What school did you attend?
University of Puget Sound
How many students?
2800
How many GLO's? (local and national)?
6 sororities when I was an undergrad; lost TriDelta my senior year, now 5 nationals (Pi Beta Phi, Alpha Phi, Kappa Kappa Gamma, Kappa Alpha Theta, Gamma Phi Beta); again, had 6 fraternities when I was there, lost Kappa Sig in 1996; lost SAE 2 years ago, now have 4 nationals (Phi Delt, Sigma Chi, Sigma Nu, Beta Theta Pi), possible expansion of another fraternity (may try to return K Sig, Fiji, or Theta Chi, all were on the campus before my time)
Chapter total?
Ceiling is at 85. No one is there this fall. Pi Phi is closest at 80.
Was your recruitment early fall or deferred?
Deferred to right before beginning of Spring Semester
Ladies, did you ever serve as a Rho Chi/Rho Gamma?
Nope -- had too much Pi Phi gear to disaffiliate
Does your GLO openly support one or the other?
Fall rush is supported by Pi Phi nationally. I don't think our chapter really cares one way or the other given that they have never seen it any other way.
Do you think a different style of Recruitment would work better at your school?
I think a deferred fall rush would work better. I think that having an entire semester to foster steriotypes by the freshman and to have them hear (from a lot of the fraternities) which are the "cool" sororities and which are not has really hurt some groups and has made it impossible to rebound from a poor rush/not making quota/low numbers (ie what happened to both TriDelts and Kappa Sigs).
However, I do think that we are a less traditionally greek campus, and a lot of people who wouldn't have rushed if it were right off the bat are more inclined to rush after having a semester to see what our greek system is all about, and after having a chance to just adjust to life at college.
Do you think numbers are affected by the timing of Recruitment?
Not really...we changed over to deferred rush in 1989. 1990-1993 were by far the biggest pledge classes our greek system had ever seen (quota the year I rushed was 38, and 260 women went through rush, so basically 50% of the campus was greek at that time), then was pretty stable around thirty for a few years, and has fallen off into the low to mid twenties the last couple of years...it was 18 last fall -- ouch! We have a terrific new Greek Advisor though, and a great group of chapter advisors, and basically we sat down on bid matching and did everything we could to place every girl. It sounds like the new advisor has been VERY aggressive about early advertising for spring rush and numbers are already up halfway through the fall semester, so hopefully we'll get a better turnout for formal this year. The only thing that is improving is informal. We gave out 88 bids as a system last spring, and had 47 women go through informal rush (at least sophomore standing or transfer students, all houses participated) and I think all but 1 or 2 were offered bids, which is terrific! I also think that the large numbers for informal speaks highly of our greek system as a whole...after being on campus for an entire year, sophmores like what they see in our houses and realize that they want to be part of it.
For those that went through deferred, would you have gone through early fall?
Absolutely. The one thing that always bugged me was the fact that the women in the sororities become totally segregated from freshman in the fall because everyone is so freaked out by the thought that someone is going to say that they were dirty rushing if they are so much as seen talking to a freshman, let alone becoming friends with them! I think that makes the sorority women seem exclusive and snobby, when really they are DYING to meet the new freshman. This is also something that our greek advisor is addressing, which is very needed.