IU Sorority Recruitment Concludes with Smiles! (Article)
 

Sorority recruitment ends in smiles
Bid day concludes process as sisters greet new members

by Michelle Manchir
Indiana Daily Student

Published Monday, January 8, 2007

Freshman Lucy Rodriguez beamed as she stood among her new sisters in matching navy and gray hooded sweat shirts upon the steps of Delta Gamma on Sunday afternoon.

"I couldn't be more excited," she said, clasping her fingers.

Rodriguez was one of more than 800 women who received invitations to be members of one of the 19 Panhellenic Association sorority chapters at IU.

The women's recruitment process, which began in early December with 19-Party, concluded this weekend with first and second invite on Friday and Saturday and, finally, bid day on Sunday.

"It's a long process," said Rodriguez, who said she had witnessed crying throughout the week from other pledging women on her floor in McNutt Quad. "But mostly everyone was happy."

After the freshman and sophomore pledges received their invitations in their dorm rooms Sunday, they boarded double-decker buses to their respective houses. Awaiting them were their new sisters, armed with sweat shirts, hugs and sometimes rehearsed cheers.

Panhellenic Assocation's Vice President of Recruitment Kelly Jones, a senior, said recruitment started out with more than 1,600 women signed up. She said many drop out of the process on their own accord, failing to enjoy what they encounter while visiting the chapters during 19-Party. Others drop out because they don't meet the GPA requirements, which vary from house to house.

Jones also acknowledged that not all women who complete the recruitment process receive a bid.

A woman is chosen for a particular house when both the individual and sorority "preference" one another during first and second invite parties. Both the sororities and potential recruits rank their choices, and a chapter's picks must match each individual woman's for her to be invited back for the next round.

Alpha Phi President Kait Behan, a junior, said her chapter recruited 47 new members, one more than last year. Like her peers, she expressed excitement but felt the effects of missing out on sleep from the long weekend.

"My voice sounds like a man right now," she said. "It was worth it. We were so happy with every girl we got."

Jones compared the recruitment weekend to being part of a "three-day long interview."

"It does take a lot of time but it gives (prospective new members) the chance to experience all the houses," she said.

After being greeted on the houses' lawns, new recruits were invited inside for reintroductions and photographs, but also to learn their obligations for the rest of the semester. While new recruits don't move into the houses until next school year, they must attend pledge-class meetings.

Rodriguez is looking forward to the semester with her newfound friends.

"It makes a big campus seem a lot smaller," she said.

50% dropped (or were dropped)!:eek: Is that normal?

I may be confusing my rush threads, but I think one of the recruitment stories is about this school, and I believe that they always have low placement compared to many other places because they don't do it the same way and groups just take as many girls as the need to fill the house.

http://www.greekchat.com/gcforums/sh...ad.php?t=81895

That was my first reaction to the story, too. The consultant that was with my chapter when I was a pledge was from IU and I remember her comments about how rough recruitment was at her school, but I had no idea it was that bad. That seems awfully wrong and, actually, pointless to me. Why don't the sororities just all do informal recruitment if it's going to be such a waste of time for so many women? Does the process have anything to do with how the school handles housing? If the only point of formal recruitment is to fill an exact number of beds in the sorority house, either the recruitment process needs to be re-evaluated, a cap needs to be placed on applications, or the school needs to work out an arrangement with greek life regarding housing.

I wonder if some of it doesn't stem from the fact that 19-party day is held at the end of the fall semester while the rest of recruitment is held a month later. I'm sure some girls go home over break and decide that it isn't for them or maybe they can't work it with their schedule or whatever. It could be somewhat intentional to ensure the women who do finish recruitment are the ones who are there for the "right" reasons and really want to be a part of a chapter there.

But 50% does seem extremely high.

It started out with 1600 - that means 1600 SIGNED UP IN THE FALL, not 1600 at pref night or even in the second "stage" of rush. I would wager some of those didn't even go to the first round.

Also, I'm sure a lot of women got their grades from first semester and decided they wanted to work on that before committing to a sorority. Which is a HUGE advantage to this schedule, in my opinion. There's nothing worse than to have someone struggle and just barely make grades, initiate, and then not come back to school.

As ISU Kappa said, it probably is intentional to "weed out" people who aren't there for the right reasons. Again, a huge advantage IMO.

