one cause it was expensive as [ __ ] and i felt bad that my parents
Were paying for that but i was dead set on not letting these kinds of people compromise my experience and i am so proud of my younger self for rushing a predominantly white sorority and getting through the things that i got through because i probably couldn’t get through internet trolls today without it so
Thank you let’s get into the background within rush week itself so this has been all over the internet and i think people are like what’s going on i mean it’s to the point now that people are asking netflix to do a whole show surrounding rush week because people are so curious
So there’s basically two sides to rush week there are the new girls coming in who are fresh out of high school going to be freshmen or maybe they’re transfers but usually these girls are referred to as pnms which stands for potential new members so they’re the
Girls who are going through rush on the flip side there are the people who are recruiting and they’re already in houses i don’t think there’s a special word for them because they’re normally just referred to by whatever sorority they’re already in so these people come in like maybe three weeks before school
Actually starts and they start prepping for rush week so during this they are assigning roles you’re kind of making up skits like each day is a theme within rush week it is a whole to do on top of this they are already scoping out girls
That they want to take in so you may think that when you go into rush that every girl that’s rushing has an equal chance and that is absolutely not true here’s everyone who’s coming to rush there are legacies there are the it girls that everybody just wants like
Every house probably wants them and there are like siblings who maybe have an in-house sister so depending on like how many of these you have how many advantages you have like you are gonna be more prioritized it’s not just a one-sided street where it’s like the girls coming in are looking for their
New house the houses also want a very specific type of girl and they’re also trying to get the best of the best so it’s a two-way street there so on the back end they’re already pitching their sisters legacies all that stuff they come up with these cute
Little songs because the songs help you remember the names of girls because there’s a lot of people who come through there’s a lot of sarah as emily’s like you gotta figure out who’s who and it’s very complicated but the interesting part is when you’re rushing like everything is
Very strategic it’s not just like you’re coming in and talking to someone usually they have you go with a very specific person especially like if you did have a sister who was in house they would make sure that your sister probably got to talk to you at some point or another so
They line up in a specific order so that people can talk to certain people or someone from your high school comes through you can talk to them and a lot of the times it’s just like a courtesy because you want to feel welcome in the
House and i will say that the girls do oftentimes go out of their way to make girls feel welcome not all the time but they should it is a long tiring week especially for the girls who are recruiting because they’re coming in early to prep they’re doing the actual
Rush but then they have to stay to cut girls so every day is a long day usually you’re losing your voice like you’re losing sleep hormones are raging everywhere like it is emotionally and mentally taxing but also it’s really fun and i think the end of the week is
Really rewarding for people so on the pnm side you are coming in you’re new you are rushing all these houses and the experience can be very different based on the girl and like i said their advantages and their experiences some things that might play into that one
Where you’re from so if you have hometown advantage a lot of hometowns like to keep their hometowns coming in like i noticed that during rush another thing a lot of girls like are siblings like i said they’re gonna pull for those siblings what could be looked at as
Disadvantages but should it be are your race and depending on what house you’re in kind of plays that out for you but i will say i literally had friends who went to southern schools uh this was a friend who went to a texas school i just wanted that clear it was not arkansas
And she straight up told me her house refuses to take black girls so i was like okay like it’s so awkward when people tell me these things about their houses as if i’m supposed to be like great like what do you want me to say that’s so [ __ ] weird and it’s weird
That you’re just so calm and cool about it so that’s how i realized a lot of my friends from my hometown were racist yeah baby it’s true though those texas schools are bad too to all my women of color who have rushed big hugs to you i
Understand i love you and it’s not fair it’s not [ __ ] fair that you would ever choose to not rush a girl who is qualified probably better than half the roster because you don’t like this the tone of her skin like kick rocks i remember also when i was rushing like i would always
Immediately look for someone who was a person of color anyone anyone i was dying to know for me like subconsciously i think i was looking like are they gonna even consider me at this house like that’s how i felt during rest week it didn’t change the way i
Approached the house because i was going to treat everyone the same i was going to give my best because you just never know what goes on behind the scenes and you don’t want to make any assumptions but i was always like is there anyone here that’s not white blonde or brunette
