In skirts barely skimming their thighs, with their hearts in their throats, 1,500 freshmen girls gathered at the University of Colorado Boulder’s main quad Monday to anxiously await their sorority fate.
At exactly 5:30pm, phones in hand, they ripped into their envelopes containing their bids. Some leapt. Most shrieked.
Hugging, crying, and sprinting uphill toward Boulder’s nine sorority houses, the stampede carried them past balloon arches, food trucks, and bouncy castles.
Their fruity perfumes wafted as they passed.
The swarm caused at least two recruits to trip over each other and one to wipe out, twisting her ankle and skinning her knee on the ground.
‘I’m okay, girl. I’m okay,’ she told a new sorority sister who sought to clean her leg and wipe her tears. ‘You go. Y’all run home without me.’
‘Running home’ is a decades-old Greek life tradition and recruitment ritual that has gone viral in recent years thanks to TikTok.
Sororities at the University of Alabama drew national attention in 2021 after sharing clips of their competitive and often cringeworthy rush and recruitment process, ultimately turning ‘RushTok’ into a global spectacle and punchline.
The posts triggered a viral wave of tell-all videos making wannabe sorority girls look like shallow, vain young women who are more interested in material items and social climbing than sisterhood, and in sipping cocktails than studying.
About 1,500 sorority hopefuls packed onto the University of Colorado Boulder’s main quad Monday waiting for what many hoped would be their defining moment in college
A group of girls who rushed Pi Beta Phi are seen embracing and jumping for joy upon receiving a bid to their sorority of choice
The energy and excitement was just as high at Alpha Chi Omega, where one girl was seen doing cartwheels on the lawn
Concerned that the ‘RushTok’ videos – and the popular reality shows and documentaries they subsequently inspired – have sullied their reputations, many sororities and colleges are cracking down on oversharing, Daily Mail has learned.
Some have even imposed new policies limiting social media posts about Greek life and shielding members and recruits from news reporters with heightened interest in rush week.
Students themselves have become wary that at any point in the recruitment process, they could get a dreaded call informing them that a sorority has dropped them from consideration for babbling to reporters or oversharing on TikTok.
We heard little other than ‘No comment,’ ‘I can’t talk’ or ‘Go away’ when asking more dozens of happy recruits about their rush experiences.
Their silence was as uniform as their short shorts, crop tops and belly tanks, straightened hair with blond highlights, gelled nails and spray tans.
Although most in Monday’s Bid Day throngs ignored our presence, one mean girl at Alpha Chi Omega tried to shove our photographer and his camera off a sidewalk where dozens of her sorority sisters were celebrating.
Across the street, a fiercely protective upperclasswoman in Delta Gamma told us we weren’t allowed at an intersection where that house’s Bid Day party had spilled onto the street.
‘Don’t even think about talking to our girls,’ she warned us.
Bid in hand, one recruit is seen charging uphill towards her new sorority sisters as other accepted members scream and celebrate around her
‘Running home’ is a decades-old Greek life tradition during bid day, that captured national attention in 2021 when cringeworthy videos of the process at the University of Alabama went viral
One successful recruit for Delta Gamma is seen beaming as she poses with an anchor, the sorority’s official symbol
A few blocks away, a Kappa Kappa Gamma sister who identified herself as a journalism major implored that we ‘keep this day positive.’
We agreed, saying we had come to learn how the 12-day recruitment process went for the lucky recruits and what, specifically, about the prospect of sorority life inspired such hoopla among them.
‘Please don’t point your cameras at our house. This is a very personal, private day for these girls,’ she said as the recruits danced on the front lawn, took selfies and posed for glamour shots by a photographer working for the sorority.
As private parties go, those on Bid Day celebrations were strikingly public.
‘Wow, they’re culty,’ Clay Harlamert, a junior from Massachusetts, said of the crowd he observed from a nearby stoop as if commenting on an anthropological case study.
‘They act like they’re on camera being watched all the time,’ added Nathan Hunt, a junior from Texas. ‘It’s sort of like being at a zoo and looking at all the wildlife.’
‘Except that all the animals look exactly the same and are wearing the same thing,’ quipped Jovan Downs, a freshman from Atlanta, who came to CU to escape the sorority scene.
