Iota Omega -- University of Maryland

[ZetaGirl22]

I am an alumna from Iota Omega. I graduated May 2002. I think the excellent recruitment results for Iota Omega, at least last year, can be attributed to the incredibly hard work of the membership, as well as a change in attitude by the panhellenic community. When I was a collegian, there was really no sense of Panhellenic unity. There was a definite "us against them" mentality that all sororities had against eachother. As a result, the big chapters kept on getting bigger and the smaller chapters kept on getting smaller. I think once Panhel as a whole realized that this sort of attitude was pretty deterimental to greek life in general, things really changed for the better. For example, When I was a collegian, there were really only 3 chapters out 14 that were consistantly at total every year. A majority of houses would not make quota in formal recruitment. As I understand, almost every single house made quota both last year and this year, which I think is incredible. I also know that this year, there was lots of buzz going around the community about how wonderful our house looked specifically, how great our skit was, and also the fact that the chapter members decided to wear brown instead of the traditional black for preference was what made them stand out specifically. I also think panhel as a whole is doing a lot better job at increasing retention from the beginning of formal recruitment and the fact that quota was 27 this year (WOW! That is a HUGE number for UMD) means that there is definitely a lot more interest in Greek Life than there ever has been before.