Each fall a new fashion supplements the Abercrombie & Fitch jeans and Louis Vuitton bags that dot Northwestern’s Evanston Campus. Colorful fraternity and sorority recruitment T-shirts have become this quarter’s couture, and Greeks are turning into walking billboards for their chapters.
“Having rush shirts promotes Greek life to freshmen, and it also promotes morale within your own organization,” said Weinberg junior and Alpha Chi Omega member Emily Peck. “We like to wear (our rush shirts) whenever we can.”
Alpha Chi’s bright blue shirts have a picture of the Klondike polar bear on the front, with the phrase, “What would you do for an Alpha Chi?” on the back.
A play on a popular advertisement is a common theme for recruitment T-shirts. Alex Kemmler, a Weinberg sophomore who designed shirts for Lambda Chi Alpha, used the Sprite logo as a template for his fraternity’s shirt design.
“Usually when I come up with shirt ideas, I don’t try to come up with anything original because it’s much easier to rip off of someone else’s design and make it look good,” Kemmler said.
Instead of the catch phrase “enjoy SPRITE,” the front of Lambda Chi’s shirt says, “Rush Lambda Chi.” The back of the shirt reads “Obey this Shirt” instead of Sprite’s “Obey Your Thirst.”
Some shirts use their chapter’s Greek letters to make their own catchphrases. Gamma Phi Beta’s shirts combine the first two letters of “Beta” with an adjective that can describe the sorority’s members. The phrases on the shirt read: “Gamma Phi Be sweet; Gamma Phi Be crazy; Gamma Phi Be real.”
This year’s shirts may be sassy, but Interfraternity Council president and Weinberg senior Mitch Holzrichter said he hasn’t seen any that contain crude messages the ones that got some fraternities in trouble last year.
Chi Psi and Phi Delta Theta’s shirts were recalled last fall and new ones were made after campus women’s groups said they were offensive. This year, both fraternities have safe catchphrases.
Phi Delt’s shirt reads “Rush Phi Delt — We’re like Scott Skiles in NBA Jams tournament edition” on the front with “exactly” on the back. Phi Delt member Samir Malviya said the fraternity was looking for a confused, double-take reaction when they designed the shirts.
“We all got a kick out of this shirt,” said the Weinberg sophomore. “(The shirt’s design) had everything to do with it being really random.”
Other fraternities have completely shied away from controversial messages and instead sport classic designs.
The Pi Kappa Alpha rush shirt has the fraternity’s letters, “PKA,” on the front, and the fraternity shield on the back.
“We went for the classic look this year,” said Brandon Conrad, Pike president and Weinberg junior. “We decided to be safe because the IFC and Women’s Coalition are being really strict and we didn’t want to offend them.”
Reach Julia Neyman at [email protected].