A CU spokesperson said Tuesday the university has no gag order limiting speech among students, but that some have expressed ‘discomfort with the presence of unexpected media cameras and journalists at sorority houses.
Tears, hugs, and joyful shrieks erupted on the quad as hopeful recruits opened their envelopes and learned their fate
One overjoyed freshman sprints uphill after receiving her golden ticket to Greek life
New members were quick to pose for photos with their new sisters, capturing their first steps into sorority life
It is the university’s job, Deborah Méndez-Wilson said, ‘to protect the privacy of our students as they go through the sorority recruitment process.’
Staffers from CU’s Fraternity & Sorority Life Department took that job seriously Monday as they thwarted Daily Mail’s attempts to interview ‘PNMs’ — Greek-life lingo for ‘potential new members’ — about the recruitment process.
One administrator told us that CU seeks to protect students more from their own heightened emotions around the rush process and their bombast on social media in general than from what journalists are likely to write about them.
‘Look, these young women are amped up in their first weeks on campus eager to stand out, expand their social media following or show their friends back home what a blast they’re having on campus,’ the administrator told us.
‘We’ve taken measures to try to keep them from embarrassing themselves and each other in ways that could affect their whole lives.’
Although Greek participation at CU is up 30% since 2023, it is markedly less dominant at CU and at other Western schools than on the East Coast and especially the South.
Less than 13% of CU’s undergraduates belong to sororities or fraternities compared to 36% at the University of Alabama, which has the largest percentage of any school in the U.S.
It was at ‘Bama in 2021 where young women started chronicling their attempts to join sororities on social media.
They all look exactly the same and are wearing the same thing, one freshman at UC Boulder quipped
Upperclasswomen in hi-vis pink vests were tasked with consoling other students who were not accepted to a sorority
Those posts, as well as documentaries and a reality show about the #BamaRush exposed a darker side of the rush experience that includes families paying consultants up to $10,000 to coach their high schoolers on conversation prep, wardrobe and make-up tips to help them win spots in their preferred sororities.
Copycat RushTok’s videos about other schools also revealed what can be the hyper-sexualized nature of Greek life and overuse of drugs and alcohol in some sororities.
Some videos exposed the high costs of annual dues, which can exceed $10,000 for new members and more than $20,000 for housed members at certain schools.
Others detailed the pressures some sorority girls feel to shell out for designer clothes and pricey vacations to keep up with their sisters.
Creators of those videos said the quiet part out loud: that acceptance to some sororities hinges less on young women’s common goals and shared values, than on their looks, money and status.
Alabama student influencer Kylan Darnell, who has racked up 1.3 million TikTok followers as the ‘Queen of ‘Bama Rush,’ claims to have faced so much online and criticism for her sorority girl personae that — gasp— she had to step back from senior year recruiting responsibilities at her beloved Zeta Tau Alpha sorority last month.
‘I’m in a mental health spot where I’ve been struggling,’ she acknowledged in a post that sent her fangirls into a tailspin until she bounced back days after.
Cameron Hardt, an Alpha Chi Omega member, defends the hype around Bid Day, likening it to ‘Christmas Day for all of us.’
The University of Alabama’s infamous sorority recruitment process became a viral sensation in recent years after dozens of hopeful ‘sisters’ flooded social media with videos documenting their rush experiences as part of the #BamaRush trend
But the trend also now led to ex-members of Greek life to come forward with details of the dark side of rush #BamaRush on social media
She also defends CU’s sorority culture as far more grounded in friendship, leadership, and philanthropic interests than social media clips about other schools might lead viewers to assume.
‘I looked for my best friends at my sorority, not someone I wanted to pose with for Instagram,’ she said, noting that two years after graduation, she still lives with her sorority sisters.
About 390 CU students didn’t get bids from sororities on Monday — a plight known in Greek circles as ‘being dropped.’
Among them was Emma — her middle name — who declined sharing her full name out of ‘abject humiliation.’
She dined at a Chipotle off-campus on Monday to avoid people in the dining hall asking why she wasn’t celebrating her sorority bid. And she spent much of Tuesday on Facetime with her dad, who tried convincing her not to drop out her third week at college ‘because of a bunch of sorority b**ches in too-tight hot pants.’
‘I guess he’s right,’ she acknowledged. ‘So I’m taking up mountain biking, instead.’
