The Good Old Days
The students of the college roughly fell into ranks and files on a sunny, bright April day. The frats and sororities were nearly finished with their rush events, marking the end of some intense discomfort. And the comfort level of rush corresponded directly (though perhaps unintentionally) with the New England weather cycle. There were the typical foot-in-the-door events—parties, mixers, and real orgies of fun—that resembled ancient harvest time festivals. A total abandonment of care to prepare the spirit for the harsh winter forthcoming. Then midterms would mount; “In a word, ‘rush’ means recruitment.” Bids come like early Christmas presents, and as the pledge period begins in the cold winter months, many a pledge finds himself swaddled—quite literally, toga party?—like a baby Jesus or Moses hoping to persist to the promised land of the Greeks. Unspeakable tasks, humiliating requests and downright Brechtian performances: all are solicited with expectation and brotherly malice starting with the onset of winter and hailing down through its subzero nadir (which incidentally is the worse period for the pledges); they finish finally as the snow melts and the flotsam is scrubbed clean off the sidewalks by underpaid buildings and grounds officers weilding hoses and rakes like nature gods giving good tidings to heathens of the past. The correspondence between pagan ceremonies and Greek rush wouldn’t fail to suggest itself to a cultural anthropologist, perhaps. The connection would at least describe coherently the emerging popularity of lacrosse.
