Northwestern alumni asking their children and grandchildren how rush went this week might be surprised by how similar the modern rush experience sounds to their experience 30, 50 or even 80 years ago.

Kathy Chefas, Speech ’72, visited her daughter Carrie Chefas, a Weinberg senior, at Kappa Alpha Theta this past week to help with rush events and revisit her former house. Both agreed that while the campus surrounding the fraternity and sorority quads has changed over the years, the foundations of the recruitment process have not changed.

“The physical house is the same. The caliber of the women is the same,” Chefas, the alumna, said. “The reason for rush is to perpetuate membership – that’s the same.”

Fraternities existed as early as 1859, but their rush stems from the “class rush” system, where sophomores would haze freshmen in violent rituals. Today’s rush system seems tame by comparison, University Archivist Patrick Quinn said.

“It became a very violent phenomenon,” Quinn said. “The freshmen became all the more interested in visiting this upon the next class of freshmen when they became sophomores.”

By 1921 class rush reached a fevered pitch when freshman Leighton Mount disappeared during the hazing rituals, only to be found a year later south of campus beneath the Lake Street pier. The mystery became a national scandal and the university forced students to sign an anti-hazing pledge upon admission, leading to a system similar to today’s.

“The emphasis became more on individual fraternities trying to recruit members than the rivalries between the members of each class,” Quinn said.

The period from the building of the sorority quads in the 1920s to the changing values of the 1960s became the “zenith of the fraternities,” Quinn said. The only exception to this popularity came during World War II when the fraternity houses became Navy barracks and all available men were drafted.

The modern rush system of bids and pledges emerged during this period for both fraternities and sororities. The golden age for the Greek system came during the 1950s when membership reached record highs. Records show that in 1960 nearly 900 women participated in sorority rush, and the fraternities experienced similar success.

By this time, fraternity rush had developed into a system where houses would hold parties over the summer and invite students to luncheons, dinners and overnights during rush week at the beginning of the school year.

While the process is similar today, the Greek system’s dominance on the social scene made it much more attractive, said Paul Brown, a Phi Delta Theta member in the 1950s.

“It was very important to be in a fraternity to have any kind of a social life and be involved in any activities,” Brown said.

Deferring rush

One major difference remaining between rush then and now was that it began in Fall Quarter – a debate that emerged in the 1960s and that would span the next four decades.

Fraternities objected to the crusade against Fall Rush, and the administration rejected a recommendation in 1967 to defer rush to Winter Quarter because having freshmen eat in Greek houses during Fall Quarter eased a dining hall shortage.

Weinberg Prof. Emeritus Richard Leopold, who led the committee proposing deferral, said NU also wanted to handle donors cautiously.

“I have the impression that several of the higher people in the administration were reluctant because it would antagonize alumni who might contribute to the university,” Leopold said.

Many faculty members called for deferred rush, insisting that students were committing themselves to fraternities instead of forming their first loyalties to the university and academics, but they succeeded only for a year in 1970. Deferred rush was quickly abandoned because of confusion over how much contact sorority members could have with freshman before they rushed, Kathy Chefas said.

Membership drops

Membership levels in the Greek system remained high until 1969, when recruitment dropped significantly. In 1971, 313 men joined fraternities compared to 553 men a decade earlier, and numbers for women dropped similarly.

Reduced figures were partially the result of the counter-culture movements of the 1960s, but two other events may have also heralded the decrease: the advent of coed housing and the lowering of the drinking age in the 1970s.

When male students joined the women living on South Campus for the first time in 1969, the Greek monopoly on social interaction with members of the opposite sex ended.

Recruitment also was hurt when the State of Illinois lowered the drinking age for beer and wine. At Bobb Hall in the late 1970s, Wednesday night munchies would often include snack food, soft drinks, and a keg of beer, recalled Bill Tempelmeyer, director of the University Housing Administration from 1969 until 2001.

“When most of the college was of legal age, beer and wine were available in the residential halls and colleges,” Tempelmeyer said. “When the law changed, beer and wine in the residence halls dried right up, and then the number of students participating in rush probably increased.”

return to normalcy

Since the end of the 1970s, the number of students rushing increased along with the number of students living on campus, although numbers have never returned to their peak in the ’50s and early ’60s.

Demand for housing exceeded supply in the 1970s and the university implemented the Freshmen-in-Fraternities program, which freed up dormitories by allowing freshmen to live in houses where they pledged in the fall.

The program ended in the 1980s when 1835 Hinman and the residential colleges along Sheridan Road were built. By the 1990-91 school year, rush finally became deferred to Winter Quarter.

“The request to move rush never went away,” Tempelmeyer said. “The logistics for deferred rush were finally in place.”

Since rush was deferred in 1991, the rush process has remained constant, but the foundations of the Greek system have remained solid for most of the century, Quinn said.

Watching this year’s women participate in rush, Kathy Chefas said she could picture women from 1970 in the same hallways having similar conversations. Sitting nearby, Carrie Chefas listened to her mom tell stories about the past and realized that the principles behind rush haven’t changed.

“The same kind of qualities my mom was looking for in girls is the same thing we are looking for today, ” Carrie Chefas said. “You’re still looking for individuals who you wouldn’t mind brushing your teeth next to … people who you can relate to.”