Iota Zeta Recruitment

[tcsparky]

Ladies,
I have exciting news. As you know, I am the chapter advisor for the Iota Zeta chapter (yes, I also recently became an AF, but haven't found anyone yet to replace me on the Advisory Board). So, I am still actively involved with the chapter. And we have Recruitment starting this week. There are currently 68 women officially signed up for Recruitment here at Wingate!!! With 3 sororities, this potentially puts quota in the 21-23 range. This would be the highest in 5 years. There are a lot of terrific women of all classes, freshmen-seniors, signed up with fabulous lists of activities and most have super-duper grades. This should be an exciting Recruitment for us. We have No Frills, Partially Structured Recruitment. If I share too much, I am sure the moderators will edit my post appropriately.

Here is our schedule:

Thursday: Open House; all PNMs attend all three events, no cuts after this event; sorority women wear university spirit shirts- no sorority shirts or pins; room decoration - one banner only, ice water in cups is served

Sunday: Sisterhood Night; PNMs attend all three events; cuts are made after this night; sorority women wear letters, but not all the same shirt

Monday: Philanthropy Night; PNMs may choose to attend all 3 if invited; sorority women may wear screen print shirts (we will have bump groups wear the same shirt); Pref invites are made after this night

Tuesday: Preference; PNMs may choose to attend all 3 if invited; on this campus, most sororities wear all black for Preference; we may serve a dessert and punch; final bid lists due to Greek Advisor by 1:00 AM.

We are using ICS for the first time this year, and it has pros and cons.
Pros: We can look at the PNM information sheets and photo at any time after she registers. We can get schedules and make our cuts efficiently.

Cons: (Mostly selfish reasons!!) I don't get to hang out in the clubhouse playing board games with the Rho Gammas while waiting for the other groups to finish their bid lists. I also don't get to hang out with the other chapter advisors for a couple of hours doing bid matching. And, this way I won't know for certain who from our first bid list was also on the other groups' first bid lists....I mainly enjoyed the evening with the other advisors. And it gave me a chance to drag out my green book!!

And, we also have an ELC with us for Recruitment!! Megan arrived last night, and my girls absolutely LOVE her. They were expecting some scary person from "HQ", and discovered that she is terrific. They are now having impromptu workshops, have planned a Sisterhood event for tomorrow night to make door decorations for our New Members, and are having a lot of fun.

This year Recruitment may turn out to be better than we have had in years. We are so pumped!!!!!

[WCUgirl]

Wow, what a great amount of women! I know all the sororities would like a boost in numbers.

[AZ-AlphaXi]

Sounds like Iota Zeta is ready to go ... good luck and keep us updated!!

[fuzzie]

Originally Posted by tcsparky

...And, we also have an ELC with us for Recruitment!! Megan arrived last night, and my girls absolutely LOVE her...

Megan is from my chapter. We weren't there at the same time, but I saw her in the last issue of The Quill. Tell her hello from a fellow Delta Nu.

Good luck with recruitment. Sound like it has the potential to be a great one.

[tcsparky]

Ladies,
Thursday night was terrific! The new Greek Advisor was able to talk the administration into letting us use the new classroom building for Open House night. Here is the set-up: each group was given a classroom to use for conversation. We served ice water only (which probably helped in gettting us the building- not a lot of damage can be done by plain water!!). The classrooms were clustered next to each other. It was interesting to see how the three organizations set up their rooms. Our group created clusters of 4-5 desks around the room. PNMs and members sat at these clusters to talk. Another organization moved the desks out and everyone stood around to talk. Another one pushed the desks to the side, and had chairs set up around the room in small groups to talk.

The PNMs were split into three groups, and each organization had three parties that night. The PNMs wore jeans or khakis and t-shirts. Some wore the Recruitment t-shirts, but it wasn't required. All sorority members wore some sort of school shirt: SGA polos, athletic team jerseys, shirts from the campus store, and a variety of t-shirts from school events. Absolutely no sorority shirts were allowed. No door chants were allowed on this night.

Our girls had the cutest name tags! They were made to look like diamond rings, with silver glitter making these HUGE diamonds on top of the rings. Names were written in the circle of the ring. The other organizations wore simple square "Hello, my name is...." name tags.

I was amazed at the quality of women who came out for Recruitment. We had 71 arrive that night, and another 8 have registered since then!!! The night went very smoothly, no glitches. It is going to be hard to make cuts (for other than grades) on Sunday night, because so many of the women are fantastic. I would estimate that more than 4/5 of them have two or mote of these characteristics:multiple clubs, leadership positions, community service, talents (drama, choir, musical instruments), athletic ability and grades (above 3.2).

