Her Campus had the chance to chat with Daniel (aka “Danielle”) Markowitz, the Michigan senior who attempted to participate in formal sorority recruitment. Some Rho Omegas (recruitment counselors) and potential new members (PNMs) praised Markowitz’s flowing red hair and adorable dress, while others did not responded so positively to his efforts to rush. With the help of a few friends, Markowitz created a YouTube video documenting some of the most outrageous moments of his experience rushing, which quickly went viral.
It became clear after talking to Markowitz that his video was not about making fun of the sorority rush process. He clearly empathizes with the Panhellenic community and understands that it can be particularly difficult to get to know girls when first arriving to campus, especially at a school as large as Michigan. For someone who has quickly become so recognizable around campus since the release of his video, Markowitz is awed by the attention the video has garnered. His modesty only became more evident when asked for a “fun fact” about himself, to which he replied, “I can almost solve a Rubik’s Cube, but I guess that’s not really exciting…I can ‘almost’ do a lot of things, which is kind of upsetting.” There’s definitely one thing you can do for sure, Daniel: Make us laugh!
Her Campus: Your video has gotten attention from several national and online outlets. Have you been following the coverage?
Daniel Markowitz: I recently had to take a break from looking at it. I can’t even remember the last time I searched for it. For a week all I was doing was following this. It was so new and exciting for me, I wasn’t expecting this at all. I knew that Michigan’s campus would hear about it because around 20% of people are involved in Greek life and pretty much everyone at least has one friend in Greek life. I didn’t expect it to be featured on all of these websites and shared by people from other schools, so that was really cool.
HC: How and when did you come up with the idea for this video?
DM: If you want to be technical, I’d say the start of the idea came from when I was a freshman and started learning about what sorority rush was. I’ve had these opinions on it since I’ve been in college, and they’ve grown over my past four years here. Yes, I’m making fun of Greek life in the video, but I’m also a part of it myself. The idea kind of just formed in my head overtime, I don’t even really know the exact moment.
HC: Tell us a bit about the making of this video. Who was involved? How much planning did it take?
DM: My friend Guy and I are a part of an improv group called ComCo. Guy is really good with camera stuff, so I hit him up and told him about my idea and asked if he wanted to help me make this. We went to the ISS [Instructional Support Services] building, where you can get media equipment. I had never done anything like this before, I’d never had a mic on or been followed by a camera. We got the equipment and then drove around all the sororities to kind of get a feel for everything. On the actual day of filming, my friend Benji was the driver in our “get away car” in case anything went wrong. My other friend Josh had another camera shooting at a different angle. Another friend Alex was there for emotional support. ShenaniGANG [the YouTube channel that released the video] is me and Guy. We plan to make a bunch of videos. We’re not just going to be pranking people, we mostly want to do sketches. They’ll hopefully start coming out more consistently now that things are quieting down.
HC: The women in the video seemed to have mixed opinions about your antics. How did you feel when people didn’t respond to your act in the way that you wanted them to?
DM: The point of the video was to get rises out of people, especially when something so organized like rush gets a bit chaotic and that’s the funny part. But if people got overly mad I didn’t want to target them specifically. We cut a lot of times when we made people really angry because I didn’t want any one person to be targeted when the video came out. I didn’t want people commenting on them specifically, so a lot of our shots were either from far away or of multiple people. I also didn’t want to comment on any sorority in particular or make any claims about sororities. I wanted to target everyone! That way no sorority would be like, “Why is he picking on us?” cause that wasn’t the point of it. Any time I was improvising and felt like maybe I had said something too targeting, we cut it.
HC: What would you say to the women you encountered in the making of this video who didn’t understand or appreciate what you were doing?
DM: The funny thing is that more of the Rho Omegas found it funny than I thought were going to. I thought I was going to have to put out a Facebook message afterwards and say something like, “Dinner on me for all of the Rhos because I feel so bad!” Some of them actually enjoyed it. I also didn’t take any offense during filming when they didn’t, because I knew they were just doing their job. I do apologize for anyone who I angered or may have ruined their day. I hope it was more enjoyable for them to see than it was annoying. As soon as the girls were in their house and had to do the actual rush process, I wasn’t involved. It was only when they were outside waiting and there was dead time for like 20 minutes, so hopefully more people enjoyed it than were angry about it.
