Some pledging routines, located in the Folklore Archives by Megan Colleen Hillier
Text 1
Original Collector: Julie Greime
Title: None Provided (possible title = Well House Scavenger Hunt)
Class: F101
Semester/Year: Spring 1984
“The night I got my mom, there was three of us in a group and each—everybody was divided into three groups, basically everybody went on some type of scavenger hunt. (She goes on to explain where they went.) Then we went to the (slapping hands on the floor) um… I can’t think of the name of it… the little pavilion thing were you go at midnight type deal and um… we went there and we had three Fiji’s [members of Phi Gamma Delta fraternity] waiting there at the thing and they gave us a kiss because it was midnight and stuff and they planned it that we’d be there at midnight and then we went back to Fiji.” — Denay Williams of Phi Mu
Context: Performed by Denay Williams (age 20) and collected at Phi Mu by Julie Greime (age 19) in the spring semester of 1984; this collection was recorded in the mid-afternoon. As a tale collected from Indiana University, the collection relies on IU culture to understand both the tradition itself, but also the reference to the Well House and to know what a Fiji is. It is for this reason that the context of the story is both the IU Greek community and the greater IU community.