Need ideas!!!
 

I need COB ideas!

I'm the recruitment advisor at a small school that does COB exclusively. The chapter has always had "recruitment parties" in conference rooms on campus (the sororities don't have houses) and they never produce the results we want. This semester, the girls have planned a movie night at the $1 movie on campus, and they're planning to attend some sporting events.

Greek life is not looked at in a positive light by the students on campus, but that way of thinking is founded on practically nothing. I think that we're just not as prominent on campus as we'd like to be, and we don't have people "rushing" to join. I'm looking for ideas.

The girls wear their letters all the time. They eat lunch together once a week and invite PNMs to join them. They are attempting a more diverse recruitment plan this semester, eliminating a large portion of the typical "parties" they usually have.

Again, the problem is having girls come to these events. What new events, or everyday activities, besides the obvious (studying, working out, getting coffee, etc.) would you suggest they do? And what kinds of advertising strategies and techniques have been useful for your chapters?

Also, how can they really stand out from the other 2 sororities on campus?

Off the bat my first reaction is to say read I <3 Recruitment by Coffey and Gendron if you haven't already. A lot in that book can be geared toward the "exclusively COB" type of Recruitment and I think would do the chapter you advise a lot of good.

For other ideas, I have to poke around, but will post more later.

I think the problem is thinking in terms of "events." People meeting people, becoming friends with them, and introducing them to their friends (who happen to be their sisters) is what COB is about. And becoming friends with someone requires one on one time. If every time your friend Jodie asks you to do something you're in the conpany of her entire sorority, you're going to wonder if she really thinks of you as her friend or just as a warm body to recruit.

Oh, and although you probably think I'm nuts, I would encourage the Panhel to re-institute a structured rush period if you don't have one anymore. COB is important, but so is an open event that women can come to. Contacting a sorority directly can be a little daunting for some women - you are pretty much saying to that sorority "I like you" and laying yourself on the line for possible rejection. Signing up to rush all the sororities doesn't mean you put yourself out there quite so much. And this goes for the sororities approaching women as well.

Again, the problem on campus is that girls aren't exactly running at the chance to join a sorority. Everyone in my chapter will tell you that they never thought they'd join a sorority, and the only reason they did is because one of their friends was a sister, or one of their friends was friends with a sister and told them they should definitely go.

When I was Panhellenic President in 2006, I started what we call our "kick-off" recruitment party in the spring (they're now trying to do it in the fall, also), where all 3 sororities get together in the student union, and put on 3 separate parties, 3 different times for 3 different groups of PNMs, who are required to attend all the parties. From what I understand, this is very similar to how formal recruitment works. The problem is, half of the PNMs who attend are recruited through one of the sororities, and there's never more than 10 girls that show up.

Would formal recruitment help? Maybe. But that's a huge process to establish a formal recruitment system when there's never been one here before. And to be honest, I don't think that one of the sororities would go for it, because their new member classes are usually twice the size of the other two, and I really don't think they'd risk losing that.

On top of that, we're a satellite campus for a much larger school. After 2 years, students from our campus can automatically transfer to the main campus. That one sorority that always gets larger numbers... a reason they do is because a few girls actually do their research and find out that this particular sorority is the only one with a chapter at the main campus. I don't know if these PNMs think they can just transfer to the main campus and join the other chapter, but they end up going with them.

Am I using it as an excuse as to why we don't get more girls? No. We obviously need to improve recruitment methods. But I don't know if that sorority would go for changing the entire system, running the risk that they might not get the numbers they want and might not be the "dominating" chapter on campus.

And I know that "events" don't always produce results, which is why I said that the girls are slowly moving away from that. I'm looking for a variety of activities they can do in order to keep PNMs around.

For the clueless out there reading this, the post is about Penn State Behrend/Penn State Main.

I assure you that the ASA chapter at Behrend is not a "feeder" chapter in any way for the main campus chapter and the girls in the Behrend chapter are more than aware of that. Maybe rushees look at them first for that reason, but they don't join for that reason. They aren't misled into thinking that if they transfer to Main, they can walk onto campus and just plop their butts down in the ASA suite.

From what I've always been told, the majority of Behrend students stay at Behrend for 4 years, unless they change their major. So "I won't be able to participate at Main campus" would be kind of a moot point. Obviously you know more about your campus than I do, but it's not like you're Penn State DuBois or something where everyone will definitely clear out after 2 years.

Oh, I know it's not a "feeder" chapter, and so do the girls in the chapter. But I think a common misconception among PNMs is that they'll be able to transfer to the chapter at main. A few girls have even said that to us in the past few years, and have told us that was one of the main reasons they wanted to originally join ASA.

Even if this isn't the main reason they join, some tend to originally gravitate toward them for that reason.

And again, going back to the original point... girls are not thinking about joining a sorority the second they step foot on campus, like at some other schools. My question really is... how do you attract girls that have never even considered joining? How do you break through the stereotypes (that seem to have a large impact on this campus), and show people that you don't constantly drink and hang out with fraternity guys? And how do you find girls that you don't personally know already and get them to join?

One idea is to do something campus-wide for National Hazing Prevention Week (Sept 22-26).

