[ASTalumna06]

Again, we have COB all year long, with no formal recruitment. Quite frankly, I read and learn A LOT about formal from coming on here, and I find it extremely interesting. Both systems have their ups and downs.

Like I've said, Panhellenic makes its best attempts to make sure that all of the sororities have their recruitment parties at different times. All of them are in the same 3 conference rooms in the same part of the student union, so it makes it easy for girls to find them. As to whether or not PNMs visit all three, that's up to them.

The only thing that we have right now that is considered a "formal" type of recruitment party is our kick-off recruitment party in the spring. It is the first event, and all of the PNMs are required to attend all three sororities' parties, almost like a first round in formal.

The Greek advisor is pushing toward a more formal recruitment system, but like I said, it probably won't happen very soon. There is still generally a small interest in Greek life on campus, and until all of the chapters start gaining larger numbers, the system will most likely stay the same.

Now... PNMs can attend ANY events that they like (besides meetings and ritual), even if they aren't eligible to receive a bid. This makes things difficult with dirty rushing. I know that my chapter personally doesn't do it, and it's kind of hard to tell if the others do. When you can talk to PNMs, even as first semester freshmen in the halls, at parties, on Facebook, and invite them to recruitment parties, how can you tell if someone is saying to them in secret, "stick around until next semester and we'll give you a bid." That's where it gets confusing.

My girls even had a retreat this past summer and went camping. It was their second time doing this, so it wasn't anything too formal or involved. But they did a bunch of sorority stuff during the day, and then they invited one or two PNMs to join them that night for a cook-out that night. A couple of the sisters posted pictures on Facebook, and they had the PNMs in them. One of the albums was called "AST retreat", a few sisters from the other two chapters saw this, and then started questioning whether my girls were dirty rushing, because it looked like they had PNMs at an official (or secret?) AST event. So the situation can get sticky, but most of the time the suspicions are just sisters being paranoid. But it's usually hard for any chapter to get a large number of girls, so we do anything we can to keep them around when we find them.