Hundreds of nervous young women braced themselves.
News was coming that could either markedly improve or effectively ruin their lives — or at least their Thursday.
As if the weeks of non-stop congeniality testing, small talking and dolling themselves up hadn’t been enough, the women suddenly faced yet another threat to their dignity.
Donning polo shirts, a large crowd of almost 100 young men – some with solo cups in hand – walked onto the scene.
And the smell of beer promptly settled on the Coker Arboretum.
The sorority hopefuls perked up from their seats on the grass to look in awed confusion at the men, who now filled the vacant space around the girls.
Some men turned to each other, trading expressions and laughs of disbelief.
One climbed a tree to get a better vantage point.
Two European men began capturing the episode on video, then lit a cigarette.
The time had almost come. The sorority members passed out the sacred envelopes to the anxious hopefuls.
Don’t open your envelope yet, they instructed.
But some couldn’t wait.
One started tearing hers open. Sharp rebuke came quickly from one of the sorority women.
Another angled hers against the sun in an attempt to glimpse her future.
“Cheater!” yelled one of the men, pointing. “Kick her out!”
“On the count of three open your envelopes,” one of the leaders shouted into a microphone.
“One!”
The men began to jump up and down and let loose a low chorus of shouts in anticipation.
“Two!”
The bizarre scene reached a fever pitch.
“Three!”
The girls frantically dismantled their envelopes and new shrieks rang out in Chapel Hill.
The men looked closely for women that fortune had not favored. They smelled blood.
Got one.
“We got a crier!” one man shouted, pointing and exclaiming with the vehemence of a lion that had snared an injured antelope.
But most of the unhappy women left quickly and quietly to grieve on their walks home.
Ecstatic, sorority women both new and old ran blindly into traffic on the way back to their houses.
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