Recruitment Location

[mightydeepher]

I come from a school whose Panhellenic Council is growing fast. We have 7 chapters, each with around 100 members. Our recruitment is usually held in the student center but is now becoming too small. We do not have greek housing in our university and are expanding with one more sorority coming to campus in the Spring - they will be taking approximately 90 members.

My question is - next Fall, with 8 chapters and 100 members each, we will no longer be able to fit in our student center. Does anyone have any ideas as to where we can move our recruitment location to?

I was thinking possibly a hotel nearby, but paying for 8+ rooms for 5 nights straight (how our recruitment is usually done) will probably be overly expensive. Another idea would be to only allow a certain amount of sisters in each room instead of the entire chapter, however this poses the problem of the new members meeting a smaller amount of women than they normally have. I would love to hear if anyone has similar experiences or has any ideas.

[ggforever]

Years ago I was part of a group with the same situation. We held recruitment at various locations around campus - lobbies of academic building, dorn rec rooms. It is not ideal but it worked because recruitment was the week before school started.

We also did the hotel thing one year. It was VERY expensive and there were some issues with privacy because we were all in rooms right next to each other. Also it meant the pnm were always right outside the doors. If you have a large hotel, that might not be an issue.

[Titchou]

Can you use other locations on campus - auditoriums, meeting rooms in the basketball arena, areas in the football stadium, galleries, etc? It may mean transporting some PMNs but it has worked at other campuses (U of Montevallo uses campus buildings, South Carolina used the football stadium before they had their Greek Village, etc). I know you want to keep the venues as equitable as possible but that may not work with the additional chapter. You could draw lots for the odd venue or rotate so that every 8 years each chapter would be the one in the different site.

[violetpretty]

Maryland does the first round in the student union, with 25-30 sisters per room allowed. Since there are 14 chapters, each chapter would be there all day (8am-8pm), Saturday or Sunday. The PNMs were split into three groups, and PNMs would be there both days, but for a third of each day, either 8am-12pm, 12-4pm, or 4-8pm. So there are 21 total parties for the first round.

Most chapters rotate the sisters recruiting so only the president, recruitment chair, and recruitment advisor are there all day. Breaking up the PNMs to create more parties allows a better ratio of PNMs to sisters.

I hear now that Maryland does 4-5 chapters over Friday, Saturday and Sunday, which I think is stupid because the PNM groups are larger when time is shorter on Friday.

[thetygerlily]

My school was in a similar boat, no sorority housing (we all had chapter rooms in a wing of a dorm). For quite a while the recruitment HQ was in a dorm basement, and the parties were in that dorm's lounge, the campus bar, and the campus coffeehouse. Then when a new dorm was built with large, nice, uniform lounges, recruitment activities moved there. It was especially great because the only difference was the floor number and paint color on the wall, so the shape, size, furniture, etc was exactly the same. It really helped even things out. But honestly, when the parties were in three completely different locations- it was fine. The groups rotated so that nobody "owned" one particular location. ABC was in the lounge for night 1, then the bar on night 2, and the coffeehouse on night 3. If I recall correctly parties were also held in other dorm lounges as well as in one of the auditoriums.

If you can find 7 locations on campus, it should work just fine. I liked the rotational aspect at my school so that nobody had the "nicest" location more than once. And if the locations are a bit tight like others have mentioned, you could always restrict the number of women that can be at each party. In addition to keeping the actives fresh, another perk to this option is that any drastic number differences won't be noticed by the PNMs. If most groups are 100 but there's one with 80 and another with 70, being noticably smaller won't necessarily hurt them. And as is discussed many times, a system is only as strong as the weakest group...

Good luck!

[ree-Xi]

Are there classrooms that you can use? I imagine that not every room in every building has night classes. You should be able to find blocks of rooms (that aren't adjacent to existing classes those nights). It might cut back on the amount of decorating you do, but it's a thought.

[PeppyGPhiB]

My school used the larger classrooms on campus. It worked fine.