I need ideas.

This is so painfully simple. Greeks need to take over freshman move in process from letter of introduction in July to actually moving the freshmen into the dorms (I realzie you will have many who are commuters but at least you are getting the attention of one group) and all greeks should have a Go Greek kind of shirt. They can them tell the parents about the merits of membership, panhel can sponsor coffee and cake and hand out flyers. After moving in to your dorm, everyone can use a drink and a snack and you could get your message acros so these women would at least consider membership!

We've had our girls help during freshman move-in and be freshman orientation leaders. Two problems though:

The campus won't allow us to wear ANYTHING Greek while moving freshman in. My one friend KJ is a Delta Chi. He was wearing his "move-in" shirt, and had a DX hat on. They said he couldn't wear anything to promote any organization on campus while an orientation leader. Kinda sucks.

(oh, but one good thing this year... it's our campus' 60th anniversary, and the Greeks are putting on "Behrend's Birthday Bash" during move-in weekend, which includes food, a DJ, fun activities, etc. So that should help!)

Second... the dreaded '01 rule, as we call it. 1st semester freshman on our campus can't join a GLO. We have Club Rush in the fall, and a lot of girls give us their info, we contact them all semester, but most won't come to recruitent events because they can't join that semester. Then they find other things to join in the meantime, and when we contact them the next semester to come to things, they say they have too much going on.

I do love that idea: it makes a big difference.

For COB, we do tailgates before football games (w/o alcohol and we will watch them on TV for PNMs without tickets), games nights with board games, picnics, Taco Tuesday, ice skating, cookie decorating, etc. A really popular event is to have a breakfast before classes with bagels, coffee, OJ, etc. so PNMs can pop in and out as their class schedule permits.

Our most popular COB event (which is the one that won me over) is an Info Night. We order pizza, play ice breakers, and present the sorority history, our philanthropies, our socials, show pictures, etc. The PNMs love it because they see how much the sorority means to current sisters and learn a lot about the sisterhood they may join. It does a lot to dispel doubts.

Have you tried having a theme? This is silly and fun, but for our chapter both actives and PNMs have loved COB recruitment themes. My favorite theme was the Reality TV Recruitment.

Good luck!

That's because he was an orientation leader. They are supposed to be impartial individuals. If the Greek community as a whole is helping and everyone is wearing the same shirt, that's a different matter.

I agree with 33Girl. COB is fine but a structured Panhellenic recruitment would be of great help in your situation.

We've actually tried moving away from themes, as we don't have a huge recruitment budget, and each themed party, with little decoration and no "fancy" food, ends up looking more pathetic than anything.

One "theme" the girls are going to do this semester though is a Green and Gold party. Everyone will dress in Green and Gold (or yellow), and all of the food will be green and gold as well (veggie dip with cucumbers and green and yellow peppers, green and yellow candy, green hi-c or hawaiian punch and apple juice, etc). If they split into teams for a game or activitiy they'll have the Green team and Gold team, blah blah blah. It makes it a theme without having to try and go all out and spend a lot of money.

We usually have an info night, which is planned very well and shows the same things that you mentioned... but again, it's getting girls to come to these kind of events that's difficult.

And again... hopefully this move-in weekend and the activities planned will help immensely.

The one problem though is getting the fraternities involved in things. We have 3 fraternities right now, and one of them does not want to participate in anything that involves the Greek community as a whole (they don't even participate in Greek Week anymore). Another one is attempting to rebuild right now, after they essentially were non-existent for a year (whether they'll really step up and try to be involved is unknown).

People always suggest using the fraternities to help us out. But that's difficult when all 3 sororities kind of turn to one of them for help.

Also, question... do you think we'd kind of be seen as... "interfering" with orientation if we randomly help freshman to move in?

Are you allowed to hold events with the regular student organizations (like clubs that your sisters are involved in or have friends in)? Maybe iceskating with the ski club or barbecue with the biology club or game night with the residence hall association (possibly holding the game night in a lounge of a dorm with lots of first-year women). You'd be doing an event with another group so it's more people and more lively. Plus there are gonna be females in these clubs so maybe they'll think "hey this sorority looks like fun, maybe I want to join too". And it will get your name out beyond just the Greek Life circle.

If you're looking for a way to distinguish your group and you keep bringing up changing people's mindset or the image of greeks on campus, why not really focus on and start up some campus-wide and -involved service projects?

Do a "green" push and spearhead some new recycling efforts. Do a clothes drive for the Salvation Army or a local shelter. Have a "campus clean up" day where you spread out around campus in letters and clean up trash or volunteer to beautify some gardens or something of the sort. Anything that gets you out in touch with the whole campus and identifies you and your greek letters as a group that "does" something. As you're in classes in the fall, have your members talk to their classmates about that week's or month's service project, invite them to help if they like, post flyers (ABOUT YOUR SERVICE PROJECT, NOT RUSHING) around campus, in the Starbucks on any 'community boards' you can find, etc. Associate your letters with the impression that you are an involved, campus- and community-oriented group and that may bring out more people who naturally gravitate to being part of something that's more than the negative greek stereotype.