Three hundred and forty-six women participated in fall term sorority recruitment, which lasted from Sept. 28 to Oct. 5. Of those who rushed, 273 received a bid from one of seven houses participating in formal Panhellenic recruitment, according to Panhell executives.
Thirty-seven bids were extended at Alpha Phi sorority, 39 at Alpha Xi Delta sorority, 44 at Chi Delta sorority and 43 at Kappa Delta Epsilon sorority, representatives of the organizations said. Epsilon Kappa Theta sorority, which did not participate in Panhellenic recruitment, extended 21 bids through its shake-out process.
Representatives from Kappa Delta, Kappa Kappa Gamma and Sigma Delta sororities did not respond to request for comment by press time.
The number of bids extended from each individual sorority are roughly on par with numbers from last year, though the total number of bids extended dropped by 24. Overall, of the total number of women who rushed, 21 percent either withdrew from the process or did not receive bids.
During the first round of recruitment last Monday and Tuesday, potential new members attended parties hosted by each sorority, after which they selected their top four and ranked their bottom three choices. Panhell vice president of recruitment Sarah Young ’16 said that the 15 minute-long financial aid presentations typically presented at each house during the first round were replaced with digital brochures so that prospective new members — or PNMs — and sorority members could have more and longer conversations.
“We felt that the PNMs weren’t getting a lot of information out of the programming and finance talks,” Young said. “Putting it in booklet form allowed the PNMs who were interested in programming or finance in particular to go back and review the information in their own time, in a setting where they are more likely to retain the information.”
For the second round on Friday and Saturday, PNMs were called back to one to four houses, and again selected their top two and ranked their bottom two choices. After submitting final choices on Sunday after attending preference night parties, PNMs received their house bids on Monday.
“We were really excited about round two because every single PNM was asked back to at least one house, and that’s something that we’re very proud of because one of our main goals is to be an inclusive organization,” Young said. “We know that the Greek system has this stigma of being an exclusive system. It’s inherently exclusive in the way membership selection works. The fact that every PNM was asked back to at least one house during round two means that each sister who wanted a place did have one in the Greek system.”
In the spring of 2014, Panhell announced a new policy that would guarantee that each women participating in rush would be called back to at least four houses for round two. During recruitment last fall, Panhell executives called sorority presidents asking them to invite more women to the second round, but two sororities refused — meaning that some women still did receive fewer than four invitations.
Chi Delta, which officially separated from its former national organization, Delta Delta Delta, went through its first formal recruitment process this term. According to Young, most of the sororities on campus that are currently linked to a national governing body have been discussing the idea of localizing.
“I was very impressed with the [number of preferences for] Chi Delta, which was promising in terms of localization,” Young said. “We are really interested to see how localization impacted the recruitment process and if it changed the outcome or number of preferences they received. We definitely saw a positive trend there, so that was reassuring, especially considering there is a trend on campus toward localization.”
For the second year, Epsilon Kappa Theta sorority held its own shake-out process outside of formal Panhellenic recruitment, in which PNMs attended one of two events before being offered bids. Of the 21 bids extended, 20 were accepted.
“Since it’s still a new system, I think a lot of people were still confused,” Theta president Sally Kim ’16 said. “I was sad to hear that some girls thought you had to rush to shake out, you can’t participate in both or if you get a bid from us on the first day, you can’t rush — even though that’s not true. I think there are still some misconceptions because it is so new, and I’m hoping that we will find ways to advertise the rules more clearly.”
According to vice president of public relations Allison Chou ’17, the Panhellenic Council is focusing on two areas of improvement regarding rush — transparency and inclusivity, regarding both racial and socioeconomic diversity. Chou said that currently, the Panhellenic Council covers 75 percent of financial need.
“We really want any woman who wants to join a sorority to be able to be a part of any sisterhood, and not have to select her sisterhood based on financial aid options in that chapter,” Chou said. “So the long term goal would be to cover any need that’s not covered by individual houses through the Panhellenic scholarship.”
