If you re-watch Real World Boston you will see me. 
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I will confess to formally being nicknamed Puck having appeared in Real World SF😀
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I’m fascinated by the whole thing and plan to watch, just as I watched some of the TikTok Bama rush stuff for the past couple of years. I’m interested in pop culture and really curious about people who are “joiners” in general, whether it’s sports teams, clubs, Greek life, etc. I’m not so much of a joiner so it’s honestly really interesting to me 
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I was not in a sorority, although when I was at CU in the late 80s I somehow ended up in the traditionally Greek dorm filled for the most part with kids from a suburban Denver who seemed to know this factoid in advance. The firsthand view was very interesting. It didn’t make me want to join, but I liked learning about the subculture and rules of it all. I had Greek and non-Greek friends. It was all fine.
Neither of my kiddos is in a frat, but I have one who will likely rush next fall. He’s the lone extrovert in a family of introverts, so I get it for him. Of course I want him to be safe and surround himself with good, decent kids, but I suspect that he can find those people within a fraternity, even if it wouldn’t be my choice. He can also find kids who aren’t great who are not in frats, so I’m trying to be objective.
I’m open to it if my ds feels it’s for him.
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I’d say there were more introverts in my sorority (also at CU) than extroverts. We had a lot of engineers (at a time when there were few women engineers) looking for a place to relax, not go-go-go.
To build strong leaders, you also need to have a few followers and many were happy to take on the follower role. I did a lot of the grunt work myself, building the floats rather than designing them, collecting money for the Red Cross door to door because an alum asked for that help, cleaning up.
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My daughter attended rush with a friend, just to be supportive. Then D got an invitation to join a sorority while the friend didn’t. Oops. D turned it down.
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You’ve made this way too easy. But I’ll avoid the very easy joke and instead say that it’s better than being nicknamed Snot Rocket. 
Same here! I didn’t even really know what a sorority was until I went to W&L. I like my sorority fine (it was before there were sorority houses) but it was hardly integral to my life. My husband dropped out of his frat at W&L his Junior year after he moved out of the house.
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I adored CU. Did you live in Sewell Hall?! It was definitely culture shock for me in the dining hall with all of sweatshirts with the Greek letters…
I imagine that if I had rushed, I probably would have found a group of people I connected with, but I was unschooled before I arrived. I was an Art major and found my people through my classes.
That would certainly be a lot less expensive! I think both my D’s had one t-shirt day, the rest dresses, with the dressiest day being on pref day. Bid day is always themed t-shirts.
Someone mentioned “Greek Letters” - it’s been interesting to see the differences, campus to campus on whether they wear Greek letters. We wore them almost 24/7 at my college (1980’s). No one wore them at my older daughter’s college - I bought her a sweatshirt with small Greek letters over the heart and she never wore it. At my younger daughter’s college, they wear shirts that have the name written out, like “Kappa” or Tri Delt" but rarely do they wear what I now think must be classified as the “old school” Greek letter shirts. Do they wear these anywhere anymore?
Black Letters White Trim Greek Lettered Stitched Shirt - Etsy
It was a doc in the 1970s. You have to go further back. Not on MTV. MTV adapted it to the series. I’m not here to argue with people about television history, but your statement is factually incorrect.
I imagine Preference is still dressy, but by then they should be done judging the PNM just by their clothing.
I think keeping track of 2200 PNM who are all wearing the same t-shirt would be difficult. “the one with the pony tail” just doesn’t cut it.
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Actually, it’s not. The Real World was never a documentary. Claiming it to be a documentary because it was adapted from an unrelated work is akin to calling West Side Story a Latin lyric poem, since Romeo & Juliet was adapted from Metamorphoses.
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I rushed at Alabama in the very early 1990s (as I mentioned, I was there and involved enough in Student activities to know many of the people referenced in the Esquire article.) I had attended high school in Dallas, and my mom had been in a sorority at a big midwestern flagship, so I had a vague idea of what was going on, but I basically knew nothing. I knew one person at Bama, and he was very, very far from being in a fraternity. This was clearly pre-internet, so I didn’t know about Old Row and New Row, I didn’t have any idea of how the sororities were ranked, and I didn’t have any clue about how to choose sororities. In retrospect, it is a miracle I got into my sorority which was lower ranked and kind of academic at the time (these things change a lot.)
They sent a dress code: kind of dressy day one (all houses), medium dressy day for 12 party day, pretty dressy for 6 party, and for serious night very, very dressy. (Frankly, so many of the outfits I see in the NYT articles about this seem too casual and ugly to me, but I am old.)
But here is the thing- Bama rush was HUGE even then, nationally known had I known the right people. I had no idea, and so: MY MOTHER SEWED ALL MY OUTFITS. That’s right. From patterns.
And no, there was probably no time in history, and certainly not in the early 1990s, when this was normal at Bama Rush. 
They were beautiful dresses that I wore for years, but still.
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There’s a doc in the 1970s it was based on. I can’t remember the name but I saw part of it in a film class once. Years later, execs liked the idea and adapted it into the early form, which is what the later shows are based on. It’s okay- my point has been lost in all of this.
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I’m on an old episode of MTV’s TRL! Cheers!
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According to wikipedia:
The Real World was inspired by the 1973 PBS documentary series An American Family . It focuses on the lives of a group of strangers who audition to live together in a house for several months, as cameras record their interpersonal relationships.
Inspired is very different than adapted. The description is of the Real World, not An American Family. American Family filmed the day to day lives of a single family in their own home. It was almost two decades before The Real World.
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Yes, @CTCape , the Dirty Rush!
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But are they all that way? Some are a lot closer to reality IMO. Take the Last Chance U series for example. Not a lot of play acting there.
Why don’t we watch the docu-reality and then come back and assess. If you really think about it, there is no point in taking a hard stance on this until you’ve seen the show.
It may be that this show is another RHONJ, where you can an almost hear the director say “aaaaaaand cue the drama!” Or, it may be more like Last Chance U. Would I expect a bunch of sorority girls at Alabama to play up to the camera? Sure. But it’s an intellectual leap of some distance to assume that they’re play acting and that what they portray is exaggerated to such a point that it distorts reality, and therefore dismiss it out of hand before watching.
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