Formal rush/recruitment?

[ThetaPhiAngel]

Hey everybody...

I'm still relatively new to greek life, but I thought I remembered reading somewhere that if there were 2 NPC sororities on a campus, that campus had to hold formal rush/recruitment. Can someone with more knowledge of this please fill me in?

[KappaKittyCat]

ThetaPhiAngel, you're right. If there are two NPC sororities on a campus, the campus should have a Panhellenic and hold Formal Recruitment according to Green Book rules.

Is QFA new to the campus? What other group is there and/or where are you (if you don't mind saying)?

[ThetaPhiAngel]

We've been on campus(Kean University in NJ) for almost 10 years. The other NPC sorority is Delta Phi Epsilon, and the rest are locals and NPHC.

I was talking about this with one of my sisters tonight and she had no idea what formal recruitment is. I just thought that maybe it would help us with getting a larger pledge class, since we only have 23 sisters right now and 11 of them are graduating next May. Our pledge classes are usually pretty small - I didn't have any pledge sisters at all!

Also, we don't have a college Panhellenic, we only have Greek Senate, so maybe that has something to do with it???

[aephi alum]

As I understand the Green Book, you and DPhiE should establish a college Panhellenic separate from your Greek Senate. Whichever sorority was there first should take the lead. It's up to you whether to offer full or associate membership to the local sororities, but the NPC groups must be full members.

You can be part of Panhel and still be part of Greek Senate. When I was in school, all NPC and local sororities were members of Panhel and IFC.

Then, you should be holding formal recruitment once a year. Again, it's up to you whether the locals are invited to participate. It might very well bring your numbers up - some women like the structure of FR, plus in terms of advertising, you will have all the sorority women cooperating to get PNMs out to rush in general, vs. each individual sorority competing to get PNMs to go just to their rush. And you can always hold COB rush at other times of the year.

[GeekyPenguin]

One thing to consider, if you do invite the locals to membership, is that they may take the rules about "no frills" and throw them out the window, because they aren't in NPC and don't have anything really binding them to the rules. We had a big problem with this at my school.

[loriaphi]

To get more information on establishing a College Panhellenic you should contact your NPC Area Advisor. A complete list of Area Advisors is listed on the NPC website (www.npcwomen.org).

On an interesting note, the NPC website lists a "Kean College" in New Jersey as having a College Panhellenic.

[ThetaPhiAngel]

Thank you all so much for your help. The problem we seem to have is that since new members don't have to visit each sorority, they end up just pledging the first one they visit. And since I've heard horrible things about most of the locals, I think we may get (and keep!) much larger pledge classes since we don't haze AT ALL. A lot of the recruitment events are planned at the same time on the same day, so even if you wanted to visit two groups, you may not get the chance to. We usually just end up with girls who are friends of current sisters.

loriaphi: Kean actually became a university in 1997, but everyone still refers to it as "Kean College" or even "Newark State," which is what it was called years and years ago. Anyway, maybe back then we actually had a college Panhellenic, but I don't know for sure. I think I'll ask our BOD chairwoman about that.

[FuzzieAlum]

While there are pros and cons to the formal rush system, you've hit upon two of its big pluses. One, rushees have a chance (indeed, they must) visit every group before even being offered a chance to join. Secondly, no events can be scheduled simultaneously. A rushee might still have to make a choice of which smaller number of groups to go to at the next event, but it will be an informed choice based on meeting the sororities and not on scheduling!