Registration continues until Sunday afternoon, so we won't have a true idea of how many women will be available until then. We will find out Sunday night how many we are required to cut. The computer (ICS) will tell use how many we are allowed to invite back. Some time on Monday I'll let you know how things go Sunday night. This is so exciting!!!

[tcsparky]

Last night was the Sisterhood Night. The girls wore the CUTEST letter shirts imaginable. They were excited, and happy to be there. We were in the same classroom as before. Once again, minimal decorations were allowed. The girls hung their homemade banner (which looks great!!) and the AXiD banner. They had two tables of AXiD "stuff" (scrapbooks, mugs, picture frames, composites, etc...) and ice water with lemon slices. They also wore their diamond ring name tags again.

They arranged the chairs into small circular groups around the room, and had a formal "bump" system worked out so that chapter members got to meet as many PNMs as possible. This seemed to work very well for them last night.

At the end of the night we were told that the chapter could invite back 85% of the women to the next round. Since many young women had dropped, or had been no-shows for the first two rounds, there were 70 women left on the PNM list. The chapter invited back 60 women. The chapter is so nervous about who accepts!! There are a ton of fabulous women going through Recruitment. They just hope the PNMs are are impressed with them as they are with the PNMs!!!

It was a good evening overall. We had two alumnae come to help, plus the ELC, so I was able to leave campus at 11:00 PM. Not bad for a Recruitment night!!! The PNMs pick up their invites this afternoon, and we will receive the invite list right before the first round starts tonight. I'll update you as soon as I can.

[tcsparky]

Yes, they were able to say they were Alpha Xi Delta, and were alllowed to have one banner on the wall signifying this. The banner was black with a gray satin border, and had Alpha Xi Delta in white and Wingate University in light gray.

"No frills" taken to the bare extreme.

[tcsparky]

The chapter was so excited to have a 100% acceptance rate to their parties!! Overall, the return rates were great for all chapters. There were 2 PNMs who received no invites, and 2 who received only one who dropped because they weren't happy with that one (there were others who received only one who were happy with the one they received).

The girls made bears to go on the doors in the children's wing at the hospital. The PNMs had a lot of fun, and the bears were extremely cute. The bears were that foam stuff with a sticky back. They put clothes, pom pons, eyes, banners, shoes, etc.. on them.

The girls had the two banners up again, and set up one of the tables of "stuff". The table on which they were working had blue plastic tablecloths with large overlapping lighter blue and darker blue circles. Again, they served ice water with lemon slices. The members wore their diamond ring name tags and sorority event shirts with jeans, khakis or skirts. The PNMs generally wore jeans and t-shirts.

The chapter was allowed to invite 40 women back for Preference. This meant that there were 20 women they were not allowed to invite back!! I am glad they are the ones making these decisions and not me. Talk about nerve racking!!! I am still waiting for schedules to post on ICS to see if what our return rate was for tonight. They are making us wait until right before it starts to post the schedules!!! E-vil

[AZ-AlphaXi]

Congratulations ... good luck for preference ..

[amanda6035]

I will never ever EVER understand the invite back rate that happens at larger campuses. I can understand cutting girls if you just dont feel right about them, but being told you are ONLY allowed to invite back X number of girls seems like....you're cutting the possibilities of girls who want to become greek. Precisely the reason my campus doesnt have total is because if 20 girls go through formal recruitment, all 20 girls are gonna get a bid....because we wanna maximize greek life for women. Unfortunately, some do drop after pledging, but that happens anywhere...not just small schools who extended everyone a bid.

It's like when my advisor has tried to explain to explain bid matching before and girls end up not getting bids, but yet they are allowed to COR....I just dont flippin' get how you can be one of the top ranked girls throughout formal recruitment, but yet your number one on you pref list doesnt match up with their number one so you dont get a bid at all....but yet, you can be CORed *rolls eyes*

I am so glad I dont go to an SEC school. As a 23 year old freshman, they would have laughed at me going through recruitment anyway.

Good luck Tresa. Keep us updated....I keep coming back to read the thread....

[amanda6035]

okay, I'm dying over here....What's the word? *grin*

//mini-hijack

keep y'alls fingers crossed for Iota Theta. We might hit record breaking numbers tomorrow. Spring 2004, We colonized with 11 girls. Right now, we have 11 girls. Tomorrow, we're extending a bid. Keep your fingers crossed that she accepts! If she does, that will be a new member class of 7 girls! WOOHOO!

//end hi-jack