Recruit more girls to think about pledging
 

My school is a very small school people refer to as a suitcase college. People come on mondays with their suitcases and leave on fridays. In the past couple of years our numbers have been going down.
This upcoming fall semester we will only have four active sisters.
We are looking for ideas to recruit girls to look into the greek system.

We are looking for number but we also want quality girls.
please help!!!!
-Sister of Delta Chi Omega:rolleyes:

there is an entire forum devoted to recruitment. just down the block a bit, make a right at link. can't miss it.:)

Ditto on the checking out the Recruitment Forums for ideas. There are several threads that give advice on recruitment to improve quality and quantity.

You mentioned that in the past couple of years the numbers have been going down. Do you know why? Has your organization done anything new in recent years that might have led to the decline in members?

And please define "suitcase college". Is it like a commuter campus where people just go to class, not get involved, and then go home?

Providing a little bit more info about your sorority and your campus might help as well. :)

"Suitcase" school is when nobody hangs around for the weekend. They all hightail it back home to hang with their high school buddies.

Yes, and I think for a lot of schools it's getting worse and worse since people can keep in touch w/ their HS friends more easily. I know that sounds like a contradiction, but when you can text & IM your HS friends all week to find out what's going on that weekend, basically only being apart from them physically, it makes you less likely to "have" to get involved at college.

Hopefully the high gas prices will help slow it.

To the OP - are the other sororities having the same problem w/ membership?

My alma mater is sometimes considered a "suitcase" college. However, it never really effected membership. I think this was because Chapter was on Sunday nights for all the GLOs on campus! It made people stick around!

I was actually going to say something similar-give the sisters a reason to stick around on weekends. I'm not suggesting mandatory events on a Saturday, but if you ladies had a tradition of breakfast together or a fun service project on Saturday afternoons...

Talking about lame! LOL :D When I was a freshman in college, I didn't go back home and hang out with highschool buddies. The point of college is to meet new people and broaden your horizons.

^^Every college campus is different. Suitcase colleges are also often called commuter colleges because a large percentage of the student body commutes to campus and therefore, does not live in oncampus housing. This may be the case here. Students also leave campus because the activities or town is lacking...

No, these are two different things.

Commuter colleges are meant to be that way....there is not enough housing available to accomodate the majority of the student body. The majority of students go home at the end of the day, they don't live in dorms or apartments near the college.

Suitcase colleges have ample housing on and off campus (near the school) for students to live there during the week. They just go to their hometowns on weekends because (in their perception) there is nothing to keep them around.

"Suitcase college" has a negative connotation. "Commuter college" does not and should not.

Aren't suitcase colleges and commuter colleges somewhat different? As in, commuter colleges are often in urban areas, have no student housing, and everyone drives in every day to school and leaves to go to their own home/housing in the evenings. Suitcase college implies that people go to school during the week and live on campus, but vamoose on Friday at 5 PM. Suitcase colleges are often in rural areas where there isn't much to do in the community on the weekends, thus your high school social life seems more appealing.

To the OP, if you go to a suitcase school, it seems like you have a great opportunity to sell your sorority as something to do on the weekends and an awesome social opportunity.

I don't think of "suitcase colleges" as strictly rural. My school, a commuter school, could also be considered a "suitcase college" for those that lived on campus. The school was a ghost town on weekends. A large part of the population is from L.A. so it's pretty easy to jump on the freeway and head north.

Yeah, well I said "often rural." But point taken. I still think there is a difference in "commuter college" and "suitcase college" though.

I guess in some ways, Otterbein was a "suitcase college" because so so so so many people came from these wee towns in Ohio and went home on the weekend. It was almost creepy. Us rare but hardy out of staters enjoyed the weekends. But OC also has this weird family thing, meaning we get lots of 3rd and 4th generation Cardinals going to school there, and most of those have some Greek affiliation in their history. Plus people tend to be freakishly involved in campus life (for better or worse).

