U. of Iowa NPC Recruitment Picture & Article
 

An article (with picture of some potential sorority members) about U. of Iowa recruitment is in a recent issue of the city paper. It says about 10 percent of the undregrads are Greek, and if the figures quoted are accurate, a lot more women than men are Greek:

http://www.press-citizen.com/apps/pb...508170321/1079

The article mentions that Beta Theta Pi will be recolonizing, with a four-week recruitment period.

And just to clarify, the U. of Iowa is a different school from Iowa State, which has been mentioned in a recent thread or two.

Re: U. of Iowa NPC Recruitment Picture & Article
 

Personally, I feel part of the reason numbers are down at Iowa is because they do not have a good marketing/PR system in place to reach incoming Freshmen and transfer students. This year was the first year they were able to actually put information in the University packet that gets sent out to all incoming students, and it was only a bi-fold brochure that wasn't very informative.

Plus, the University is very tough on Fraternities and Sororities--at least 3-4 chapters have lost recognition from the University or left campus all together in the last 2-3 years. The President is not very Greek friendly (as opposed to Iowa State where the two most current presidents were Fraternity alumni and worked very closely with the Greek Community) and I know that has put a damper on people wanting to join.

There are 16 fraternities on campus with membership ranging from 10 to 70 members. There are 13 sororities on campus. Sorority total is 120 and membership ranges from 30 to 100 members (pre-recruitment).

http://www.uiowa.edu/~greek/

That was not the best written article or maybe I'm just tired from work.

Another issue facing Iowa is probably cultural. The mid-west, in my opinion, is not a hot-bed of greeks in the same way the south and east coast are. Rush, in the MN, WI, IA region, is not built up in HS. Of my graduating class of 350, only 5 or 6 people joined glos. The culture does not tend toward it. Additionally, the people I know that went to Univ. IA went with a number of other people they knew. They had social groups in place when they started and thus probably did not see the point (plus many went home often). I know people go to college with friends elsewhere, but I think the lack of GLO culture combined with already having a network creates a situation where some just don't go greek.

Just my random thoughts though

Re: U. of Iowa NPC Recruitment Picture & Article
 

Oh, dear. I'd hope nobody would confuse the two.

Also, I don't know if it's a midwestern thing as much as it is a school thing -- Greek life is HUGE at the University of Illinois, and I think at Indiana as well.

Re: Re: U. of Iowa NPC Recruitment Picture & Article
 

Don't worry, we won't let them.

Definitely. The atmosphere at UIowa is much different than other campuses in the Big 10, and even across the Midwest. I'd say UW-Madison is maybe the most similar to UIowa, but even UW-Madison has a good-sized Greek Community.

Re: Re: U. of Iowa NPC Recruitment Picture & Article
 

Doesn't the University of Iowa have a huge dance marathon every year? One of my sisters was chair of that a few years ago. Um, I think.

Iowa still have a very active NPC greek community, but not in numbers of PNM's going thru. I think you are right, they need to do more PR. Many of the PNM's are coming from the State of Illinois where in the Chicagoland suburban high schools, recruitment is talked about. And yes, University of Illinois is HUGE with greeks. Illinois has the largest greek system in the country. They have PR, but it's when the students return to campus. So right now, according to last report, about 200 signed up for Panhellenic Recruitment over the website. Because of waiting til freshman get on campus to push NPC and IFC, the NPC numbers swelled to 1,308 PNM's last year on the first day of recruitment which was around September 2nd and bid day was September 12th. What a site I'm sure--1,308 PNM's visiting 21 houses over 2 days!
Does Iowa give their PNM's matching t-shirts to wear?

Iowa has recruitment the week before the semester starts, though, so they need to do all their PR during the spring/summer before students get to campus.

I'm not sure if the PNMs get matching t-shirts. I know each sorority at Iowa has Greek t-shirts (the design is the same on all shirts, but each chapter has their own name on it) that they wear the first day of recruitment.

Re: Re: Re: U. of Iowa NPC Recruitment Picture & Article
 

LOL.

My summer roommate is a DZ at Iowa, and I nearly peed my pants laughing when she told me that.

Re: Re: Re: U. of Iowa NPC Recruitment Picture & Article
 

BWAHAHAHA! Dang, KR - I just knocked my co-cola all over the desk!

Most of the Big Ten schools have fairly large Greek communities, but only because the schools themselves are so large -- the overall percentage of students that are Greek rarely tops 10-15 percent. For example, there are over 2000 Greeks at Wisconsin, but that still averages out to less than ten percent of the student body. I think there's only one school where even a quarter of the students are Greek (is that Illinois?).

It's mostly cultural. As Little E said, outside of the Chicago suburbs, there is really nowhere in the Midwest where girls go through high school knowing that they're going to rush. At Wisconsin, I'd say that for 80 percent of the girls, it was pretty much a spur-of-the-moment decision to decide to rush, or at least, they had only been thinking about it for a few months, not their whole high school career. Because of this, we have a lot of girls who drop out of rush halfway through because they aren't completely committed or they decide sorority life isn't for them. The year I rushed, we started with 800 girls and placed just over half of them. Even with the stereotypical sorority types in the ritzier high schools, most of these girls will never even think of rushing. Out of the girls from my graduating class that joined sororities, they were mostly the girls you wouldn't expect -- the ones you would expect to join didn't even contemplate it, or even looked down upon it.