Help!!!
 

Formal recruitmnt starts friday and we only have 12 girls signed up. Last year we had 100 signed up at this time. I go to a medium sized school...any ideas for what we can do?

We chalk...wear shirts...have signs up...hand out flyers....what else?

We have 11 sororities and 12 signed up...kind of a pointless recruitment

Have you placed flyers on all the floors in all the dorms?

Have you gone into the 101 level classes where freshman are found (biology, math, etc.) and asked to make an announcement to the class?

Placed ads in the school paper.

Placed an info table in the Union and manned it during the busiest hours of the day?

Is something going on at your campus or community? That kind of drop seems like it would be attributed to something sudden, rather than just a drop in interest in Greek Life. Have Greeks recently gotten bad press, or is there a serious economic downturn where you are, or something that would explain this?

Is there anything different from last year? Was the advertising for Rush different? Is orientation different? Did someone from Panhell drop the ball?

Thats an enormous difference for a Fall Rush .. .

Do you have deferred recruitment?

Any information you could give us allow us to help you better.

Cancel formal recruitment and reschedule it-- maybe for next semester, giving you a few months to have Panhellenic events with non-Greek women to build interest.

There is no sense is spending this much time and money when you have so few registrants. Invite the 12 registrants to COR events.

It is possible that hurricane relief efforts and the wide-reaching effects of the hurricane have disrupted normal school events. For the future, your Panhellenic Recruitment Exec. should track the numbers weekly and examine year-to-date where you are from years prior. If there is not already an agressive marketing plan in place, there should be a task force to draft and implement one in order to promote Greek Life and Sorority Recruitment to non-members.

this may sound stupid, but......is it possible that people are just waiting until the last mintue to sign up? i know that happened at the campus i advised. there would be just a handful the week aps were due and then BAM (just like emeril lol) the number would quadruple in about 3 days. we all freaked out up until that point.

if this is not the usual case at your school, i too might just cancel the "formal recruitment" and make it more like COR/COV events during the same time period. maybe panhel can make a big event for everyone...something even simple like a movie night, pajamma party, etc.

Do the women realize that since this is formal rush they have to attend events to be offered a bid - they can't just wait around for COB?

And I would wager there are LOTS of people waiting till the last minute to sign up - this is your 1st time as an active sister, right? You find out a lot you didn't know previously.

I don’t know where your campus is, but at this time our whole country is in a time of mourning for the victims of Katrina. Formal recruitment may be seen as a frivolous undertaking at a time of such sorrow.
I think that if you do decide to defer your formal recruitment this semester as was suggested in some responses, that you use the time to work together with your entire Greek System in developing a week of service events to benefit the Hurricane Katrina victims. My feeling is that most people are feeling impotent and extremely sad; helping in some way might invigorate your entire campus community. It would take creativity and time, but I think it might be very healing.

Question; have the numbers for formal recruitment been declining in recent years? If you have been using the same methods for advertising year after year and the numbers are not increasing it is time to try something else. Try an evite or other direct email tool to reach undergrad women before you next recruitment period. Place a strong emphasis on a well-designed easy to navigate Greek Life/Panhellenic website. The web is the first place that young women look when they want information on any topic so you it is extremely important that you can market recruitment through this channel. If these are things you are already doing, then I apologize for the repetition.

Again if you do decide to defer FR, I also suggest that during the end of November and beginning of December that your Panhellenic sponsors’ events the undergraduate women would appreciate. A safety class, time-management/study tips seminar, financial aid tips, health and wellness speakers…have all the chapters in your system put a call out to their alumnae to see if there is a local “expert” on a certain topic who would be willing to donate their time. If you do this a few times, undergrad women will enter second semester with a positive view of the contributions of sororities.

Then there is the all important word-of-mouth (we totally forget how powerful a tool a personal invitation is). If you have each of your sophomores and juniors committed to asking at least 5 women each to recruitment you will certainly have more women excited about Recruitment.

Good luck, let us know what you decide to do.

This is nowhere near Katrina so I really don't think that is the issue. Not that people aren't concerned, but I don't think that is the problem.

I forgot to ask in my earlier post - are most of the groups at total? Because if women know all the groups are under total, and know where they want to go, they're not going to bother doing formal. They're going to wait till afterwards and COB.