So I guess what keeps people around is the "tradition" aspect of it, but thats not going to help you just starting out. How many other groups are there on campus (both Greek and non-Greek)? Maybe since you're a bit down on man-power at the moment (but use those alums!) you could pair up or bunch up with another group and hold a larger event. But also keep in mind that your most likely pool of candidates are people you already know on campus. By diversifying your pool by looking at all class standings and not just freshmen, you can find some girls who already have the skills to be successful sisters.

and check out the recruitment board ;)

I agree they're different, but was trying to point out that a school could still be both. :)

Mine's both. We have a big commuter population, but most students live on campus. Mon-Fri, that is. :rolleyes:

A lot of people throughout the school complain that there's nothing to do on the weekends. During recruitment, we usually advertise that we do things [ie, someone's always around!], but in all honesty, most girls go visit their boyfriends [& vice versa], go home, or work. The few of us who aren't doing any of the above usually put something together. And to start having chapter events to encourage staying would get a lot of negative feedback from girls who want to go visit their boyfriends, go home, or work. Vicious cycle.

I went to UCLA, and it often felt like what you all are describing as a suitcase school. All fraternity parties, exchanges, and chapter meetings were held during the week. Thursday was the big party and bar night, though Monday had sizeable bar thing due to a Margarita Monday in the village. Friday, Saturday and Sunday weren't so hot. People seemed to disappear over the weekends.

I knew plenty of people who would regularly go home on the weekends and the sorority was always a little empty. The vast majority of the student body grew up in California, so a chunk of them were always within a car ride away, and then add in sporadic trips up to northern California for the rest of them.

Fall is an exception, of course, because of all the football games. I think if we had a stadium within walking distance to campus (like USC or many other schools), it would have been better for keeping people around even if they weren't going to the games.

I feel for the OP. She wanted to know how to recruit more members and I had to derail the thread by asking what a "suitcase school" was.

Je regrette.

Ok well yea I go to Alfred State and mostly everyone at the school lives an hour away. so no one really stays around cause they say there is nothing to do on the weekends. I love my weekends at school but its the same people that stay every weekend.
And alot of you said to try and recruit girls by advertising that we do alot on the weekends but to tell you the truth we only have 4 actives. Thats not a whole lot. and all the sororities on my campus dont have houses so that kinda makes people not want to join either cause they say its nothing special.

The main thing is at my school ALL the numbers are going down. This past semester each sorority (3) only had about 2 pledges. With numbers like these im scared were going to die out. We are only a local college. We used to have a chapter at a community college but they died out. So i feel as next semesters president I need to figure out a way to keep us alive.

To the OP:

Being from Illinois, I feel for all the chapters (fraternity or sorority) after the shootings. Now is the time to call your alumnae so that they can help. This is the time for your alumnae to become really active so that the undergraduate chapters can continue to function. Tell your alumnae that you need their help- now. You still have 2/3 of the summer to arrange for a successful rush.
After reading your post, I'd be calling my national's NIU chapter president with an offer to help in any way that I could, but my national does not have a chapter there. I can appreciate your concern-make sure that you express it to your alumnae. If you don't have a "Slightly Older Sister" program or something like it, it would help to implement it. This is when alumnae relations become important. Let us know how it goes. :) :)

See were pretty much on our own, people told me to post a thread in the recruitment forums so i did If you would like to help more, I posted a little more about my sorority in there.

http://www.greekchat.com/gcforums/sh...96#post1671096
thats the link so if you have any ideas for like rush parties,
see we dont do the bids and stuff at my school we just have a rush parties and if a girl is interested in that sorority they come to the rush party and then about 2 weeks later we start the month pledging process

Thanks
<3
Sister of Delta Chi Omega

Is this even related to this thread? It feels like your responding to a completely different topic. :confused:

Thanks, chan815, for correctly interpreting my response. It should have been directed to you, not the "op." I know that many people here in Illinois, me included, are all still very emotional over the shootings. I was concerned about its effect on the Greek population at NIU, one of my favorite campuses because of its close proximity. It has always been a popular choice for anyone in my immediate area, and I know quite a few people that went there. I hate to see the population, (Greek or just the general campus population) there affected in any way.

Question -- How big are the sorority houses at NIU, and have all chapters always filled them in the past?

The best website for recruitment... PhiredUp.com. I'm telling you, everyone should check it out. They have a blog on there with a ton of great ideas and pointers. Everything from recruitment events, to how to contact more people, to how to use the faculty to your advantage, to how to gain those quality members you've been looking for. And get the books from that site... "I Heart Recruitment" for sororities and "Good Guys: The Eight Steps to Limitless Possibility for Fraternity Recruitment". It's well worth the investment