University of Virginia Library

Rush Reasoning

The rush schedule says that "rush" began
last weekend, but, as usual, the functions of
the first rush weekend served to do little more
than to expose the "green" first-year men to
the excesses — that is, the Bacchanalian
aspects — of "ripe" fraternity life at the
University. Serious, get-down-to-business rush
will not begin, for the most part, until this
weekend. And what a remarkable
phenomenon that is, every year.

For the fraternity men, it is a wholesale
effort at selling themselves and their
"programs," which are invariably cleverly
constructed for maximum effect just for the
occasion, and it is a time of distracting
anxiety as each successive function rolls
around. It is also a time when best friends in
different houses become cool and suspicious
in their contacts with each other, only to
become best friends again after it's all over.

For the rushees, it is a totally new
experience, one which tends to leave the egos
of those who succeed hopelessly inflated and
of those who fail painfully deflated. Many will
be infatuated with it all as it proceeds; others
will be sadly disillusioned with their
generation as they encounter this aspect of it.
Whatever the case, rush is a very complex and
intricate institution, one of which no one
would dare presume to know all the ins and
outs. Rather than attempt to discuss all those
ins and outs we will confine our discussion
here to two aspects which should very
definitely be "outs," but which usually
become more and more common as serious
rush gets more and more serious toward bid
day.

The odiousness of dirty rush, one would
think, should be immediately apparent to
everyone, fraternity men and rushees alike, in
that it is called "dirty" rush. And yet every
year there are a number of fraternities which
resort to dirty rush, and, as a result, a number
of first-year men who fall for it. No one can
blame those first-year men for falling for it,
though, for not only is it very ego-inflating for
someone to know that a fraternity will risk
the penalties involved just to try to get him,
but also, and probably more important, his
natural reaction is that the fraternity will
resent it if he resists. Those responses are
certainly understandable, but what the
first-year men don't know is that there are
much greater implications of dirty rush than
those.

The most obvious reason to avoid dirty
rush is that it is specifically prohibited by the
IFC and that it can result in severe penalties.
For example, we have heard of fines of
hundreds of dollars to houses just for giving
rushees rides; when the infractions get more
serious, the fines go up and, most important
to the first-year men, the rushees involved are
prohibited from pledging the house which
dirty rushed them until second semester, or,
in some cases, the rushees are not allowed to
pledge any house until second semester and
they may not pledge the house involved until
their second year. Those penalties should
speak for themselves.

But there are other aspects of dirty rush
which should be of greater consideration to
rushees as they go about choosing their
fraternities. Dirty rush is often a sign of a
weak house. A house which feels it has to
dirty rush to get the pledges it wants is one
which is not sure enough of its own strength
to take a chance on getting them through the
proper methods. A rushee would do well to
evaluate carefully the strength of a house
which is so uncertain of its own strength.
Further, a house which dirty rushes is a house
which is irresponsible in its regard for rules set
up by its own representatives; it is a house
which subscribes to those rules on paper but
breaks them in fact; it is a house whose
brothers readily betray their friends in more
responsible houses who conscientiously abide
by the rules trusting that others will do
likewise. A rushee would do well to evaluate
carefully the desirability of a house which has
so little character.

There is one other aspect of responding to
dirty rush which seldom, if ever, occurs to
rushees. If someone is rushing two houses
seriously and responds to dirty rush from one
of them, his chances at the other house are
naturally impaired if it should find out about
it (and it very often does — there are many
more rush violations of which other houses
are aware than get reported). No house enjoys
finding out that a rushee has little enough
respect for it to respond to dirty rush from its
rival; or, on the other hand, the natural
assumption of a house which finds out that a
rushee is responding to dirty rush from
another house is that the rushee prefers the
other house.

Dirty rush seldom achieves anything which
cannot be achieved within the rules; further, it
can result in severe penalties and it creates a
lot of resentment and animosity. A good
house can only respect and admire a rushee
who is sure enough of himself not to respond
to dirty rush.

Our second objectionable aspect of
get-down-to-business rush is committing to
pledge prior to bid day. It has many things in
common with dirty rush. A rushee is naturally
flattered when a house asks him to become a
brother long before (he thinks) it asks anyone
else. He naturally has a hard time saying no
lest he offend the fraternity involved. That is
just the way the fraternity wants him to feel.
A fraternity which tries to commit a pledge
long before bid day is very often a fraternity
which is scared he will see another house and
get to like it better. By committing him,
however, it makes it very difficult for him to
renege if he should find a house he likes
better. A rushee would do well to evaluate the
strength of a house so uncertain of its ability
to rush successfully against other houses.
Also, a rushee who commits early and stops
rushing elsewhere loses out on a lot of the
benefits of rushing in a more normal pattern
and loses the opportunity to meet a lot of
good friends in other houses; further, he
always runs the risk of being balled at the last
minute at the house to which he is committed
— that does happen.

Of course many houses try to commit
rushees early but secretly just so they can help
out with the rush program. We know of
several instances in which a rushee kept
rushing one house just to try to attract other
rushees to the house to which he was
committed, but in many of those instances he
was discovered and won himself a houseful of
permanent enemies. Even more odious than
"rushing" one house to pirate its rushees for
another is the habit of some of the weak
houses of committing rushees secretly and
having them continue to rush other houses
just so the weak house can bump the stronger
house on bid day. Happily, in most cases the
stronger house finds out what's up in time to
boot the rushee resoundingly out the door for
good.

What it all comes down to is this: rush, as
prescribed by the rules, with all its phases
(meals, parties, smokers, etc.) is more than
adequate for fulfilling the purpose for which
it is designed. Those who play by the rules
and by accepted standards invariably get more
out of rush than those who break the rules or
commit early. It is those who are unsure of
themselves that depart from the depart from
the accepted and prescribed pattern of rush;
happily there are plenty of weak houses for
such weak rushees, and there are plenty of
weak rushees to fill such weak houses. And
that's nice, for they certainly deserve each
other.