The faces of "Rushed." From top left, clockwise: Paige Mackey, Panhel's voice in the documentary; Alexandra Sinderbrand, the all-telling Tridelt rush chair; an anonymous freshman; Allie, the film's unwitting star; and Marcus Cohlan, the RTVF junior whose classwork became a campus sensation.
Four years ago, the short documentary above, “Rushed,” began to circulate at Northwestern, sending the Greek community into uproar. It follows a freshman girl, Allie, as she goes through sorority recruitment. As Allie goes from house to house, an anonymous rush chair, now known to be former Tridelt Alexandra Sinderbrand, divulges the secret rating system sororities use to evaluate potential new members. The rush chair claims that girls are cut from chapters if they’re unattractive, and that the chapters choreograph their members placement “on the floor” during rush such that quieter sisters serve food while more social sisters would speak with girls who are rushing. The accusations rocked the Northwestern community, and began heated debate on both sides of the issue. “Rushed” garnered more than 50,000 views on YouTube and later won Best Adult Documentary at the New Castle Community Television Film Festival.
Today, the film’s director, Marcus Cohlan, a then-junior in a documentary film class; its antagonist, a mysterious former rush chair; and its unwitting star subject, a then-freshman named Allie, reveal how the film came to be. The story begins with an RTVF junior’s growing resentment towards the Greek system and a sorority rush chair’s disgust with her own role in a supposedly sick process. But where the narrative leads in the oral history that follows is anything but well-documented.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
MARCUS COHLAN: Director of “Rushed,” class of ’07, former Fiji, former Director of Programming for IFC.
ALEXANDRA SINDERBRAND: (often referred to by first letter, “A”) former Tridelt rush chair who speaks out in “Rushed,” class of ’07
PAIGE MACKEY: former Vice President of Recruitment for Panhellenic Association, class of ’07, Theta
ALLIE S: (requested last name be withheld), Main Subject of “Rushed,” class of ’09, Tridelt
DEBRA TOLCHINSKY, Marcus’s professor in the RTVF class Documentary Production for which “Rushed” was made
Paige: I can’t believe it’s been 4 years. To think that people today don’t know who Marcus is on campus is weird for me. I’d known Marcus since freshman year, and he’s always been a goofy, creative, smart-ass—but in a good way. He would always ask those questions that no one else would really ask.
Marcus: I lived in Bobb freshman year and it was a very frat-centric dorm. Everybody there was really being pushed hard by the fraternities and the sororities to jump in. People began to become, what I call, sororitized and fraternized. I was in a class called Documentary Production with Deb Tolchinsky, so I had to make a documentary.
Tolchinsky: I’ve been teaching Documentary Production for a few years on and off. In this class students make a short documentary on a topic of their choosing. It’s really student driven, and I want students to make things they are excited about, that they want to do research on, that they’re not going to get bored with.
Marcus: I really wanted to do something on frat or sorority life, something that really got to my anger over this culture at the school. Maybe I wasn’t getting enough dates with sorority girls, maybe I was angry at the girls at the school, I don’t know. I found it very difficult the way friends became separated during rush, some girls got in to Theta, other girls got into Tridelt. All these things got to me, and I just decided to do it.
I was friends with Allie, who agreed to let me follow her through the opening process of rush. She’s got a spark to her, a real personality that’s unique. I also liked her because she is not gorgeous, but she’s not unattractive either. She offered me the best representation of a freshman.
Allie: I didn’t give a shit about rush, I didn’t think I was going to rush at all. I was a freshman so I didn’t know how controversial rush is as a whole. It was very benign. I didn’t care; I was just doing him a favor. And he assured me that only the people in his class would see it, which was a flat-out lie.
Marcus: I couldn’t get in to the chapter houses; there were a lot of legality issues regarding that. I was only included in the Fall Philanthropy Round.
Paige: Marcus asked for permission to take some shots generally of the process, but there was one point when he was stationed outside one of the chapter houses and was getting very close-up faces where you could actually see who the women were and was asking to get inside the chapter houses, so we had to send out some of our Panhellenic recruitment team members to go ask him to step back, because he was interfering with the recruitment process.
Tolchinsky: Marcus was really good at getting people to open up and talk, and they said things you wouldn’t think people would say on camera. He got this footage that was pretty inflammatory.
Marcus: Alexandra just turned me on, first of all. She was fiercely attractive, really kind of a social queen on campus. We spoke for about an hour and a half, and she let loose about the inner-workings behind sorority rush. She told me everything.
Alexandra: At the time when he approached me to do it, he thought that he had the ability to kind of blur out my face and voice, so that it would really be anonymous. That was what sold me on talking about it.
Allie: She did the whole thing to get attention, let’s be honest. If you actually care about your house, you would never say that. [Allie ended up joining Tridelt.]
Alexandra: He kind of got me at the right time, because it was right after rush and I was very disillusioned by the whole thing. It was really cathartic for me to come clean. I just felt that freshman girls had a right to know what they were getting themselves in to.
Allie: What she said is a flat-out lie. If that’s how we conducted rush, I would have never been okay with it.
Alexandra: Of course Allie doesn’t think it’s true of the rush process, because she’s never run rush. That’s how the system perpetuates itself, because very few people know what’s going on. The rest of the house gets to participate in it without any remorse. Once you’re on the other side of it and you’re in charge, it’s a much different picture.
