It was not the intention of the Panhellenic Council to create distress during this year's fall sorority recruitment process. We do believe, however, that an accurate representation of facts is necessary: of the 335 women who participated in this year's recruitment process, only one woman was released for lack of invitations.
With that said, the Panhellenic Council feels that there are many misconceptions about what we do. We in no way govern all eight sororities, but instead serve as a moderator for a board of sorority representatives. We set guidelines and oversee recruitment to help facilitate the interactions between chapters and potential new members. If women during recruitment did not end up in the chapter of their choice, it was because that chapter did not extend them an invitation.
The online management system that we use during recruitment in no way interferes with any PNM's selections and preferences. This system has been in place for nearly two years and was created to empower PNMs with more influence in the process. To our knowledge, this is the first time that we have encountered such a controversy in recruitment not with the established system itself, but with the mindset of potential new members.
All 83 women who withdrew did so voluntarily with invitations still on their plate. In fact, only 15 of these women had received only one invitation at the time of withdrawal, meaning that 68 women voluntarily left the process with two or more chapters still considering them for membership. Some of these women withdrew despite having invitations from four or five chapters. Therefore, these potential new members withdrew not because of a flaw in the distribution of invitations; they left the process voluntarily because many were not willing to consider the offers extended to them.
We also have a norm of placing all women who complete the process "in good faith," which means that they were willing to accept an invitation from any chapter to which they are invited, rather than minimizing their options (single-select, or "suiciding"). Had these PNMs been willing to truly consider membership in all chapters, rather than just a few, they would have found a home within our community. What would happen if every house had a pre-designated list of 30 girls, and if they didn't get their top 30, would not give any other girls a chance? The result an inverse of this year's recruitment ideology would clearly be problematic. Just as our chapters do not enter the recruitment process with a pre-determined list, potential new members should not enter the system with only one house in mind.
The Dartmouth Editorial Board's suggested process for recruitment ("Verbum Ultimum," Oct. 16) fails to account for the differences in recruiting strength that exists between chapters, which the invitation process attempts to equalize. The Dartmouth's suggested process would ultimately produce fewer chapters of much larger size an end result that our community finds unfavorable. We recognize that sororities do not have the same open social spaces as fraternities do, and that many women going through recruitment are meeting sisters for the first time. Using the IFC model would not work for two simple reasons: houses without open physical plants would be disproportionately disadvantaged, and we believe even fewer women would receive bids as the majority of women would repeatedly visit one of a few houses which would not be able to accommodate all of them as new members.
We do recognize that we need to make certain improvements for the future. We will consider making all-campus events for freshman women obligatory to increase equitable visibility, and we will reassess a cap on recruitment spending. In addition, we are looking for reasonable suggestions to improve the system, and have created an open forum for students at http://recruitmentfall09.blogspot.com. Despite our willingness to consider improvements, the Panhellenic Council will not assume responsibility for the close-mindedness of some of the women who participated in recruitment this year.
Ultimately, it comes down to this: not every PNM will be placed in their top choice. Instead of asking for a "good faith" effort to fix the system, we ask future potential new members who enter the process to genuinely consider each chapter as a possible home. All of our sisterhoods in the Panhellenic system have fun, smart, beautiful and fabulous women who want nothing more than to find PNMs to call their "sisters."