I don't think that a few days at 19 party meeting sorority members and deciding whether or not you want to go forward is a "waste of time." They actually have TIME to think about it, which seems more and more foreign these days - one of the reasons I hate these 3 day rushes, you get caught up and don't have time to think about what you really want.

I can't imagine what a nightmare all-informal recruitment would be at a school with so many sororities. That can work if there are 1 or 2 groups on campus, but not 19.

Well, it doesn't say that all those women are dropping out on their own. It sounds like a significant number are probably being released from recruitment along the way. Since they don't follow the traditional NPC formal recruitment model, there's nothing to stop the sororities from cutting the majority of women who come through. If it was your chapter, would you want to do membership selection involving 1,000 or 500 women when you could easily get away with whittling it down to just 50? For instance, if one house only needs to fill 15 beds, they're going to release a ton of women if release figures aren't used. Of course if a woman goes through recruitment and withdraws because it's not for her, it's not a waste of time. But what about the women who go through all rounds, then suddenly don't get a bid in the end?

ETA: I agree that informal recruitment would be a nightmare with 19 sororities. But let's be honest here: most women going through recruitment at IU apparently don't have a shot at getting into all of the chapters anyway. My point was what they've got right now doesn't really sound very formal, anyway...without a set quota, I doubt they use release figures, right?

There's no way we can know that unless we know if they use release figures.

Also, it doesn't matter if they would do informal recruitment - then they'd just have a bunch of random women with no forms, no recs, no nothing showing up at their house. Some chapters could have MORE people show up than they ever would at formal rush, just because the rushees would say "I only want ABC and don't want to go anywhere else so I'm going to their informal party. I'm putting all my eggs in the ABC basket." How would that make things better for anyone?

ETA: Pinky's second post on the thread above clears up a lot. Many women are released for grades, many women drop out of rush at the last minute, and many women refuse to maximize their options. When that happens, you're going to have a lot of cutting going on. If the total = beds in your house system didn't work for IU, I don't think they would still be using it. I think it's stupid too, but apparently housing is a MAJOR part of the Greek system there.

All good points.

I think the better solution is for IU to make some changes in how formal recruitment is conducted. With so many wonderful choices of GLOs, there's just no reason why the drop/released figure should be at 50%. Does anyone know if it has to do with housing? It sounds like all sorority members have to live-in? If so, is this something that could be changed so more women may participate in greek life?

I have heard different accounts on here, but I know for a fact the Tri Delta chapter requires the women to live in, 2-4th year. From the women at IU, I was told all of the chapters require you to live-in. I can't imagine we would an noone else does, that just doesn't make sense.

Quota is not in place because the size of the new member class is determined by how many 4th years there are as well as taking into account your historical loss rate of non-graduating members.

The placement rate is low for a variety of reasons, not just because there isn't quota. Grades come into significant effect both with the PNM's and the chapters. Also women are just overwhelmed by the process and drop. I would be interested in knowing how many women are actually cross-cut, I know it happens, but I don't know how much.

Why should they? They've obviously found a system that works for their campus and Greek Life is strong there. Man, we need imsohappythatiama to explain what it was like when she went through at IU.

I think the 50% release figure is very misleading. I would be interested in seeing how many women went through the actual invitational rounds and what percentage placement that number received.

I agree - I know someone posted on here and said something to the effect of "only half the girls who went through rush got a bid!" and it turned out to be only half of **eligible freshman women** or something totally different - not that 400 girls went to pref parties and only 200 of them got bids!

It makes Greek life sound more "elite" than it already is. It's a PR move.

If I have this correct, "quota" at IU is basically just the number of girls needed to fill the house the following year? Granted, PNMs probably drop out for a variety of reasons (grades, lack of interest, etc...), but it seems like the sororities there are missing out on a lot of really great women by limiting their numbers to just bed spaces.

I can understand requiring that enough girls live in-house to fill all of the beds, but I don't see why someone couldn't be a member of a sorority and live elsewhere. Only about 1/3 of our girls can actually live in the house.

I'm not criticizing as their system seems to work for the school, but I'm definitely curious as to how/why IU came up with this system. I'd love to hear more about it from anyone who knows more.

It isn't really based on bed spaces - it is based on how many girls you lose to graduation. Our chapter at IU has about 200 members. It isn't like they are keeping the chapters tiny.