Izzy Darnell Breaks Her Silence After Dropping Bama Rush Before Bid Day

NEED TO KNOW

• After revealing to followers over the weekend that she had dropped out of sorority recruitment at the University of Alabama, Izzy Darnell is speaking out about the decision

• Izzy is the younger sister of Kylan Darnell, who has grown a massive following since her freshman year of college for her sorority life-centered content

• In a video, Izzy can be seen holding a mock Bid Day card with her name on it and then ripping it up, with the words "haha fooled y'all again" written over the footage

Izzy Darnell will not be following in her older sister's footsteps.

Over the weekend, the TikTok star, who has been participating in rush at the University of Alabama over the last two weeks, took to the platform to let followers in on a secret: she dropped the recruitment process just before Bid Day.

Izzy is the younger sister of 2022's Bama Rush breakout star Kylan Darnell, known to many online as the "Queen of Sorority Rush" as she gained a huge following for posting the recruitment process during her freshman year.

Now a senior at Alabama and an active member of the Zeta Tau Alpha sorority, Kylan's followers spent the weeks leading up to recruitment speculating if the younger Darnell would also accept a bid from the sorority.

However, as she revealed over the weekend, Izzy didn't accept a bid from a sorority at all.

In a video posted to her account over the weekend, just before sororities were set to celebrate Bid Day (the highly-anticipated day where girls find out which sorority they have ultimately received a bid from), Izzy cheekily revealed that she had dropped the process entirely by ripping up a mock Bid Day card with her name on it as she frolicked in the water far from school in Orange Beach, Ala.

In a follow-up post, the influencer, who has over one million followers on TikTok, shared her reasoning behind the surprising decision.

"Okay, so I've gotten so many questions about Rush and what happened, so this is the one time I'm going to talk about it," Izzy prefaced the video. "Don't ask me again."

She went on to explain that she had entered recruitment with a full intention to participate in the rush process, explaining that she had heard about another micro-influencer who had rushed the previous year, who had tried to go through recruitment and film the process, which Izzy claims "ruined it for the rest of us that do social media."

"I went in with the mindset that, 'If they don't want all of me, then they are not getting any of me,'" she continued.

She also addressed rumors that Zeta, her sister's sorority, had dropped her.

"You are wrong," she said. "The first day, you have this list on an app, and you order like the houses that you want to see and then at the bottom you put the three that you don't even want to walk in. I put Zeta as my bottom three because, I want to be Izzy I don't want to be Kylan."

She explained that she didn't want to take another girl's spot if they wanted Zeta, and ultimately ranked Zeta low to accommodate for that. She also shared a screenshot of the app where potential new members rank their choices, seemingly confirming that she had put Zeta as number five on her list of desired sororities, and Delta Gamma number one.

However, while trying to stay an individual was a priority in Izzy's recruitment process, it wasn't the ultimate reason that she chose to withdraw from recruitment.

"The main reason why I dropped was because everyone was telling me I didn't need one," Izzy opened up in the video. "And I agree with that, 100%. I've never really dreamed and wanted one. So I was just like, 'Yeah, I'll try it and if I don't like it then I'll drop later. Y'all are right I don't need it."

Izzy also cited concerns about her social media presence as a key factor in her decision. "Genuinely, a sorority has a lot of rules about social media and the way that you can post and talk to people," she said.

"I feel like we," she said, indicating that she was speaking directly to her followers, "have such a close relationship. I don't want to do that, I don't want to vanish."

"I hope everybody understands the point of this video," Izzy concluded. "I'm not trying to be mean. I'm just trying to live my life how I want."

Izzy and Kylan's mother, Tonya, also weighed in on the decision, taking to TikTok in her own video to clear up some more rumors.

"I've seen some wild takes on people deciding or talking about whether or not Izzy really rushed," Tonya said in a GRWM video. "Guys, she really did rush. Now, did Izzy question the entire time and even before she rushed? Did she question the fact that a sorority might not be for her? Yeah, totally."

"But Kylan kept telling her, 'You just have to try it to see if you like it,'" Tonya followed up.

"Izzy's decision wasn't made just on a whim either," she clarified. "I don't want you to think that we did have large part of Kylan and Izzy's social media team in Tuscaloosa with us. We were not by ourselves there and it was discussed daily. Like, 'Okay, Izzy, what are your thoughts for the day?' Everything was considered. Even taking a house that's not known or popular and maybe making it very popular was, was discussed."

But the tension between social media and sororities ultimately ruled the decision in the end, according to Tonya. "Bottom line, social media and sorority houses, it's kind of like water and oil," she said.

Even Kylan, who spoke with PEOPLE about her decision to take a break from her senior year rush duties early last week, has said that she has struggled with the friction between social media and sorority life.

"For the future PNMs, I just wouldn't post," she told PEOPLE. "I feel bad that I've posted this whole time online and made girls think that they should, but I've just realized that the talk around sororities and universities, if girls post online and they're not picking them, I just feel like that's very disheartening."

"At the end of the day, it's not going to make or break your life," she said. "If you don't get into a sorority, you're going to find friends here. If you do, you're going to have a great experience."

After years of participating in recruitment and sorority life, her takeaway for potential new members was to make sure that they stay true to themselves.

"I would tell them to be themselves. To really, really just not form into the Southern sorority girl character. Keep their personality because I noticed that I, myself, freshman year, changed a lot whenever I did first get into a sorority, and then I kind of had to find myself again."

Read the original article on People