Blog Post #1

I’m in a fraternity, and this week is recruitment week. The interactions I’ve had with guys who are rushing my fraternity feel very indicative of the power of the situation. The social self seems to completely change in an environment where one is trying to impress others, and that has shown itself this week in a variety of ways–the guys who have come to rush events have been notably talkative, have responded notably strongly and positively to things that others say, and have gone out of their way to have conversations with a number of brothers so as to introduce themselves to as many of us as possible. Some of them have dominated conversation, while others have seemed to be wary of doing this and have spoken at more specific moments. Everyone This is especially interesting on the other side because they don’t know that within reason, we try to extend bids to everyone. That said, we didn’t expect to receive 26 bids (requests to join the fraternity), and it’s possible that we may have to cut a couple of people because of the sheer number who want to join. We try to be as inclusive as possible, so this has made many of us wonder how exactly we should go about weighing who should and shouldn’t get a bid. Our schemas of each of these people are fairly limited, but some of us know some of them well–one of the first-years in my a cappella group submitted a bid, for example. A number of players on the rugby team also submitted bids, and rugby players comprise a pretty large number of the group’s current members. With personal bias in the picture, the metric for everyone who we don’t know (and there are many) becomes first impressions, which I think is kind of unfair. We’re judging people off of “thin slices,” as you said in class, which aren’t necessarily indicative of who each of these people are. One of the current sophomores in the group is a really nice guy, but is very quiet, and I feel like if he were at events this year he may not have gotten a bid because he didn’t really speak much at events last year. I wouldn’t want to exclude people like him. I don’t really know how the decisions are going to go, but I hope we’re fair about them.