Sometimes during my rush experience it was interesting because like if i got invited back some of them made an effort to put me with a minority i don’t know how to feel about that i think a lot of people of color who go through rush you you kind
Of do that like gays at first when they open the doors they start doing the chant it’s like white faces white faces white faces like that’s kind of the initial reaction for me so i don’t know if any of you can relate to that that rush predominantly white sororities but
Let me know in the comments because that was something i always did so basically at the end of every day the sororities get together they cut people who they want to cut and then what happens is the next morning the p m’s will get like an
Envelope or a card that tells them what houses they’ve been invited back to as you can imagine each day can be very emotional especially if these girls are not getting the houses that they wanted to get it’s it’s quite the theatrics i will say 2004 i’m going to grad school at the
University of alabama i’m an older student i don’t know anything about rush i decide to ride my bicycle to gorgas library and from where i live i’m going down sorority road i don’t know it’s midday girls everywhere screaming to mommy on the phone laying around crying acting fools and what do i think
There’s been another terrorist attack these girls this is their life and if they don’t get into the sorority that their mom or their grandma or their aunt was in these dorms are on suicide watch like this is serious business y’all i am not downplaying anyone’s experience when i say this but people
Make sororities their identity and you feel that during this week but there are some girls who have these expectations that this is it or there’s nothing and those are the ones who get their feelings hurt the most you can’t control everything when it comes to this even if
You have a legacy or like sister-in-house those girls can get cut too and it’s really sad when that happens but it isn’t the end of the world i think those girls who go in with an open mindset end up having a really great experience regardless now that
Like rush week is happening i’ve heard so many dope girls come out of the woodwork saying like i was blacklisted and by the way the term is blacklisted if you get dropped from every house for some specific reason that’s called blacklisting and it’s normally because someone specifically went and like said
Something to panhellenic or whatever about you if you had an incident in high school or something and and this is where it gets it still gets catty like rush is not fair all the time there are girls who are already in houses that take advantage of already having a house and
Will sabotage other girls experiences because of jealousy issues because of past mistakes these girls have made i remember people would make fun of me at parties and say that i got blacklisted from every sorority and oh my god it was so mortifying i had no idea why it
Happened a few months later i figured out what happened these two girls wrote a letter to panhell saying i was a bully in high school i didn’t know them in high school and it was because one of their ex-boyfriends had a crush on me so they completely rigged the system to make
Sure that i didn’t have that experience i personally think there needs to be a better way of doing that and a more extensive look at who you can blacklist because i’ve seen it happen a lot and it’s not fair there was a girl on tick tock who’s
Been going viral named michaela and i think she’s a great example of this i have not looked into the details on what specifically it was but i’ve seen rumors floating around about something that happened in high school and to me that’s enough of a stupid reason to say kick
Rocks because who cares what this girl did in high school she even admitted that she wasn’t the best in high school but people change people change and i think that everyone should be given an opportunity to at least rush and if they still have flawed character within the
House then they can still be dropped so speaking of michaela she was actually rushing at bama and i wanted to talk about bama rush specifically just for a second because bama rush is trending and that’s why everyone is like all about rush week right now hitting up netflix like yo
Drop the series because it is so interesting and i think it adds that all of them have like the most charming southern accents so it’s really entertaining to watch them go through rush and talk in their sweet little country accents um went for the basic platform sandals too um enjoy that
Little spin that was a little something special for y’all since bama rush is trending i wanted to give you guys a little context on them specifically because if y’all are going to trim them you know you need to know the tea about them okay as i’m sure you
Could guess it’s vama let’s address the elephant in the room no pun intended i know that’s their mascot but bama is so racist you guys so that’s why i find it hilarious out of all the schools to trend for rush week that they’re trending they only just implemented desegregation policies within their
Sororities like in 2013. bruh that was like yesterday please stop i want to talk about one specific incident because i remember hearing about it when i was in college i think i had just rushed so i was having like you know a pretty good experience and then i
Hear about the story of a girl at bama which i’m gonna leave her anonymous because that’s what she wanted then so i’m gonna leave that anonymous now but this girl was [ __ ] stellar when i tell you 4.3 gpa her dad was actually a senator ideal candidate everyone loves
Hers treating her like that she’s gonna get hella bids comes back second day she’s like dropped by pretty much everything and what it comes down to long story short was that the legacies and alum who were sending money to this specific house at bama they were basically threatening that they would
