The Interfraternity Council and Panhellenic Council will kick off Winter term recruitment this weekend, with about 70 percent more women rushing this term than last winter. Some 89 women signed up to participate in recruitment as of Thursday evening, whereas last winter's recruitment process drew just 52 women. The IFC, the fraternity system's governing organization, anticipates that the total number of men who sink bids this winter will be comparable to last winter's figure at about 25 new members.
Panhell Vice President of Recruitment Marisa Origel '07 attributes this rise to the number of women who withdrew from recruitment Fall term.
This fall, 57 of the 291 women who entered recruitment -- approximately 20 percent -- withdrew, compared to about eight percent of women during the previous fall.
Origel said that this wider distribution did not detract from women's abilities to be invited back to a sorority in general. Origel believes that Fall term's high dropout rate was due to potential new members being unwilling to consider joining certain sororities.
"Unfortunately, stereotypes of the sororities play a significant role in the potential new members' decisionmaking," Origel said.
Director of the Coed, Fraternity and Sorority system Deb Carney and CFS Assistant Director Megan Johnson, view fluctuations in rush participant numbers as part of normal ebbs and flows.
"This year was very consistent with previous years." Johnson said. "We have women that go through every year in the fall and are overlooked because there's so many girls, and do it in the winter and end up totally happy."
Johnson also echoed Origel's comments, emphasizing that preconceived notions often affect women's decisions to drop out of recruitment.
"My sense is that there are women that go through recruitment who already have their minds made up," she said.
Johnson attributed the "hype" over recruitment this year to disappointed women speaking up, and suggested that they may be particularly "dramatic."
"It's really easy for the people that complain to speak up, and for the people who feel like it was fine to take a backseat [in the dialogue]," she said.
According to Origel, the number of women sororities could ask back decreased both because of the addition of Alpha Phi sorority to the recruitment process and the fact that 28 fewer women participated in Fall term recruitment than in 2005.
"This year it was a smaller number of girls divided by one more house, so invite quotas were decreased but it was in proportion to the houses and the number of girls," she said.
Johnson rejected the notion that Alpha Phi affected womens' chances of being asked back to other sororities, and said that the goal of recruitment is to give women "as much opportunity as possible."
"It's easy to use Alpha Phi as a scapegoat," Johnson said. "Those women may or may not have gotten invited back whether or not they rushed last year or this year."
Final pledge class sizes were reduced as well, from 49 women per sorority in Fall 2005 to 37 in Fall 2006, a nearly 25 percent decrease.
Some women who are participating in recruitment for the second time this term, however, feel that the process leaves some women with invites to houses where they may not feel comfortable.
"I think a lot of girls dropped out because of lack of options after round one," said one sophomore woman who plans to rush again this term. "My general feeling is that most of these girls were surprised at how many houses they had been cut from, since the process is advertised as 'mutual selection.' In reality that's not always the case."
Despite complaints from disappointed women, Johnson and Origel defend the computerized system Panhell uses as well as the recruitment process in general, maintaining that both do what they are designed to do.
"I think the system is fine. It did its job," Origel said. "Girls were put into sororities and they just didn't want them. They need to be secure enough, confident enough and not so superficial that they automatically eliminate sororities they do not consider to be popular."