#Tri sigma letters how to#

They will learn to drink and how to deal with drunk men.

Now they’re dancing on the lawns of their new houses in which they’ll practice making expert small talk, organizing charity fundraisers, throwing large parties, and rocking a nude lip. They’ve been cut by other sororities: they’ve cried they’ve called home they’ve thought of ditching the whole show. They’ve cut some sororities: rush or “New Member Recruitment,” as the grown folks want everyone to call it, is a weeklong process of elimination. They’ve withstood a week of talking about their hometowns, their high schools, their hobbies, their pets, and where they got those great shoes: no religion, no politics, no boyfriends. Barts tan who would undoubtedly deduct points for poor bladder management. These young women have survived days of walking from columned sorority house to columned sorority house in the sodden August heat, days of standing on sidewalks reapplying melted mascara, slipping on their party shoes (smart girls travel in flip-flops and carry their heels in a bag), waiting for the tall white front doors to burst open revealing yet another singing, clapping, beckoning stack of girls: “Try, try Tri-Delta! Try, try Tri-Delta!” or “Kappa! Kappa Kappa Gamma! I’m so happy that I am a Kappa! Kappa Kappa Gamma!” or “I wanna go A D Pi! Boom boom! I wanna wear blue and white! Boom boom!” They’ve endured a week of smiling till their faces ached, a week of sipping ice water at Ice Water Teas-the first round of parties in which they visit every sorority house-careful not to drink too much lest they get so desperate to pee they’re forced to ask directions to the ladies’ room from some high-toned sister with diamond studs and a St. Five minutes ago they’d lined up in Bryant-Denny Stadium, ripping open envelopes with their invitations to pledge Kappa or Chi O or Phi Mu or Tri-Delt or one of fourteen other mostly white, mostly affluent, mostly Christian societies of girls with every reason to expect they’ll run the world, or at least their corner of it. The sound is less a squeal than a soprano roar, high and triumphant, louder and louder as they round the corner, a delirium of girls in shorts and sneakers, cantering behind sisters bearing huge cut-out Greek letters. We all hear them, nearly two thousand young women making a joyful noise and heading this way in a ritual officially known as “Bid Day,” but called “Squeal Day” by pretty much everyone. One of the bros says, “All right, all right. Congeries of mothers and daddies mill about behind metal barricades along Sorority Row. The grocery store often sells out of red ones.

Raternity bros in polos, Tevas, and Crimson Tide ball caps stand in the street clutching long-stemmed roses: mostly red, but some pink and yellow, too.