Page 75 - 1926 February - To Dragma

238 TO DRAGMA OF ALPHA OMICRON PI

A t our tea the only entertainment offered was the singing of a group G f
fraternity songs in front of the fire. Here we endeavored to show the
rushees first, what a wonderful feeling it is to be a fraternity woinal
and secondly, with what strong bonds our particular fraternity is held
together. A great deal of joy and inspiration can be gotten by the f l a _
ternity girls Irom a large and well-sung repertoire of songs, and a great
deal of splendid, fine, sentiment aroused in the freshman. Each nuhee
is presented with a Jacqueminot rose to enjoy after the tea.

Later in the week came our "'pirate" party. The girls were requested
to come in costume, and great was the ingenuity we discovered in our
embryonic AOPis. We had several five-minute entertainments inter-
spersed in an evening of dancing, of eating pretzels and drinking cider.
We had skits which amused, and skits which worked on their emotions'
but, primarily, it was just a good fun party.

The invitations to these first two .parties had to be sent at the same
time. For the last party, therefore, we did a great deal of cutting down
on the list of girls we were rushing. The last party was a six-hour
party, while the other two had been two-hour parties. This final party
was given at the home of another of the actives. We transformed the
large living-room into a cabaret hall with small tables in two semi-circles.
The room was illuminated by red candles, and at each freshman's place
was a red and white dog with big, round, flat feet, big ears, and gro-
tesquely appealing face embroidered in black. A regular dinner was
served and in between each course was a clever little bit of five-minute
cabaret production. This took up the first two hours, and while the
girls wandered out into another room, the cabaret room was quickly
transformed into a living-room with a huge blazing fire around which
we gathered. Now had come the time to put fun aside f o r a bit and
enjoy some real AGTI thril's. We sang, this time introducing some
new ones. As a solo number, the "Red Rose" song from "Monsieur Beau-
caire," transformed into an A O I I song, was verv beautiful and effec-
tive. We concluded the evening with "Alpha Omicron P i " and a good-
night song which we have adopted for such occasions.

A l l the work, all the worry, of the season was more than amply
rewarded on Nov. 14, when we pledged thirteen girls. May I introduce:
Margaret Caverly of Norwood, Mass., Virginia Drury of Winthrop,
Mass., Lucile Gardner of Littleton, Mass., Constance Handy of Tufts
College, Mass., Aletha H i l l of Walpole, Mass., Kathryn Maclnerny of
Adams, Mass., Maria McLellan of New York City, Louise Moore of
Foxboro, Mass., Gyneth Prue of Foxboro, Mass., Irene Rachdorf of
North Adams, Mass. (graduate student—Smith '25), Jeanne Relyea of
West Hartford. Conn., Portia Russell of Newton, Mass., and Eleanor
Sanborn of Sharon, Mass.

Our rushing reactions have been varied. We feel more than satis-
fied with actual results. We cannot decide whether or not we've accom-
plished much by the preferential bidding system, but the tendency is
toward a feeling that, taking into consideration the fact that we have
only one season to judge by, it will prove to be much more satisfactory
than the former system. Toward rushing in general, there is a feeling
throughout college that something should be done to break up the atti-
tude during rushing which we more or less unconsciously assume, namely,
the endeavor on the part of the fraternity girl to impress the freshman,
rather than that the freshman be impressed by the fraternity groups. I
am wondering i f other chapters have met with these same difficulties and,
if so. how they coped with them. Our Panhellenic will urge next year
less elaborate parties. There is also strong reason to suspect that second
semester bidding w i l l be initiated next year in an attempt to relieve the
stress and strain which may be due to the present shorter period of rush-