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Drunk, Sober, High: Bid Day 2015

At Penn State, whether you think it’s a nuisance or not, Greek life is a popular and familiar culture in regards to student life. Yesterday, sorority sisters near and far celebrated the initiation day for their new members with lavish style and heavy enthusiasm.

We at Onward State couldn’t miss the opportunity to experience bid day in our three most beloved states of mind. That being said, we present to you one competent, and two absolutely inebriated, staff members in the latest edition of Drunk, Sober, High.

Drunk 

I prepared for my assignment by drinking a bottle — err — few glasses of white wine. I felt that if I was going to observe and comment on the most basic event of all eternity, I should at least drink the most basic drink in all the land. It ended up being an excellent idea!

I arrived at Old Main lawn feeling the perfect level of drunk. I thought all of the girls dressed in matching tanks and gladiator sandals were novel more than anything. The music that the DJ was playing was extremely welcome, as it made me feel like I was at a music festival instead of school. And by the way the girls were dressed, they thought they were at Coachella too. Sober and I had a good deal of fun picking out which sororities had the best outfits, and which ones were sooo 2012. 

Maybe it was because it was hot, or maybe it’s because I reached my tolerance level of basicness, but my drunken amusement soon turned bitter. I put it upon myself to be a bid day critic. Because let’s be honest, there’s a lot of stuff that doesn’t add up about bid day. Here are my hottest takes:

  1. Some of the sororities have balloon letters. That’s whimsical and all, but then they blew away in the fucking wind. Bid day already claims the freedom of the biddies, does it’s cruel reach really have to extend to birds too?!
  2. Some girls are wearing alien antennae on their heads. This proves it: biddies are actually not humans. They are aliens. It’s science
  3. This is the most dainty cult I’ve ever seen.
  4. Honestly some of their cheers are sort of catchy, but I cannot understand what they are saying.

By the time the girls who actually got bids showed up, I felt more anxious than drunk. Mad props go to Sober for putting up with me as I screamed almost louder than the sorority girls about how I just didn’t understand. It only got worse when the actual biddies showed up. Even though I sat far away from the whole kerfuffle, I felt like Mufasa in the stampede of antelope when they all came running from the HUB. My fight-or-flight instinct soon kicked in, and I quickly fled from the scene. Now, I am just left with a pounding headache, a lot of questions, and only a little nausea.

For Bid Day 2016, two bottles of wine may be necessary.

Sober

As I make my way towards Old Main, I am graced with the opportunity to follow not one, but two different sororities also strolling towards their beloved initiation celebration. Both groups are carrying their enormous, respective letters and matching identically in fun-loving, baseball themed outfits (which I loved, by the way). As I got to Old Main lawn, I cozied up against one of the flag polls and was very soon approached by Drunk who seemed just as excited as me to see what exactly Bid Day is all about. The first thing I really noticed was how Coachella-like the themes of all the sororities decided to go with were. Most of, if not all, the girls were adorned in high-wasted shorts, aviator Ray Bans, high socks, and the 2015 summer festival favorite, glittery skin “tattoos”. All essentials in any white girl’s closet. I was also struck with the innovative transformation of Greek letters as balloons instead of the regular wooden cut-outs; they kept us all on our toes, and floating up into the atmosphere literally every 30 seconds. What I wasn’t surprised with was the stereotypical, drawn out white girl voice ringing in my ears. Dealing with that terrible sound for an hour and a half straight kind of made me wish I was drunk… Anyway, with signs and flags being flown black and forth, a DJ spinning all of the EDM hits of the summer, and tons of chanting, I figured out right away that this was definitely about to be a rager.

This party-like atmosphere lasted a (really) long time. The chanting never ended. I swear those girls had windpipes of steel, and to be honest, I was impressed that they could be this enthusiastic for as long as they were. The bids, or as Drunk and I liked to call them, the “biddies”, took a super long time to arrive. This gave me time to really survey the grounds and find anything weird enough to strike my interest. To save time, here’s a short list of my fav’s: a sea of Go-Pros, a drone (???), three different types of puppies (it took a lot for me not to pet them and keep focus), a bunch of moms, a large group of frat boys on Old Main’s steps overseeing the activities about to go down for some reason, and my personal favorite, a group of guys who dressed up in safari outfits that commentated and filmed a Steve Irwin-esque short where the “host” treated the sorority sisters like they were rare and endangered animals. I probably laughed way too hard at that. Drunk and I were rolling on the floor watching this go on. Also, one of the moms approached me and asked me the greatest question of the entire night: “Excuse me, do you know why there are so many anchors everywhere? It’s odd and all of them seem to have it. I just don’t understand…” I died.

As the biddies arrived, the chants coming from each sorority, I swear, collectively shook the Richter scale. I couldn’t hear myself, or my counterparts, speak. With every step the new sisters took, the volume grew louder, and louder, and louder. It got to the point where I couldn’t hear anything but incoherent yelling. But once the bids reached the lawn, absolute chaos took place. There was hugging, and lots of it. The new sisters had the biggest smiles spread across their faces, and it was actually adorable to see how genuinely happy all of them were. I guess Greek life isn’t all so bad after all… right? Right?!

High 

Well, one thing’s for sure — I smoked way too much weed for this event. I can’t handle sorority girls in clusters while I’m sober, and definitely wasn’t anywhere near mentally prepared for the massive congregation of preppy girls that I was about to encounter high.

As opposed to my counterparts, both in varying frames of mind, the entire ordeal seemed like one giant blur. Albeit a colorful blur, it was simply too much for the human mind to comprehend. I think for at least a solid 10 minutes I just stared at the Old Main bell tower, and might’ve even had a conversation with it. Is that true? I don’t know. Did I inadvertently try and hit on one of the girls? I also do not know the answer to that question. All I can tell you is that sorority bid day high off your ass — for lack of a better term — is simply an unparalleled experience, but it’s not necessarily one that I’d do again.

Where am I going, you ask? Oh, don’t mind me. I’m just going to let the sweet sounds of A Rush Of Blood To The Head by Coldplay serenade me until I’m whisked away by sleep’s loving embrace. Hey, after that ordeal, I need to decompress.

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About the Author

Staff

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