Dear applicant

Dear applicant,

We regret to inform you that you are not worthy of membership in our organization. Your performance at Northwestern so far, a long two weeks, has failed to distinguish you from the masses of jittery freshmen. The application committee has carefully considered your resume and determined that you are not the economics major living in Bobb we’ve been yearning for. During your time here, you’ve achieved little more than putting your shoes on and marching through the Arch and into the off-campus frats. While we commend you for your remarkable observation that student organizations are another conduit toward social dominance and embezzled Blaze profit-share money, we just don’t think you’re right for us, Students for Perfunctory Involvement, the premier socially conscious sustainable, diverse group on campus.

The applicant pool this year was the strongest ever. By this we mean that our exec board enticed candidates like you into applying with witty Facebook in-jokes, knowing all the while we never really wanted you. You, unlike our recruitment chair, are not from Long Island. This is a deal breaker. We could never accept someone that wouldn't fit into our culture of over-scheduled meetings and badly themed fundragers.

However, we would like to invite you to commend us on our increasingly exclusive reputation. This allows us to fill our ranks with the shining stars of the freshman class: those who acquired social capital through participation in the right pre-orientation programs or through pre-existing Chicago suburb-ness. While we have actively chosen to become more inclusive by appointing a diversity and inclusion chair and using the word "diversity" in the occasional meeting agenda, this does not extend to you. If it wasn't clear, we don't want you. We will, however, continue to invite you to taste the bitterness of defeat through regularly advertised programming and Facebook updates.

If you are still interested next year, we encourage you to develop your brand in the following ways: by raising excessive amounts of money for Dance Marathon (nothing says #philanthropy like begging your rich uncles for money on Facebook), plastering your feeble, cookie bar-filled body atop the flyers on the walk up to Norris and removing all non-buzzwords from your vocabulary. We can't wait to see how you've engaged with our dynamic group-culture-opportunities-collegiate-business-co-ed-passions-cultural-educational-fundraising-top-notch-content-advancement-social-engineering-design-content-community-arts-philanthropy for influencers.

Best,

Students for Perfunctory Involvement