Helped by a strong showing by Alpha Xi Delta sorority, the College's Panhellenic sororities gained a whopping 60 more members this Fall than a year ago -- a rise of close to 40 percent.
The seven Panhellenic sororities have added a total of 220 members so far this year --compared to 160 new sorority members last Fall.
All in all, this was a good fall for Panhell, with the total number of women rushing going up from last year, and the number of women dropping out of rush during the process declining sharply.
This fall close to 300 women rushed, including those who attended the newly added optional Round Zero -- and only 21 women dropped out. Last year, approximately 266 women rushed, but more than 100 members dropped out during the process.
According to statistics released by the Office of Residential Life yesterday, thus far Kappa Delta Epsilon sorority has added 40 new members this Fall, Delta Delta Delta sorority has added 38 and Sigma Delta sorority has gained 37.
Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority has added 36 new women, Alpha Xi has added 35, and Epsilon Kappa Theta sorority has added 31.
Zeta Beta Chi sorority -- which recently deaffiliated from the national Delta Gamma -- has added three new members thus far this term, though a number of bids the house extended are still outstanding, and theoretically can still be sunk in the future.
This year the "quota" was set at 34 bids, meaning each house could invite up to 34 women to join. But some houses surpassed the quota, which Panhell Vice President Ann Marie Nee '98 stressed was not the decision of the individual houses.
"A house has no control over the number of women it receives once Pref Night begins," Nee wrote in an electronic-mail message. "The size of the pledge class is a function of the bid matching process. In this fairly complicated process, the house advisors convene and confidentially match the rushee's preferences to each sorority's list of desired pledges," she wrote.
Since the spirit of the matching process is to match as many women with their first-choice houses as possible, some houses were allowed to surpass the quota. When a rushee ranks both houses to which she attends on Preference Night, she is guaranteed a bid.
But when a woman does not receive a bid because her two choices have exceeded quota, then quota addition takes place, where all women are accepted until everyone has a bid, according to Nee.
Quota is determined by the total number of women who receive invitations to Preference Night, divided by seven, since there are seven Panhell sororities.
For the most part, the five houses who have had strong memberships over the past few years -- Kappa, Sigma Delt, Tri-Delt, Theta and KDE -- did reasonably well, with all except Theta reaching quota, and Theta only falling short by three.
But the two other houses -- Alpha Xi and Zeta Chi -- had different fortunes.
Alpha Xi -- no doubt benefitting from the recent announcement that it will be able to lease the former Beta Theta Pi fraternity house at 6 Webster Ave. until the year 2000 -- gained 35 new members, nearly tripling the total membership of the house, which until now had been under 20.
Zeta Chi, which over the summer went local, deaffiliating itself from DG, has had three members join thus far. Last year, DG also initially gained just three new members.
But Panhell officials and other sorority presidents insisted that lower numbers does not necessarily mean a weaker house.
"I don't think that numbers determine a house that does well versus a house that does poorly," Alpha Xi President Emily Csatari '99 said. "I think Zeta Chi got members they were excited about, and getting three of the best people during rush is still exciting ... The people who ended up in that house wanted to be there."
Panhell President Mariam Malik '98 said it was difficult to say why some houses do better than others. "It's hard to predict how any house will perform during rush," she said. "We just went into it with our fingers crossed for every house."
But Malik also stressed that having "fewer women in a pledge class does not imply a house is not a strong house."
All of the sorority officials contacted by The Dartmouth were quick to credit Panhell for the increased interest in the sorority system.
Tri-Delt President Jess Ellsworth '98 said Panhell "did an excellent job of looking at some of the problems in the rush process last year and changing the process this year to make it better based on the previous experience."
Ellsworth specifically cited the addition of the optional Round Zero and the changing of the process of how women were invited back to houses from round to round.
KDE President Kate Frias '98 agreed that "the way things have changed this year have helped to make things a little bit more equitable."
Each sorority president contacted by The Dartmouth last night expressed excitement at her house's new pledge class, but Alpha Xi's Csatari was among the most enthusiastic. "It was our first rush -- the first time we had a chance to show what we had done to someone else. We were really excited," she said.
Malik spoke of the importance of the addition of Alpha Xi -- formerly Delta Pi Omega -- to the rush process.
"Having an extra house and another national just adds to the rush experience and the diversity of our sorority system," Malik said. "We needed that."
