BY JUSTIN KOZLOSKI ’14, Editor-in-Chief
Two weeks ago, the four sororities, lead by the Panhellenic Council held their annual Spring recruitment to extend offers of membership to women across the campus to one of the four organizations.
According to the Panhellenic Council, over the course of three nights, 179 women interested in joining a sorority (Potential New Members or PNMs) attended a series of events designed to fit them into the most compatible sorority and to help the sororities decide who would be best for their respective organization.
All of these events are planned and run by recruitment counselors. Recruitment counselors are sorority sisters who disaffiliate from their organization for a semester so as to impartially manage the recruitment process that is vital to all of the sororities for maintaining membership.
On the first night of recruitment, all of the potential new members meet with the recruitment counselors who give them the schedule of events and outline the recruitment process. From there the PNMs go to an event for every one of the sororities and then meet with the recruitment counselors again to rank their sorority preferences. These rankings determine which of the sorority events they will attend the next night as they will only go to their top three at most. At the end of the second night, the process is repeated and they once again make selections from the three to narrow down the events for the final night of recruitment which is known as Preference Night. As the name implies, this is the night where the potential new members go to the sorority event of their choice, though they may attend two if they are still undecided as to which sorority they feel they best belong.
After all of the events are completed and all of the information from the sororities and and the potential new members is gathered, recruitment ends on the fourth day with Bid Day where the sororities hand out the invitations to the girls they think are the best fit and who have expressed the most interest in the organization to join their respective sisterhood.
“The most exciting part of recruitment for the Potential Members would probably be Bid Day,” said Bianca Santos ’14, Panhellenic vice president of member recruitment. “There is an overwhelming build up of anticipation as they wait to see which sorority they will be invited to join. The chapters are always so excited to welcome their new members, so these ladies are showered with love and attention for hours.”
The process of deciding on bids is one that is based off of mutual selection, in which both the sorority and the potential new member have an opinion in the process. The sorority prioritizes which girls they would like to invite back while the potential new members decide which ones they would like to be invited back to. This process allows for the new members to be narrowed into the sorority of best fit and, unlike fraternities, only allows for one sorority to offer a bid to an individual.
Bid Day is typically filled with celebration and activities welcoming all of the girls who got bids into their new sorority and the recruitment counselors become re-affiliated with their sisterhood and can resume wearing letters and participating in the business of the chapter.
However, before recruitment can begin, there is a good amount of work to be done preparing ahead of time. The events for recruitment are usually planned almost a year in advance so that there is ample time to finish what needs to be done and new recruitment counselors can be trained to properly run the entire recruitment process.
All in all, this year’s Spring recruitment went according to plan and all of the sororities are excited to welcome new women to their sisterhoods.
“Recruitment was great this year,” said Geena Chang ’15, president of Kappa Delta Sorority. “We had so many girls go through so it was a crazy time, but a very positive experience as a whole. We got a great group of girls for our new pledge class. We were very excited to welcome some amazing girls into our sisterhood. They’re a great addition and are going to do great things for our chapter!”
The other sororities were unable to comment as of press time.
Senior Justin Kozloski is the Editor-in-Chief. His email is jkozlosk@fandm.edu.