Do you know how many hours a day sorority girls wore wedges that squeezed the sides of their feet, pumps that rubbed their heels red, and sandals that scrunched their big toes in with their little toes, all in the name of recruitment? Do you know how many times these women held up color swatches to dresses to be sure that all shades of crimson were in fact the same? And not to mention the tears that came from the three days of actually recruiting girls to join what you believe to be the best house on Greek Row. Needless to say, recruitment is hard, like really painstakingly hard, to give yourself an idea, try planning a really killer birthday party that has to last 3 days and that has to make 400 girls fall in love with you. If you’re reading this, stop and go hug a member of the Panhellenic world and tell them that they are simply wonderful from the top of the themed bow to the bottoms of the blistered toes.
But then, right when you think you can’t possibly spend another waking minute in a room of only women who are all wearing the same shirt, you hear a few screams and see girls running towards you holding signs that say “Welcome Home” and “It’s all Greek to me!” And in that moment, you know there is no place you’d rather be.
Bid Day isn’t another day where the perfectly manicured women sit and watch their fifteenth philanthropy video, it’s the day where women who only hours ago were just another student in a university now have a place to stand out and become a part of a community to make that university a little less massive. The women who open their bids are suddenly given the responsibility to uphold an International Organization’s values and principals. These women are given the task to raise money and awareness for charities and causes they didn’t even know they cared so deeply for a few days ago. But what these women mostly see on a tear-stained piece of paper is a sisterhood waiting to give them a home.
But Bid Day works two beautiful and intricate ways, for the new sisters it’s a time to be welcomed in and given a ridiculous amount of shirts, hats, bags, and stickers that they will wear for the next week because they want everyone on campus to know that yes, they really truly are a Delta Delta Delta. Bid Day is the day that an entire chapter is changed every fall as these women will without a doubt make an impact on the active members, some will find their best friends who will become their Maid Of Honors, others will find their Littles who will teach them more about sisterhood than every other woman in that house, and others will find a newfound love for the chapter they forgot that they loved through the hot glue gun burns the past few months.
Bid Day feels better than Christmas because to be honest, the best present you can give a woman is 100 sisters all wearing matching shirts waiting to welcome you to their family.