IMO this school (or any PA state school) should not be doing formal rush first semester - considering probably 90% of the freshmen went home over Labor Day weekend and still can't find their butts with both hands, it's too much to ask - especially in an area where not everyone and their mother and sisters has been Greek since 1850.

I want to make it clear that I am talking about this entire campus not just this particular organization, and I'm definitely about to get on my soapbox.

I'm familiar with this campus and they are currently working to fix the situation. However I will point out that it is not uncommon for them to have a quota of 2 during formal recruitment and then miraculously COB 100 some women within the next few weeks. They need to get those women to go through formal recruitment and quit sabatoging the process. It's not as bad as it was before, especially since they lowered total, however it is still a problem. Also there is general apathy among all students here in regard to joining ANY student organization, not just greek life.

They've had an NPC consult and it was the decision of the group that came to continue with first semester fall formal recruitment.

I think ALL of the individuals in those groups on this particular campus need to examine why they joined their organizations and strive towards those values. You also need to listen to what your greek advisor is saying because she is trying very hard to increase the number of people in your Greek system but she can only show you the path, you have to decide to travel that road.

Plus the campus environment isn't a very friendly one. I was walking to recruitment on this campus and the PNM's were meeting with their recruitment counselors. There were two unaffiliated women walking in front of me and said, "oh look at me, I want to join a sorority I'm a sheep".

You can hang fliers and put signs up all you want. My question to you is how often do you pay attention to those things? You need to get out and talk to women about why it's great to be greek and provide them with the opportunities you are talking about. Don't say you value academics when all you do is party...that kind of thing. You wouldn't be happy if you went to the supermarket to buy a bag of chips and then opened it up and found it full of rice, right? Do what you're supposed to do as a system and then to an extent you will get some PNM's to come. Each woman in your house should try to get at least 1 woman to sign up for formal recruitment. If each sorority did that, going on what total is for your campus you would have at least 200 women going through.

you are my new hero. i think these are important points for most schools, not just this one.

Was Total lowered by 20 on this campus?

If the chapters on this campus don't want to do formal recruitment and prefer to COB, have they looked into some of the alternate formats for recruitment?

There are 11 chapters on this campus. They need to have a formal recruitment or at the very least, a structured informal where the rushees have to meet every sorority at least once and there is a party schedule arranged by Panhel. The system as it is now is not helping the smaller chapters or working in a panhellenic manner. All COB would only make it worse.

Getting rid of an organized rush period completely on a campus with this many chapters goes against everything NPC stands for. You might as well let them have guys and beer at the rush parties while you're at it.

As of right now about 40 girls are signed up..which is better I guess, but it seems like a lot more are waiting until the last minute to sign up (surprise surprse)


Ive talked to a lot of freshmen about going greek and they don't really get what formal recruitment IS...so they don't sign up.
Do you think if NPC had a "So you're thinking of going Greek" Night...with information about Going Greek in general...that would help?
Bc right now as it is, Friday is the informational meeting about Formal, but you can only go if you've signed up for formal AND its more or less where you get your Alpha Omega (rho chi..) groups and your schedules.


thanks for all the suggestions and help

Could you possibly do this during the new student conferences? Do ya'll HAVE new student conferences? The ones at my school were huge, and also mandatory.

If your school has problems with involvement in ANY kind of student organization, maybe there could be a program about getting involved in student orgs in general, and have a section of that be devoted to greek life. Then, you could also have a separate, smaller presentation for women interested in sorority life. I would make this kind of a forum situation, a group of reps (like one from each chapter) could explain the sorority system on campus, what ya'll are all about, and explain the how-tos for formal recruitment. The, I would let the new students ask questions. You could also have a sign-up sheet right there for girls who want to be contacted about sorority recruitment.

Of course, this kind of situation will probably work BEST if done in a new student conference type of setting. Does this sound like something that would work on your campus?

Since we have deffered recruitment, we use fall quarter to really pump up recruitment. There's usually an "all greek" pannel (with food) and then there's like a women's only mixer, where the PNMS and sorority women meet in the campus center and eat ice cream and talk individually...it lets the girls meet the PNMS, the PNMs meet the other PNMs who have signed up, and usually a bunch of girls sign up there because the friends that dragged them there are rushing and they want to too! Don't underestimate peer power. A lot of girls don't want to go through rush alone...they want friends to do it too, so having an event that mixes the girls who have allreadu signed up and those on the bubble might help.

