The Assignment with Audie Cornish
Aug 21, 2026 · 32 min · 22 segments
This week, the internet turned its eyes to an annual 2020s tradition: watching freshman girls rush sororities at big Southern state schools via an endless stream of social videos. What does our…
Audie CornishHost
Ari ShapiroHostScottGuest
But first, it is just about back to school season, which means we are in the heart of rush talk.
Picking up speed year after year, and so it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger.
And one of the big differences this year actually is that we're seeing more people from outside of the big southern states apply to be a student athlete and then rush the sororities and fraternities at these big southern schools, partly because of rush talk.
So basically, this is putting online a process that has been around for a very long time, which is the incoming freshman, uh, in this case ladies, we really are talking about sororities, who part of the process is to shop, so to speak.
It's built into the social infrastructure freshman year at some of the biggest SEC schools.
And over time they are, by definition, judged, right? Judged whether or not they should be in this particular sorority or not.
So imagine taking that process and putting it online, but every step of the way.
But we don't have to imagine it because check out some of these recruitment videos that some of these sororities have posted.
Just to give you a sense of how elaborate this is, this is a compilation of a few different sororities that put out these dance videos to attract new members, and you can tell the work that goes into this.
So we've got acrobatics, like flips, and then in this one they're all wearing hot pink.
And then we switch to one where they're mocking a fraternity, and so they're in, like, backwards baseball caps and baggy shirts.
But first, it is just about back to school season, which means we are in the heart of rush talk.
Picking up speed year after year, and so it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger.
And one of the big differences this year actually is that we're seeing more people from outside of the big southern states apply to be a student athlete and then rush the sororities and fraternities at these big southern schools, partly because of rush talk.
So basically, this is putting online a process that has been around for a very long time, which is the incoming freshman, uh, in this case ladies, we really are talking about sororities, who part of the process is to shop, so to speak.
It's built into the social infrastructure freshman year at some of the biggest SEC schools.
And over time they are, by definition, judged, right? Judged whether or not they should be in this particular sorority or not.
So imagine taking that process and putting it online, but every step of the way.
But we don't have to imagine it because check out some of these recruitment videos that some of these sororities have posted.
Just to give you a sense of how elaborate this is, this is a compilation of a few different sororities that put out these dance videos to attract new members, and you can tell the work that goes into this.
So we've got acrobatics, like flips, and then in this one they're all wearing hot pink.
And then we switch to one where they're mocking a fraternity, and so they're in, like, backwards baseball caps and baggy shirts.
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