Text 1
Original Collector: Al Barnett
Title: “Rituals”
Class: F101
Year: 1986
Contributor: Lindsey B
Pledge continues his work sessions/wake up calls and has a DU 100 in which he listens to a tape of Terry Bullock, DU fraternity president, speaking on motivation and motivational techniques. Also, during this week the pledge class has it’s mothers night- a night when the pledges split up into two groups and are taken to several sorority houses where the soon-to-be sorority mothers make the pledges sing songs of their choice and put styling mousse or shaving cream into the pledges hair. Also some mothers may even paint the pledges fingernails and make them consume some alcohol. After they have been to all the sorority houses, the pledges return to the fraternity house and must as an entire class pick their mothers from among approximately 30 girls. This continues until the correct mother is chosen. Usually the mother awards her son by giving him a sweatshirt and or anything else with her sorority letters on it.
Context: This text was collected at the Indiana University Archives in 1986. Barnett’s work consisted of interviews conducted with several pledges and current members of the Delta Upsilon fraternity.