Greetings friends! Welcome to our first official blog! We’ve been searching for a way to show you all that Gamma Rho is truly about and we’re so excited to get started!
Due to recent events regarding COVID-19, we haven’t been able to spend as much time with each other this semester, but we have had a great year!
We kicked off the 2019-2020 school year with Spirit Week leading right up to formal recruitment. We practiced chants and recruitment rounds over and over and while the days were long, we all grew to be super close and felt confident going into the Formal Recruitment season.
Our Formal Recruitment lasted between two weekends, with round one taking place the first weekend and rounds two, three, preference, and bid day taking place the next. After lots of hard work, we welcomed our Fall ’19 members with open arms and a space-themed bid day. We celebrated with our new members at the Greek Leadership Village then took buses to the Phoenix Children’s Museum for a dance party.
A few weeks later, we had our big/little reveal. As the littles gathered into the room group by group, they were greeted by large sheets hiding their bigs on the other side. Once everyone was ready, the sheet dropped and the bigs were revealed.
“My favorite part of this year has been meeting my big, Amanda. She has taught me so much about college life and being away from home and I’m so grateful to be in such an amazing family! I appreciate all of the things she’s taught me and how she continues to support me, whether it’s for something school-related or just for fun,” said freshman, Katerina Houser.
Once everyone found their families, we celebrated with an all-day chapter retreat at the Phoenix Zoo. The day consisted of chapter bonding activities, learning chants, and hanging out with animals.
“I feel like it helped me get to know the girls in our chapter even better,” said freshman, Sophia Koop.
Once October came around, we hosted our first ever “Mane Man” philanthropy competition.
Boys were encouraged to run for a “Mane Man” and “King of the Jungle” position while raising money for Ronald McDonald House Charities. At the end of the week, the boys competed in a competition in front of all our sisters and four of the boys took home the title.
In addition to hosting our own philanthropy event, we participated in three other philanthropys throughout the month of November. We had lots of fun getting to hang out with other chapters within the greek community and even took second place in Phi Kappa Theta’s “Turkey Bowl”.
Between Arizona State’s annual Family Weekend and homecoming towards the end of November, we had lots of fun getting to show our families what Gamma Rho means to us and competing with other chapters throughout the duration of the homecoming week.
Even though the fall semester kept us all very busy, we still had plenty of fun during the weeks where we didn’t have too much going on.
Throughout the duration of the semester, we hosted three date parties and endless sisterhoods.
We kicked off our first date party of the year with a rock and roll theme, then continued the rest of the semester with a dynamic duo themed date party, and ended the semester with a masquerade-themed formal.
“I loved seeing everyone dress up and all the cute ideas people have for each theme,” said sophomore, Brianna Sloan.
Even though we host sisterhoods every week, we also have special event sisterhoods where girls can go participate in fun activities with sisters, including going to a water park, rollerskating, and laser tag.
“The sisterhoods were such fun opportunities to get to hang out with sisters more,” said freshman, Katie Davis.
As the fall semester came to an end and winter break began, we couldn’t wait for the spring semester to start. We kicked off the semester with a movie-themed sisterhood and our Spring Recruitment. We hosted two weeks of events where girls could come hang out and do activities, like karaoke and game nights, with the girls in our chapter. At the end of it all, we welcomed home our Spring ’20 members.
After Spring Recruitment, a group of our girls traveled to Chicago, Illinois, for Alpha Delta Pi’s 2020 Officer Academy. Our members were able to learn many new tips and tricks that they could bring back to help our chapter grow.
“I got to bond with sisters I thought I knew really well (I got to know them so much better), meet sisters in other chapters, and travel to my now-favorite city for the first time ever,” said our Vice President of Member Experience, Caitlin Personale.
As February rolled around, we kept busy between our annual “Crush” date party and big/little reveal for our new members. We had so much fun getting to know our new members even better that Spring Break seemed to come out of nowhere.
While our semester came to a quick end after that, we are so grateful that we got to make so many memories when we could this year. Even though we can’t be with our sisters in person, we still keep up with one another through Tik Toks, Netflix Parties, and Pen Pals. We can’t wait to keep making memories with our sisters this coming fall.
“My favorite part of this year was getting to know so many girls and make so many friends. The girls of Gamma Rho are so encouraging and fun to be around. Every event I would go to was always so much fun no matter what it was! I’m so excited for the fall,” said sophomore, Nicole Nappi.
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