HC: Many people find your video to be absolutely hilarious. Was it mostly improvisational, or was a lot of it scripted?
DM: I’d say it was half and half. Going into it I said to myself, “I can’t come in with nothing because if I run out of things to say then it will be awkward and we’d ruin the moment.” I had a couple lines that I knew I had to get out wherever they fit in. Some of the conversations were just organic. As soon as I got into character, things happened. Before that, at the first house the footage ended up being really bad because I hadn’t warmed up to the character and I didn’t know what to say. After that, it kinda flowed more naturally without me having to think too much about it.
HC: What was your favorite moment when making this video?
DM: There was one house where I ran up to the stairs and I almost got into the house. The reason that was my favorite is because we were leaving another house and just got yelled at by Panhel right before. It was totally unplanned, we were supposed to just be walking away but I saw this group of girls walking into this house. I turned around to Guy and was like “Just keep filming” and I just tried to go in. It was so on the spot and in the moment, and it became one of my favorite moments just because I almost made it into the house. That was definitely the realest moment, it was totally unplanned and no one knew that was about to happen.
HC: You mentioned at the beginning of the video that you find the sorority rush process to be shallow. What do you think can be done to make the process more personal while accommodating over a thousand PNMs?
DM: It’s a tough question, cause it’s like, “You made this statement, now what do we do about it?” It’s so different from fraternity rush because that’s so unorganized. Sorority rush is perfectly planned out to a tee, which has its plusses because you get to see every house and talk to a bunch of people. That’s cool, but I just think it’s a bit of a pageantry. It’s a show of things that no one really wants to be doing, like the cheering and the screaming and the decorating. What if you just have the girls go to the houses at certain scheduled times and just hangout? Maybe there’d be activities to do? I honestly don’t know. It’s just so different from guys, they just sit around and play beer pong or watch football. I know I can’t just “fix” the sororities’ system. I think a lot of older girls I know have expressed that they don’t enjoy it because it doesn’t feel real. I think freshmen are so nervous and there’s only so much they can say, so I think it’s hard to actually meet people in this process. I don’t know if there’s a way to fix that, and I don’t know if I’m the best person to fix the system. After doing this, I actually have so much more respect for the process than I did before, which is kind of funny. As I was doing this, I realized that these girls put in so much work. For the people who do care, all I can say is “Go you!” because they put in so much time and effort. But I still think there maybe could be a better way to actually meet the girls.
HC: It’s to my understanding that you yourself are a member of a fraternity. How would you feel about a girl partaking in your rush process?
DM: I couldn’t imagine her having a problem. For sorority rush, it’s like “You have 20 minutes at this house, wait 10 minutes here, walk here…” and so on, and if anything goes wrong it’s chaotic. For fraternity rush, it’s just like, “Come to the house between 6-8, watch Monday Night Football and eat some Buffalo Wild Wings” or something like that. I don’t think that a girl would be able to get a rise out of people in that situation because it wouldn’t be a big deal. Guys would just be like, “I’m not sure why you’re here, but OK.” I think it’d be harder for her to get a video out of it, but easier for her to get into the houses.
HC: You hinted earlier that ShenaniGANG is planning on making more videos. Can you give us any idea of what we’ll have to look forward to from ShenaniGANG?
DM: It’s hard to say, because I think we’re gonna go everywhere with it. There’s gonna be a lot of stupidity, and there’s also gonna be a lot of sophisticated critiques through sketches. I think it’s going to be a wide range of things. I don’t want to be known as a “prank guy” or “the guy who only does things on campus.” We really just want to make content about anything and see if people like it. I guess that’s really the point of ShenaniGANG. I don’t think there’s a specific topic that we’re gonna hit hard or anything. There aren’t set plans, but we want to start consistently putting out more ideas as they come.