Stop sending money if they rushed a black girl for this instance specifically the sorority wasn’t the issue they wanted her bad a lot of houses did but then they all got these threats like hey you do this you’re not getting any money from us and then they got scared they felt like
Their arms were tied and so they didn’t know what to do so she got dropped from every house and when you look at all of her counterparts who have the same resumes if not less than hers they’re getting back every house they wanted and more so it was very clear
What was going on and within the houses you know there were some girls who were interviewed about it and they straight up said it they were just scared to be the first house to do it but the time is here like when is someone gonna rush a black girl and so after
That incident started to get a lot of national attention i’m talking like every news outlet was talking about this then that’s when the school and the school board decided to start doing something about it finally but since then now we’re seeing that alabama has recruited black girls by obligation or not
I don’t feel like getting into that part but the point is they are making changes and what we have seen is that now there have been black sorority presidents back in 2014 me and maybe like seven other black girls decided to go through rush a year after
We had been like on national news for sororities not being integrated bamabi and bama you know and uh shout out my friend kennedy she was the first one to open the doors for us and we went through rush and it was uh you know a whole lot of sea of rice
But then three of us three years later became president’s first black presidents of our sororities of like 400 white women shout out them this is big for alabama especially over predominantly white sororities because you know there were some legacies and alum who were turning their nose up like
Oh here we go you know they hated to see it so we love to see it okay but that said don’t think i’m giving bama their flowers they still have a lot of work to do and panhellenic as a whole has a lot of work to do because this [ __ ] is so
Segregated in my opinion it shouldn’t be this way you get two very different experiences going like with a divine nine sorority and going with one that’s predominantly white it makes it tough to choose like which experience you want to have especially if you go to a certain
School that doesn’t offer both of them it still puts people of color minorities in a tough situation to choose like what experience do i want to have and why are they so different and why are they so segregated you know what i’m saying it’s really a shitty thing for context though if you
Go back to when most of these sororities and fraternities were founded this is back in the 1700s and it was usually for the wealthiest white people at these institutions and then as other people were able to enroll and then when desegregation started to happen they kept these institutions really
White because it was a way to separate themselves and it’s actually a fact that it was still written in certain clauses that it was a white only fraternity or sorority or establishment whatever you want to call it until like the 60s or 70s it was still written in there and that’s just
The ones they could catch who knows if they all fix those clauses but that’s crazy that’s crazy i really hope that moving forward people can spot racism if they know it’s there and do more to do better staying silent in the midst of racism and bigotry it makes you
Just as bad sorry like nothing changes if you continue to just idly watch these things happen and we know that they do we know that they do especially behind closed doors i hope that we can do better in that sense but i will say i don’t expect that to be a quick change
Like bama is just now starting to make those changes but as a whole panolynic needs to make some changes they need to make this more urgent the behavior is outdated and it’s just nasty and disgusting and you have this continued tradition of it that’s just being passed down the line in some of
These houses and that’s just big weird to me that’s just big weird to my specific experience in a sorority i wanted to leave some time to talk just about that from my point of view because everyone has a different experience but mine was interesting in the sense that i had a
Couple experiences as some of you know i started out at the university of mizzou and i ended up rushing there i do think that my rush experience would have been different if i rushed at the university of arkansas for those of you that don’t know i transferred to arkansas my
Sophomore year and basically what happens is if you’re already in a sorority you can do something that’s just called affiliating so i was affiliated into my house there but i did not rush there my experience at mizzou was actually stellar like i loved my house
So much so to the point that i suicided and if you don’t know what that means i hate that term and i’m so sorry but that’s what they call it when you write down your preferences at the end of the day if you only write down one and you
Have multiple they call that suiciding i suicided on my last day because i did not give a [ __ ] if i was in a sorority or not i got the house that i wanted if i did that and did not write down other houses i wouldn’t have gotten a house if
That same house didn’t pick me too everyone was at my neck when i told like my teachers back home and everyone that wrote me a wreck i was like yeah i feel excited they were like what you don’t do that i was looking at the dollar signs i
