Though she was less than halfway through the fall semester at Oxmoor college, Ava was pleased to be on the verge of achieving her main goal for the term. Her latest project had nothing to do with her academic progress; she was on her way to her usual 4.0 average, but her goal for this particular semester was all about her life outside the classroom.
Excellent grades had always come easily for Ava, but her social skills left a lot of room for improvement. She had a tight-knit group of girlfriends back when she was in high school, but they all had become friends back in early elementary school. As the years passed her increasingly obvious high IQ began to make other kids assume they wouldn't be interested in her, or she wouldn't want to hang out with them. Her tendency to be satisfied with her longtime friends and not work at developing new friendships kept her social circle small.
Relying on her cluster of longtime friends worked well enough through middle school and high school, but once she began her college career her inherent shyness and limited social skills left her fairly isolated. She told herself her lack of a social life was probably a good thing, allowing her to focus on her coursework. With nothing much else to distract her, she did pick up right where she left off in high school, with a perfect GPA after her first two semesters.
Back in her hometown after her first year at Oxmoor, circumstances forced Ava to recognize her lack of new friendships, as well as a tendency to be shy around people she didn't know well. The members of her old gang were mostly busy, some working full time, a few with new boyfriends to spend time with and one with essentially no free time to hang out with anyone but the baby boy she gave birth to a little more than 9 months after graduation!
With a part-time job of her own at a local hardware store and a long list of books she wanted to read, Ava had enough to do, but for the first time she could remember she found herself feeling lonely a lot of the time. She decided to make broadening her social circle a priority in the coming semester. She spent some of her free time going online to check out various clubs at Oxmoor, but didn't see any that she could see herself interested in joining if she wasn't hunting for new friends.
She realized just how unaware she had been about how her fellow students spent their time when she found a website focused on various intramural sports; according to the site, almost a third of the student body participated in at least one sport. Though the sheer number of students involved made it seem like a good way to meet people, she didn't think she would be able to contribute to any team in any sport; she had been the stereotypical klutzy nerd in high school, loathing every minute of gym class. Being the weak link in every game she played hadn't endeared her to her teammates then and she didn't expect it would in any team sport at this level either.
Ava was beginning to wonder how she could ever develop any new friends; her summer break was nearly over when she happened to see a Tik Tok video full of girls her age having fun together. The video was fairly silly and Ava knew she was watching a carefully edited version of the interaction of all the members of the Zeta Sigma Alpha sorority at Oxmoor, but they certainly looked like they were enjoying each other's company. Going beyond the video, Ava did more research and was pleased to see that the sorority had camaraderie and academic excellence listed as top priorities, built right into their mission statement!
Ava came back to campus as early as she could get into her dorm and went to the ZSA chapter's house the next afternoon to attend their first recruitment gathering of rush week. She met at least twenty sisters and came away even more sure she'd like to be invited to join them. Over the rest of rush week she attended several other house's parties; she was impressed by several of the ZSA sisters and could imagine being able to start friendships with many of them.
Ava thought she could fit in well at several of the sororities she researched, but she thought ZSA would be the house most likely to get her to come out of her shell. She knew part of the reason she didn't have many friends was her own tendency towards shyness, and from what she could tell after meeting a large segment of the members there, introverts were accepted, but gently encouraged to join in a variety of activities, fundraisers, and volunteering. When the time came to formally apply for a bid to be accepted as a pledge she almost didn't list a second choice of sororities, but played it safe just in case the girls she'd met weren't as enthused by her as she was by them.
After a nervous few days of waiting, Ava was thrilled to get not one bid but one from both sororities she'd formally applied to. She considered her backup choice but decided she might be TOO good a fit there; when she'd visited them it seemed like the typical member was, like her, great at the academic side of college life but not so outgoing.
She opted to pledge at ZSA, and was initiated along with about 20 other new members. "Now all I need to do is make it through the pledge process," she thought. She was pretty optimistic that she'd have no problem meeting that period's challenges; from what she'd been told during rush week, the tasks new members had to do were mostly volunteer work with some mildly embarrassing challenges. One night was spent taking detailed measurements of every possible sort of each pledge; the Senior sisters explained that at the final ceremony where successful pledges were accepted as full members the new members would be provided with a custom-made gown.
The vague descriptions of potentially embarrassing requirements worried Ava a bit, but she was confident that nothing required of her and her fellow pledges would be too unpleasant. The challenges had been described as being intended to give the new recruits a chance to bond with each other as they rose as a group to meet whatever challenge they were given. "I wanted something to shake me up a little bit and get me to break out of my shell, and it sounds like I'll get exactly what I've been looking for," she thought. The senior members made the challenges sound more like opportunities to gain confidence and show loyalty to the sorority; Ava was actually looking forward to being tested.
