Recruitment without Houses
 

Hi everyone. I need some help. NMSU is going through a whole mess of housing issues and are closing the Greek Housing at the end of the school year. So we are trying to come up with a solution for recruitment since there will be 2 chapters without a house and 3 with houses. We are trying to come up with a solution for all chapters. We have suggested the student union bit the advisors for the housed sororities are against it. They are claiming their house is one of their values (I think a house doesn't make the sistehood).

What are some examples of schools that use the student union for recruitment.

At Stanford all of the recruitment parties are at campus locations: the Union, Campus Center, etc. The sororities that are housed are not allowed to use the houses for recruitment.

Arizona State, UAB are two that come to mind.

At Texas State the houses were too far apart and recruitment buses were disruptive in the historic district. They have recruitment in the meeting rooms of an Embassy Suites hotel

Valdosta State has used the Union.

Clemson used the basketball arena concourse with large curtains acting as dividers between each sorority's section before the arena was taken offline for renovations, and during that time used rooms in the student union and basically anywhere else on campus that could host recruitment.

Christopher Newport has recently constructed houses for three sororities and one fraternity, but they are too small to hold recruitment in so sorority recruitment events will again be in the student union this year.

FGCU has no houses, so sororities use conference rooms around campus. The school assigns the rooms.

Seems to me there is a Panhellenic issue (problem) going on: the advisors for the housed sororities are against "leveling the playing field" (using the Student Union or a neutral site) for recruitment for the non-housed sororities?

A house as part of a sorority's values? Now that's one I hadn't heard before.

seems to me that this is an appropriate time to call in your NPC Area Adviser.

Hopefully value = selling points, not standards, morals, ideals!

Or maybe that having a house is an added value to paying membership dues. ("You get more for your money")

Sure guys, I see your interpretations. And I am with Titchou - time to call the NPC area adviser.

Paying membership dues: it costs a lot more to support a facility (regardless of whether a member is living in or out). So it would be a selling point for the non-housed sororities. "Our dues are lower because we don't have the costs of a house, so you get more for your $". But somehow it doesn't quite work like that, does it?

I mean - oh, nevermind. You know.

"Togetherness is one of our values and WE can achieve it since we can all live together in our HOUSE. " (Obviously this is BS but I'm presenting it as something a housed group might say, hopefully a little more subtly. )

I agree with Titchou that it is time to call in some bigger NPC guns. The fact that it's the advisors of the groups - who should be a little more adult and understanding of Panhellenic unity - and not the collegians downing this idea is really problematic.

I'm just trying to think of reasons why the housed chapters would come up with that. I'm not saying that I totally support what they're doing. I think 33girl was more on the right track with the speculation that those chapters might say that a house gives them a place to gather and be "together".

Because they believe having a house gives them an edge in recruitment now but don't want to admit it. So the other statement sounds nicer. In other words,it's a ploy.

Hey navane, I was attempting sarcasm (or something of the sort). Remarks not directed at anyone on this thread! Should have used "indeed" instead of "sure" to start off the first sentence, huh?

I'm with 33 and Titchou and you and everyone else here; this is really making me very uncomfortable. At a campus where the majority of chapters are housed (such as Indiana), with a few chapters not yet housed, this (having everyone have parties at a neutral site) may not be feasible. And there are other factors as well in that scenario.

But at NMSU they don't have that issue. So what's the big protest from the housed chapters about moving recruitment to neutral sites so that all chapters are on the same playing field? Uh uh. Doesn't sit well, at all.

More and more I think about Animal Farm. "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

This is exactly what I was going to say- they will decide what is "fairest" overall (I'm assuming it would be a third location[s]). We need to go to our area advisor often; they are usually very open to helping and quite friendly!

We just recently got houses at my university and, before that, each sorority had their own decorated room in the University Center for recruitment.

I think Texas State's program would be a good one to follow - all parties until preference are at the hotel. Preference is held at the houses. It would be a good compromise, because up until pref everyone is on a level playing field, while allowing (at pref) the housed sororities a chance to showcase their houses.

At my university, we have many chapters with housing and a few without, and we all just use different rooms in our university's student union building. We also switch up what rooms we're in each night based off of RFM numbers, and on pref some chapters host in different rooms around campus. However, recruiting sisters and recruitment counselors have to always be careful when discussing why certain chapters don't have housing, because a few of our chapters without on campus housing lost theirs due to infractions with the university. My chapter, for example, just got our house a few years ago, but our VPR repeatedly told us not to describe our house as "new" so we didn't have to answer any questions that might be perceived as recruitment violations.