I was a PX this year and sat the recruitment sign up table a lot this year...going into winter break, we had maybe 69 girls signed up, with 6 sororities. Come back from winter break, and before opening ceremony on Wednesday, we reached 100! Then we had 25 more girls sign up the morning of Open house and got funneled into the PX groups with girls who didn't show up. Made it interesting at the chapters...the girls always had to make up new name tags and what have you.

Kate - if I'm not mistaken, school started the 29th - lots and lots of people went home over Labor Day (this past Monday) and now rush is starting this Friday?

Unless, as Lindz suggested, there was a section of freshman orientation that dealt specifically with rush, it's way too much and too soon to even expect freshmen to have a clue. Plus there isn't much information on the website. It has dates, and generic info, but it needs to explain exactly what happens during recruitment. It's one thing to do rush at this time with all upperclassmen who know something about it. It's quite another to do it with freshmen, in an area that does not have a strong Greek tradition.

I don't know who the NPC committee was composed of that said first semester formal should stay, but they apparently did not realize that schools who DO have rush like that have other things in place to make it a success, like easy to find, detailed, updated sections on the school website and a concerted effort by Panhel and/or the school to inform freshmen of this opportunity. I don't see either of those here.

Your Panhel might want to get in touch with Penn State or Pitt's Panhel and ask them for some pointers since they're the only ones I can think of with as many groups and a similar student base.

The NPC consult - one woman was not only an IUP alumna, chapter advisor for the local chapter but also in a very good position in the upper part of her sorority. I value their opinions - the information that they returned with wasn't shocking but it was true. While recruitment was the real reason they came they singled out some bigger problems which have been making progress over the past 2 years, the most significant being grades.

However - I know that there are quite a few more women signed up than originally was posted and they placed almost all the women last year so that's a plus - and there are currently more signed up this year than last so it's growing. Rome wasn't built in a day and neither is the greek system here.

Oh and for whomever asked, ceiling was lowered by 20 women but it hadn't been readjusted in many, many years when it probably should have been.

I still stand by what I said earlier, but again, it takes time.

Something my former school does is to give a folder w/lots of information about on campus organizations. In this folder, is the flyer for recruitment w/the names of all the sororities and fraternities on campus. It also gives the information for info night & registration. This is given to all incoming freshman, & transfer students.

Formal starts tonite (well their information meeting) and as of last night we had 87 girls signed up. I guess a lot DO wait until the last minute, but I have taken a few suggestions from this forum to our Greek Life advisor.

So we had 105 total signed up...50 have dropped out already.Rumor has it that there was some scandal with a sorority telling girls to drop out of formal and just go to them during informal and they'd get a bid!!! I dont know if thats the whole reason, but its pretty crappy.

We'll see what happens.

Greek advisor or Recruitment Counselors need to go to these drop outs and talk to them about why they dropped out. Some of them might not be smart enough to hide the fact that they were guaranteed a bid from a group...if that's the case. It's always best to talk with drop outs anyway because they can tell you if your recruitment procedures/style/etc. are horrible or not. Best way to get feedback for next year.

The other thing is that if you have a list of them and a LARGE majority of them join one group right after recruitment, then you might have a problem.

BUT, if that group doesn't have enough room to bid all 50 (meaning they'll go over total), you'll have some pissed off PNMs who may rat out the group anyway.

That's just my random two cents.

PsychTau

According to my records, their Total is 45, so NO group has enough slots to dole out to all those PNMs.

But I'm sure each PNM doesn't know the sorority told the same thing to 49 other people.

ETA PinkSigma3, please check your pms. :)

if what is rumored to have happened is true, that is a MAJOR recruitment infraction, and the greeklife office should investigate it now!!bring it to their attention.

that would mean that the chapters would actually have to file an infraction which doesn't really seem to happen.

Total was just lowered last year from 65 to 45.

well quota was 4 n we got 5 beautiful pnm's

congratulations to your chapter!!

Well done, congratulations!