The first few weeks of January are the epitome of chaos for most female Wake Forest students. Thousands of students flock back to campus before classes begin to participate in rush, where active sorority members search for potential new members (PNMs) to join their sorority chapter. This year saw an especially high turnout of PNMs, with over 600 students bedecked in carefully planned outfits and layered jewelry, hoping to secure a coveted bid from a sorority. Rush is a stressful time at any college, but this year, the Wake Forest administration added to the chaos, instead of relieving it, by not accommodating anyone who arrived early on campus.
Since 2020 rush has been operating on a hybrid schedule. Some activities are online, earlier in Winter Break, and other activities, like Bid Day, happen after the return to campus. This originally started due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Sororities voted to return to a fully in-person rush beginning in 2024. This decision affected a large percentage of Wake Forest students, as 60% of the women at Wake Forest are involved in Greek Life. Since it had been several years since Wake Forest had done a fully in-person rush, many people were excited about the change. However, some were a little nervous about how it would pan out.
To some, these nerves seemed unfounded, but, as the first week of January proved, these concerns were perfectly valid.
Wake Forest announced that they were opening campus “just one day” before rush was scheduled to start, and not a second before. Since the majority of the study body hail from outside of Winston-Salem, students were left scrambling to book expensive flights and hotel accommodations. Unfortunately, the weather compounded this stress when a snowstorm swept through the East Coast, making travel not only time-consuming and costly, but also dangerous.
Even though the snowstorm was predicted ahead of time, many students still had to brave the hazardous conditions since the university administration refused to open campus doors earlier than scheduled. Those who decided that the journey was too dangerous were left with the only option of booking expensive hotels for days at a time just to preserve their safety.
Once on campus, the challenges continued. The Pit, the usual go-to spot for food, was closed to the majority of the students on campus. Only potential new members (PNMs) for sororities were allowed to dine there. While this decision may have been an effort to prevent any awkward situations, in reality, all it did was leave much of the population back on campus without consistent, viable dining options.
The only dining option available to upperclassmen was Benson’s Chick-Fil-A, which was only open from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and required students to pay out of pocket instead of through meal plans. This detail made the experience even more expensive in addition to flights, gas money and hotel expenses.
However, the most dangerous aspect of the week was the snow-covered roads. The snow once again reared its ugly head as the roads of Winston-Salem became coated with the dangerous substance. The icy roads both on and off-campus received little to no attention from snow plows. Students had to brave the icy streets just to find a full meal. Many had no choice but to drive out into the snow or resort to measly snacks at the Pod for the week.
An accident involving several student vehicles occurred on University Parkway, a result of the conditions, served as a grim reminder of the perilous consequences of getting food off-campus in snowy conditions.
As if the dining and travel woes weren’t enough, people couldn’t even catch a break in their own dorms. The enemy this time was the shared showers, particularly those located on the quad. After a day full of exhausting rush activities, many upperclassmen returned to their dorms hoping for a cleansing, warm shower. However, a more realistic comparison would be comparing the shower to a dip in the Arctic. Water was left on for 30 minutes in hopes that it would warm, which it decidedly did not. These necessary showers left upperclassmen shivering after an already cold and draining day. While freshmen dorms reportedly had access to warm water, many of the upperclassmen dorms did not.
This division of amenities felt like an unreasonable and frustrating punishment to many upperclassmen.
Rush week is inherently stressful, but these very avoidable oversights turned it into a nightmare.
Wake Forest needs to learn from its mistakes and provide its students with the basic amenities. If Wake Forest is going to continue with an in-person rush, its students need to be supported in this decision by the university. This means that all students returning to campus need the basic tenets of survival: food, shelter and water. Students should not have to navigate limited dining hall options, delayed campus opening, freezing showers and dangerous roads.
Instead, dining halls should be accessible to all, the dorms should be open a few days in advance to account for travel, and hot water should be provided. Wake Forest must ensure that its students are set up for success during this already stressful and demanding time.