Paige:Marcus wanted me to be the other side of it. I think he knew that I was going to be more impartial and try and show more of the positive side, so I appreciate he did that. That process you hear from that unidentified rush chair is from one chapter and represents a very small portion of the Greek community. Her chapter may do that, but I can tell you for sure other chapters don’t.
Alexandra: The biggest bull-shitter in that film is that chick Paige Mackey, just hawking this clichéd perspective.
Paige: I wasn’t happy with that one chapter active who decided it would be important to share our sorority secrets with the general community. There’s a reason things are secret, and there’s a reason that no one knows.
Tolchinsky: Students bring in clips of their film to class, and we would discuss it. Everyone would critique each other’s work. I recall there being a shock about some of the material that he actually got.
Alexandra: He showed it in class and one of the girls in Tridelt saw it; that was when shit hit the fan. The chick who saw it was a Tridelt cheerleader freak, she’s still pissed at me. She was the one who tattled on me to the president and then got everybody involved. It’s sororities, what do you want?
Marcus: Everybody knew about it, everybody knew who I was. I became an instantaneous campus celebrity, and not in a good way.
Allie: Marcus was not a celebrity, Marcus was a villain.
Paige: When it came out people were really upset with Marcus and with how rush was portrayed. Things kind of got blown out of proportion.
Marcus: My frat totally launched back at me and was really angry at me for making this movie. They were afraid that they weren’t going to get dates with girls or something after it because our reputation was attached to me.
Paige: My chapter came back to me and said, “We’re really proud of you, we think you did a really good job representing our Greek community and our chapter as a whole.”
Alexandra: My house called me in to answer to a committee, but they couldn’t argue with me. I wasn’t trying to out Tridelt as evil, the bottom line is that every single house pulls that shit. It’s inherent in the process. After that I never got any more shit.
Marcus: I got emails from the president of Tridelt that told me that I would be sued if I did not remove Alexandra from the documentary.
Tolchinsky:The sororities said he couldn’t show it because he didn’t have a release and they threatened to sue him. He did not show that film in my class, I wouldn’t allow it. You’ve got to have a release. It was a good teaching moment for everyone. He’s the only student I’ve ever had that I haven’t allowed to show their material in class.
Alexandra: The suing was just a drama thing. Did he actually get sued? No. If anyone should’ve been threatened to be sued it should’ve been me, not him.
Marcus: It went viral once I put it up on YouTube. Girls at state schools wanted to know about it, I got emails from professors wanting to show it, CurrentTV after I graduated offered to buy it. It was so much more than just a class project.
Allie: People recognized me. People would stop me on the street and ask me about it. Girls have messaged me on Facebook from all different schools and all different sororities. I’m happy to talk to the people who are unsure about it, but it’s annoying because I’m someone whose life is very much outside of Tridelt, and I’ve had to become this defender of Tridelt and of sororities, when it’s not my place and I never volunteered for it.
Alexandra: They thought that I was the biggest traitor ever, but honestly by that point I really didn’t give a shit. I just didn’t care; I wanted to get away from it. Senior year I moved off-campus and out of the- house and lived with my two best guy friends. It was a really big relief.
Marcus: It contributed to me deactivating. After I made the documentary, I got a Studio 22 grant to make another film. Once I left frat life and got in to the film program, I kind of regretted that I hadn’t been in that all along.
Tolchinsky: I really applaud Marcus for really sticking with it and having a vision. It might not be everybody’s vision, but he had a strong vision and he went out there and went with it and made it as good as he could.
Marcus: Some of it was self-serving. I wanted to be a star, I wanted to be entertainment, and that’s what you do. You go out there, you put your balls out, and you get shit for it.
Alexandra: I was a little miffed at him for selling me on the whole anonymous thing, and then showing the video when I clearly wasn’t. But I don’t care enough about preserving Tridelt’s image to fuck up the film. He wouldn’t have had a film if I hadn’t talked.
Paige: Looking back on it four years later, it’s much more entertaining than it was at the time. I know Marcus was just trying to make a good documentary, he was just trying to do his project and he’s a filmmaker and that’s what you do. We’re still Facebook friends, and we still talk occasionally.
Allie: I’ll never forgive him for this project. I’ll never be able to trust him and I’ll never see him as a true friend. He didn’t care, didn’t realize all the consequences, for me, for everyone in the film, for Panhel, for Tridelt, for all these new girls who are now not rushing. He just didn’t care, and I don’t think he does care to this day.
Marcus: Allie’s still not over it, it’s permanently scarred her, it’s scarred our relationship and our friendship. I stopped filming, there were so many more things I could have filmed, but it just got to a point where I couldn’t keep doing it because of my own emotional energy.
I’m proud of the film I’ve made, and I’m proud that it’s reached people and excited people across the country. It still hasn’t subsided.
I want to do something that excites people, and angers people, and makes them question things. My next idea for a documentary is to do something that’s about the twisted nature of the Hassidic people that live in Brooklyn. If I go through with it you better believe I’m going to get shit. Because it’s not a documentary of wine culture of Mississippi, it’s not a documentary on something boring.
Wow. As students at Northwestern, we are taught a code of conduct. If you promise anonymity, you GUARANTEE anonymity. You do not post your video on YouTube and sell out people you claim are your “friends.” I congratulate you on your integrity, Marcus.
As sorority girls, they were also taught a code of conduct for their respective houses. They violated it and they still cry foul. Ladies, I don’t know why you agreed to talk about this 4 years later, you did enough damage to your houses, to Panhel and to Greek life the first time around.