13’s Insecurities Easier than Ever to Manipulate

In the week leading up to rush, ‘13s insecurities surrounding getting into their top houses have reached a crescendo. Although mainly affecting girls, who essentially have no control over rush, almost no ’13s are immune from these feelings of anxiety. Upperclassmen have taken notice.

Josh Johnson ’11 explained his experiences with increased insecurity among ‘13s, “I just have to tell a girl that I ‘have a lot of friends in KDE’ and she immediately starts trying to impress me, layup city.”

Alex Nichols ’11 took this strategy a step farther, “I just tell girls that I have a list of ‘Cool ’13 Girls’ and a list of ‘Shitty ’13 Girls’ that I'm going to send to all my friends in sororities. Sometimes I have to add in ‘You know which list I want you to get on’ but usually knows what I'm getting after.”

Phi Delt blitzed out to the class of 2013 with the message, “Come hang out after we have tails with KDE!” Over 100 ’13 girls showed up; there were no tails with KDE, let’s not kid ourselves.

However, not all upperclassmen have had the same success when pursuing this strategy. Mark Lemke ’12 recalled his attempt to take advantage of the insecurity of a ’13, “I kept telling her that I had a lot of friends in Kappa and it was working like a charm. I decided to pull out the big guns to seal the deal and I dropped ‘My ex-girlfriend is a Tri-Delt rush chair.’ All of the sudden she freaked out. She started shouting things like ‘are you trying to ruin my life’ and ‘I cant believe I trusted you.’ I met this girl literally thirty minutes ago, no idea what happened.”

Christy Jacobs, the ’13 in question, sent a long blitz to the Dunyun assuring us that “Nothing happened with Mark, AT ALL” and adding, “I love Tri-Delt, can you print that?” 

Stanley Malone ’11 added that these insecurities will not end with rush, “Sure now I'm taking advantage of girl’s insecurity about getting into houses, but next week the girls who didn’t get into top houses will be looking for validation and all the girls who got into top house will still be looking for validation. It’s a never ending cycle.”

Male members of the class of 2013 have not been immune from this insecurity regarding rush. Members of fraternities have also taken advantage of this, blitzing out to rush lists with offers such as “play on [Fraternity]’s IM soccer team”, “need 1 for laundry now” or “I know it’s 1:30 on a Tuesday night, but come play pong.”

‘13s have responded en masse to these requests. Ryan McPherson ’13, who was chosen out of the 34 responses to play on a fraternity’s intramural soccer team after submitting a detailed account of his soccer experience, explained the roots of his insecurity, “The fraternity that I want to pledge (which he requested not be named in the event it would hurt him in rush) has been on probation for the last 2 weeks so I’ve been looking for creative ways to hang out, ordering extra Bobs at the hop, doing the occasional load of laundry, but I wouldn’t say I'm insecure at all. Some people think it’s sucking up, but I would say that it’s more like a pledge term tryout.”