Sigma Delta Tau’s Upsilon rush class.
@SDTMANHATTAN/COURTESY
By Grace Cardinal, Editor-in-Chief
Ready, set, rush! This past week, Manhattan College’s Greek life organizations geared up to welcome potential new members (PNMs) for their spring rushes.
The college is home to four Greek life chapters, including Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (DKE), Alpha Phi Delta fraternity (APD), Alpha Pi Phi sorority (APP) and Sigma Delta Tau sorority (SDT).
While only a week – or sometimes two – in duration, rush weeks can take months to plan.
John Packes, rush chair of DKE, explained to The Quadrangle the extensive planning involved in creating two weeks of events.
“It takes an extensive amount of planning, it’s not even just on my end,” Packes said. “I have to work with the social chair, the president and pretty much the entire E-Board (executive board) to make sure that the days we plan work. We have to get the rooms set up in Kelly at least two weeks in advance, we have to order t-shirts from a guy around a month in advance, and we have to get flyers up around campus. We have to communicate with the school [and] the head of student engagement.”
Coming into the new year, one organization is revamping its rush to include more surprises for PNMs.
Gabriella Celentano, vice president of membership recruitment for SDT, explained some changes that she’s made heading into this semester’s rush.
“I’ve kind of changed a lot… I took this from other schools, the way they do their Bid Day is that someone in the sorority has a sign with their [PNM] name on it,” Celentano said. “And then they [PNMs] run home to the girl with the sign with their name on it. So I’m doing that, it’s called Bid Day Buddies.”
Celentano also explained that this year, the Bid Day theme is going to be a surprise for PNMs, another change from years past.
While APP’s rush events finished up last week, Olivia Appel, recruitment chair and social chair for the sorority, reflected on the best parts of their spring rush.
“I think it was definitely just the excitement to see how people would react to different [events],” Appel said. “During our rush event, we have different tables with different activities. We just let everyone feel out which one they want to do. The one activity that did get the most hype, I will say, is the mason jar painting. Everyone seemed to love it.”
Frank Maro, president of APD, told The Quadrangle about his favorite rush tradition.
“At the end of every rush, we do an invite-only event, where people who we’re really close with we figure ‘hey, these guys are good people, we kind of want them around more’, and then we do this special event,” Maro said. “One year, we did paintball. It’s fun because we get the money to do it, so we might as well just go all out. Just have fun with your friends and have fun with the rest of the brothers too.”
Michael Riccardo, vice president of APD, talked about what his fraternity looks for in PNMs.
“Our biggest goal is getting people that we can vouch for,” Riccardo said. “Good people that are willing to put in the work when we do philanthropy events, more recruiting, it’s about the betterment of not only our fraternity, but campus as a whole…We just want to make sure that we’re picking the right people.”
Maro talked about the importance of working towards breaking the negative stigma surrounding Greek life in the US.
“In the United States, there’s a huge stigma about fraternities, that they’re bad,” Maro said. “At Manhattan College, I think we pride ourselves in having a very good group culture. Here, we don’t want to portray the same energy as other big fraternities at bigger schools…it’s not like what people think it is, how the stigma is around fraternities. It’s actually really great.”
No matter what Greek life organizations students might consider joining on campus, all of them agree that Manhattan College’s Greek life brings a positive, welcoming atmosphere to campus.
Packes concluded by encouraging students to rush Greek life at MC because it provides a supportive environment with friends all around, all the time.
“I mean, we go to a small school and there’s not a lot that goes on, just in general at school and nearby, and it gives people something to do any day of the week,” Packes said. “Whether you want to go grab food…want to watch basketball games, football games – it just gives you stuff to do and people to help you out when you need them.”
Celentano encourages anyone who’s interested to put themselves out there and attend rush events, even if they’re not sure about joining.
“If they don’t like it, if they don’t vibe with it, it’s not like a signed contract through all three days of rush,” Celentano said. “Obviously, if you get sick, if you don’t want to go, if you just aren’t into it, you are more than welcome to come on day [one] and put yourself out there and not show up again, and that is totally fine.”