Inside sorority rush, the blood sport making college girls millionaires

Competition for sisterhoods is big business for Kylan Darnell, the Alabama student who chronicles it all like a reality show. Shame her sister wants no part

https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/sorority-rush-alabama-tiktok-kylan-darnell-cf7sshfhf

https://archive.ph/AG4QZ


Kylan Darnell, right, has more than 1.3 million followers on TikTok and makes six figures a year

Kylan Darnell can’t walk out of her sorority house without being stopped by fans. She can’t actually walk out of any house without it happening. Darnell, 21, is the standard bearer for a lucrative new kind of fame. She is a third-year student at the University of Alabama, a member of Zeta Tau Alpha sorority and the “Queen of RushTok”, the frenzied corner of TikTok which charts the trials of aspiring sorority girls during their August recruitment, or “rush week” and the campus lives that they go on to lead. “I love my sorority,” said Darnell. “I’ve definitely met my bridesmaids. And it’s also given me a career.” Darnell now has over 1.3 million followers on TikTok and makes six figures a year. In fact, she added, “I’ve made six figures in a month.”


Kylan Darnell, second left, with fellow members of Zeta Tau Alpha

Sororities are social organisations, typically all-female and secretive, on college campuses for which members have to go through a formal recruitment process. These groups are most entrenched at universities in the south — Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, Kentucky, Mississippi State, Georgia — and were often established at the same time as the colleges themselves in the 1800s. They are associated with eliteness and exclusivity, indicators of class, wealth and, historically, whiteness. (The University of Alabama only de-segregated its sororities in 2013.) Students pay membership fees, as well as costs for living in the houses, which can amount to up to $5,000 (£3,725) per semester. Until very recently their members were well known only to other people at the same university.


Bid day is often an excuse to lavishly decorate sorority houses STELLAR PARTY CO

Then, in August 2021, RushTok went viral. Polished young women posted videos about what they were wearing to rush week — Hermès bangles, athleisure and florals — and then shared the elation of acceptance and the emotional turmoil of their inevitable rejections. For viewers online, it became a blood sport with blow-dries. Today #RushTok has 128.2 million posts on TikTok and 1.5 billion views, and is in what fans call “season five” as if it is a reality TV show, with new “characters” breaking out and old ones returning. As a result sororities are seeing a surge in applicants and brands are racing to recruit these young women to sell their products. Sororities have become influencer factories.


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Darnell is impossibly charming, bouncy, upbeat and sweet as pie. She also looks like a prom queen. The combination is commercial gold. “The amount of stuff companies send to our sorority house is insane,” she said, speaking between classes. “Boxes and boxes of make-up and hair stuff, giant boxes of Zeta-personalised Poppi [a fizzy drink].” Darnell grew up competing in dance and pageants as a teen and though no one else in her family was involved in Greek life (sororities and fraternities, their male equivalent, are generally known by combinations of letters from the Greek alphabet) she wanted to be in a sorority for the friendship and the networking opportunities.

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Darnell, left, and her younger sister Izzy ROMAIN MAURICE/GETTY IMAGES