This past week, 345 women participated in fall term recruitment for Panhellenic sororities, which ended Oct. 1. The eight sororities extended a total of 294 bids, according to the Office of Greek Life.
Forty-three women accepted bids at Alpha Phi sorority, 39 at Alpha Xi Delta sorority, 42 at Chi Delta sorority, 17 at Epsilon Kappa Theta sorority, 22 at Kappa Delta sorority, 44 at Kappa Delta Epsilon sorority, 45 at Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority and 42 at Sigma Delta sorority. This year, 85 percent of the women who registered for recruitment ultimately accepted bids, a 6 percentage point increase from last year’s 79 percent.
In comparison to last year’s figures, four more women accepted bids from A Phi, two more at Chi Delt and one more at KDE. AXiD saw no change in the number of bids accepted from last year to this year.
For the first time this year, Sigma Delt adopted a shakeout process after a unanimous vote amongst house members. After attending open houses at Sigma Delt, potential new members expressed interest in receiving a bid by “shaking out” — expressing interest in joining the sorority — with the current members. Sigma Delt was thus no longer directly involved in the formal Panhellenic recruitment process. Because the shakeout process is not binding, women were able to participate in both formal recruitment and Sigma Delt’s process.
EKT adopted the shakeout process in the fall of 2014 and continued the same procedures this year.
The remaining sororities participate in formal recruitment, which is a week-long process. Students attend parties at each sorority throughout multiple rounds, ranking their top choices after each of the first two rounds. The women are then called back by specific houses, at which they attend more parties. The process ends with bid night, when bids are extended by each house.
In the spring of 2014, Panhell announced a new policy that would guarantee each participant at least a set number of callbacks after round two. This year, this policy was not in place. Toward the beginning of this year’s recruitment process, the Greek Leadership Council sent out a campus-wide email to officially announce its policy that no Greek houses may consider ability to pay for dues when extending bids.
