Tufts, the elephant-themed school best known for its humorous reference to its students as "Jumbos" and its paper as the "Pachyderm," also operates a bustling little greek system, and its rush is on this week. The Tufts Daily sent out a reporter to look at rush activities and gather some thoughts of the potential recruits. Unlike at many schools, rush for both fraternities and sororities comprises only informal socials: none of the lines to rotate through sorority cocktail hours occurring at other schools. Representatives of both Chi Omega and Sigma Phi Epsilon underscored the laid-back approach to recruitment, the Sig Ep president explaining that "it's a great opportunity for students to see that these alleged 'rowdy frat brothers' are really just the students that sit next to them in class. . . . It's a casual atmosphere."
Tufts students were interested, though some a tad bashful about admitting it. A freshman explained he found fraternities attractive because they embodied "the camaraderie of a sports team without the athletic ability"; he asked to be identified rather mysteriously only as "Benjamin K.," perhaps fearing reprisals from fraternities with the camaraderie of a lynch mob and the athletic ability to back it up.
The article is unfortunately saddled with a rote recital of the standard counterpoints: the belief that "that fraternities create unnecessary divisions among students"; "the seemingly ubiquitous fear of hazing" (which the reporter avers to be "not always unfounded"); and rumors of "secret illicit camaraderie-building activities," perhaps deriving from an recent but conspicuously unspecified violation by sorority Alpha Phi. But under all the boilerplate disclaimer, the article reads as a remarkably unjaded slice of greek life at a small New England liberal arts college.
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