The pledging period lasted four weeks, and began with fairly simple tasks. On the first Saturday the pledges were given a choice of two assignments; they could serve dinner at a local homeless shelter or they could work a concession booth at a home football game. The pledges were split more or less evenly with Ava and eight other girls choosing the public service option. The group served a few dozen unfortunate souls the best meal of their day, their fresh white ZSA t-shirts and shorts a strong contrast to the scruffy diners. On the van ride back to campus a few pledges were gloating about how taking on the more worthy task would boost their chances of being accepted as a full member.
The pledges who chose to work at a concession stand had chosen what they were sure would be an easy gig, even a fun one if any cute guys came to buy snacks. Their task turned out to be a little bit more challenging than they had expected, as they were told just before leaving for the game that the outfits they were wearing were all wrong. Two senior sisters handed out the official Team ZSA uniform for the event. White yoga shorts and a pretty small bikini top was the entire outfit. One pledge was bold enough to ask, "I assume we can wear panties, right?" She was told in no uncertain terms that underwear was allowed, but only if it didn't show through the thin white material of the shorts.
Despite some muttering, ten of the eleven pledges got into the clothing provided; only three even bothered to try wearing panties, knowing that the undies they were wearing would surely show through the flimsy shorts One girl walked off, unwilling to serve food and drinks in public for several hours in such a skimpy outfit. "Clearly not ZSA material," one of the seniors laughed.
As the senior leaders expected from their own time serving customers dressed the same way a few years earlier, the ZSA booth had a steady stream of customers, with some guys returning several times. Since some senior girls had managed to get local stores to donate a lot of what the pledges were selling, most of the proceeds went to support ZSA.
When the contingent of pledges who spent their evening with homeless people made it back to the house they were expecting to be praised for helping the needy, as well as bringing about some good publicity for ZSA. They did receive some compliments on a job well done, but most of the excitement in the house was about the fantastic job of fundraising the ten pledges working the concession stand had done. Marjorie, the chapter president, heaped praise on them, announcing they had brought in over $1500, as well as getting ZSA some free publicity in the form of photos to be run in the local Sunday paper.
Ava had a hard time holding back a chuckle listening to Marjorie going on about the great work the concession stand team had done, but had to admit they'd been successful. "I guess it's true that sex sells," she thought as she looked at the girls still dressed in their working outfits. "But they're really not dressed all that differently from how a lot of girls sunbathing on the quad do, so why not?"
The pledges were challenged in different ways during their weeknight tasks. The older girls did things like gathering the prospective ZSA members on a moment's notice to be tested on their knowledge of the chapter's history, or demand that the new girls climb up on the tables at the dining hall and sing the school's fight song during the lunch or dinner rush. Some of the older girls seemed less interested in getting the pledges to bond with each other than to get off on some weird power trip.
Most of the indoctrination seemed to Ava to be more silly than mean, though she was pretty embarrassed when it was her turn to be told to stand up in front of a large class she wasn't even enrolled in and recite Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. She never would have imagined herself jumping up in front of an auditorium full of laughing students, but thought it might make some more appropriate public speaking easier in the future! The second weekend had annoying assignments such as stacking firewood for the bonfire the chapter's leaders had planned for the end of the pledge period, but no particularly difficult or embarrassing tasks.
Ava happened to be at the ZSA house when the signup sheets to volunteer for either working at the concession stand at the next weekend's football game or to do cleanup of litter at a mile of a county road the chapter had adopted. Ava wasn't overjoyed by the idea of being more or less on display for several hours, but considering how much revolting trash the highway cleanup crew would likely have to deal with, she went with what she believed would be the lesser of two evils and signed up to be a server, skimpy white shorts and bikini top be damned!
The next time she checked the sign-up sheet Ava was happy to see the names of a couple of girls she'd become friendly with as they worked their way through pledging together. Maria was a petite, quiet sort, with long blonde hair and a buxom figure which looked even more voluptuous given her short stature. Tanya was as different as possible, at least as far as their appearance was concerned. Always ready to make a joke or bawdy comment, Tanya was every bit of 6 feet tall, slim to the point of being skinny, with dark brown hair kept short. Ava and her new friends often joked that they were meant to be a gang, with each of the three of them having strengths and weaknesses that all seemed to mesh together.
Ava was more outgoing than Maria but way less so than Tanya. Maria was by far the most studious of the three, with Tanya satisfied with her low C level grades; Ava got excellent grades, but didn't obsess over them the way Maria did. Ava even mostly fit in between her two friends physically. She was taller than average at 5'-9", with shoulder-length strawberry blonde hair and a somewhat voluptuous figure, a bit less full-figured than Maria but way curvier than Tanya.
A few days before their scheduled turn at working at the ZSA concession booth, the three friends discussed the unfortunate characteristics of the official outfit they were going to have to wear. Tanya was the only one of them not bothered by having to wear the ensemble the ZSA crew had been told to wear, telling Ava and Maria, "let's face it, I'm built like Olive Oyl and most guys are looking for bigger boobs, at least more than my 34aa figure. The outfit might get a few guys to notice me, so what the hell, maybe I can get a date or two out of this!"