Was like if i’m not in love with this i’m not gonna do it because it’s expensive in terms of my rush week experience also had the best possible experience i’m an extrovert i like to talk i’m literally talking to a camera right now nobody’s giving me any
Feedback right now i could talk to a wall so when i came in these doors the conversation was easy i only had a few girls that really seemed like i was a burden with them but i still kept the conversation going because that’s who i am and so i think my personality really
Shined through during the recruitment process because i like i said i had the attitude like i don’t need you but i want to meet you and i’m happy to meet you and i love talking to you like i was just open-minded every day during my recruitment process i got back like the
Maximum amount of houses i did get cut from some houses that i really wanted but at the end of the day i still had my favorite one so i wasn’t tripping as long as i had my favorite one i was gucci but it is like it kind of cuts you when
You think oh i thought that went well like they cut me you know it kind of is like a jab to your ego but it does not define you and you just have to remember that i was very fortunate especially as a black girl going through rush at a
Predominantly white school that this was my experience because i know that’s not the experience for everyone it could just be so intimidating when you don’t see anyone that looks like you and i’m not gonna lie i spent weeks months mentally preparing myself for that because i knew i knew that was
Gonna happen so i really just had to like hype myself up and say it does not matter that these people don’t look like you you still deserve to be here and you still deserve the experience so it was a lot of mental toughness that went into that now when i transferred schools the
Experience was very different like the vibe at mizzou with my house was it was [ __ ] lit like if i’m just being honest those girls are so great if you’re watching i still love you all so much um i had a great time with them and it was like a very relaxed house they
Had a great reputation but they weren’t like trying to be this picture-perfect image of anything and i think that’s why i really resonated with them because i didn’t feel any bit of perfect and i wasn’t trying to act like i was however when i transferred it was a completely
Different vibe not a bad vibe i was in a great house the house had just been renovated and these girls were amazing they’re top of the line really smart girls they’re the it girls they’re all beautiful like this was a house that a lot of people sought to be
In however these were more of the good girls who did have the picture perfect image versus the house that i actually rushed where they were like where is it tequila i’m just saying because i was at a much southern school if i’m being honest i did experience the microaggressions i
Could tell that a lot of them were just curious about who i was and all those things but didn’t always come off in the nicest way i really kept to myself more in this sorority it just took me a minute to find like my people you know
You just have to kind of find the ones that resonate with you no matter what your experience is if you do go through rush or if you plan to go through rush i first want to say to y’all for real take the pressure off of it first
Because at the end of the day you get to choose what your college experience is the house you get in yes it’s gonna impact it’s gonna influence the experience you have because you’re gonna have to be around these people a lot and if you don’t like them
That kind of sucks because you’re paying a lot of money but also you have a lot of obligations like you need to show up to this meeting you need to do this you need to do that so you’re going to be around these people for a very long time
So hopefully you do like them whatever house you get give it a chance and also remember that you are your own person you’re allowed to have friends outside of the house you’re allowed to do your own thing so don’t make that your personality because that’s just
Can i be real that’s just not cute like do other things you could be excited about your house but it’s not your identity and so many girls will do that as soon as possible they make it their identity you’re more than your sorority okay yes you are
Yes you are to any girls that have a negative experience maybe do not get the house that they want whatever the case may be please please do not let this deter you from having a fun college experience it’s okay to be sad it’s okay to be mad it’s okay to cry
But girlfriend get up dust your shoulders off and keep chugging along because you’re gonna be okay you can still go to parties it’s gonna be fine you’re still gonna make hell of friends you’re still gonna have a wonderful experience regardless i promise you but it’s up to you to decide if you’re gonna
Do that or not and if you’re someone who’s just like i don’t give a [ __ ] about sororities i’m just here to watch the video well thanks for sticking around and i hope this was like interesting to you about the process because it is an interesting thing to
Look at hey maybe netflix will give us that show because i think more of it needs to be shown but that being said i really hope to see more sororities making efforts to be more inclusive and just do better within the house and actually hold each other accountable for
Not being shitty people because we know what goes on behind closed doors and that [ __ ] is not cool anyways guys if this was interesting to you don’t forget to subscribe and i hope you learned something if you were curious about rush week anyways i’ll see you guys next week [Applause]
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