Rush problems

Rush is finally over and I for one am ecstatic about this.

I absolutely love my club and everything it stands for. I love meeting all the new rushees and helping them find the club that will suit them best. But rush can also be one of the most stressful times of the semester if you let it.

Club members are busied with preparing for new members and trying to get to know everyone; rushees are rushing – no pun intended – to  make it to every event and worrying about whether or not they will get in their first-choice club; teachers are tired of receiving last-minute work from students because we stay up until ungodly hours doing poorly thought-out work when we finally get home from rush events.

The stress and the lack of time we all experience during rush make the process significantly less fun. Not to mention how it divides the clubs and pits us against each other. I’ve never heard more trash-talking between clubs than during rush. Each club has the discussion about trying to stay positive about other clubs during rush, and especially when around rushees, but let’s face it: when it’s between rival clubs this doesn’t last past the first week, or even the first several days.

When rush was first beginning, I ordered a tank from a club other than my own because I thought it was a cute shirt and I really couldn’t care less about wearing a different club’s shirt. Within minutes of ordering it I was hounded by other people with questions like, “Why would you wear a shirt from that club?” and, “Are you seriously going to wear that on campus?”

How immature is that?

The point of social clubs on campus isn’t to turn us on each other; it’s to build relationships with our brothers and sisters in Christ on campus through common bonds. No, every club is not the same; each club is vastly different in many ways and that’s why we have so many options of clubs we can rush

We don’t pick out students in particular majors and trash-talk them constantly. How is that different than a club? Majors are probably a more similar group of people than club in terms of goals and personality. I don’t know anyone, myself included, who isn’t guilty of this.

Competition between us has made the entire rush process something many people dread rather than look forward to. This should be one of the most fun and exciting times during college where we find a group we feel welcome in, that will make us better and will be full of adventure and new friendships we won’t find anywhere else.

Maybe instead of trying to win over the rushees based on the faces we put on during rush we should focus on something positive. Instead of letting them be terrified about whether or not they will get into their first-choice club, we should focus on being better clubs and drawing in the members that will actually make us better.

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