- The way bidding works is you go around to meet the different fraternities, find the ones you like, and hope you get a bid from said fraternities. It's an invitation to join. By the end of the week you decide what bid you want to accept.
- When we are deciding who gets in, we pretty much give a huge benefit of the doubt to a guy whose dad was a legacy. When I joined my fraternity, my dad asked me why I didn't join the one he was in instead. I said, "cause you never told me what fraternity you were in". But the overwhelming majority of people were not legacies.
- The way we decided who gets in - at least in my fraternity - was that we'd all sit in a room, somebody would say, "I nominate RogueMocha". Then three other people would have to vouch for him. Then we'd vote. If one person voted 'no' he wouldn't get in. But you could nominate him again later that night. Simple process. Sometimes if a dude really wanted a guy in and he was getting voted down, he'd do something crazy to show how committed he was to get the guy in. For example, I saw a guy put out a cigarette on his arm to get a guy in. Sounds stupid, but it was funny at the time.
- Other than during pledgeship, which is really short now, there was never a push to get people to conform. We did look down upon dudes with earrings. But who wants to hang out with guys with earrings anyway?
- People brought their buds who were not in the frat around all the time. Other than fraternity sponsored formals and date parties, you were always welcome to have your friends hang out.
Overall, at least with mine, it was just like a large social club. All the stereotypes were usually from people who had a bad perception of fraternities. I'd recommend it to any college guy - but I'd recommend he take rush seriously to know if he likes the guys he's thinking about joining.
