Sorority recruitment draws record numbers

Sorority recruitment had its highest turnout to date last week, with 238 women registering and 189 women receiving invitations. Only 197 women registered last year. Hopkins's four Panhellenic sororities, Alpha Phi, Kappa Kappa Gamma, Phi Mu and Pi Beta Phi participated in the recruitment process.

Due to the increased turnout, the quota, which is the number of women that each sorority can take, increased from last year's 38 women to 45 women this year.  According to Director of Student Activities and Acting Director of Greek Life Rob Turning, the only year where the quota was higher was in 2010, when Hopkins only had three sororities.

"All groups matched that [quota] number, which is kind of a big deal," Turning said.

Turning thinks that the increase in recruitment interest is not just occurring at Hopkins, but in schools around the country as well. Phi Mu Recruitment Chair senior Alison Ignatowski attributes the increase to Panhellenic Council.

"One thing I noticed about rush this year was that a higher number of potential new members signed up for recruitment," she wrote in an e-mail to The News-Letter. "Given the high number of girls rushing, it is clear that Greek Life is really growing at Hopkins.  I think the efforts of the Panhellenic Council and all the sororities have encouraged more girls to explore sorority life."

Turning also feels that numbers have gone up due to increased awareness of recruitment through Facebook and other social media. According to him, only one girl approached him and said that she had not heard about recruitment prior to the events.

"You'd have to live under a rock to not know it was happening," he said.

After recruitment ended last Thursday, the average size of each sorority was 146 members, with the largest sorority having 170 members and the smallest sorority having 121 members.

"Even though [Pi Beta Phi is] the smallest sorority they're probably one of the largest student organizations on campus," Turning said.

Only seven women were not matched with a sorority.

Sophomore Erica Tan decided to join recruitment because she wanted to become more involved with on-campus activities. "I really wanted to get involved with Greek Life, meet some new people and have some fun," she said.

The recruitment process, which occurred from Feb. 5 to Feb. 9, started with an ice water round, where every member visits all four sororities to try to meet as many people as possible.

"It was really fun, it was definitely a lot different than I thought it would be," freshman Jessica Lee said.

"At first, I thought it would be kind of weird meeting all these girls at the same time. I thought it would be super judgmental. It was kind of a judging process because you can only get to know a person so well for the allotted time, but it was really fun to get to know all these different girls that I wouldn't know otherwise."

Recruitment was previously four days, but it was shortened to three days three years ago so that the process wouldn't take so long for participants. However, it does shorten the amount of time that sorority sisters get to spend with potential new members.

"I would like there to be more days for recruitment," Panhellenic President senior Dani Nemzer said. "It would be nice for the sisters to get to know the freshmen over a longer period of time."

The second night of recruitment was theme night. Women are allowed to go to a maximum of three sororities. Theme night is followed by preference night, where the women are able to go to a maximum of two sororities.

Throughout the recruitment process, sorority sisters called Rho Gammas, who are unaffiliated until the process is over, help the potential new members find their way around and give them advice. Nemzer thought that this year's Rho Gammas were very effective.

"The Rho Gammas, the girls that help the freshmen walk from place to place and were their mentors, were exceptional this year. They were really on top of their game and the freshmen really reached out to them in ways that I don't remember doing to my Rho Gamma."

On the last night of recruitment, the potential new members receive their bids. This is the second year where all of the sororities gave out their bids in the same room instead of in separate places, which results in a lot of excitement in one room.

"Our retention is better when we do it that way than handing it out one by one," Turning said.

Nemzer agrees that handing out bids has been more exciting in the past two years. "All the girls open up their bids at the same time, so it's really fun, and all the sororities are cheering," she said "There's a lot of music and crying and tears of joy."

Lee also enjoyed Bid Night and the suspense she felt before finding out which sorority she got into. "Bid Night was so much fun. It was really nerve-wracking because you're going into this room, and every sorority is screaming and cheering, and they're going crazy in each corner," she said.

"For me it was nerve-wracking because I didn't know which one I was going to get a bid for. You're excited, but you're nervous. It was a crazy experience; you just want to rip open your envelope."

Pi Beta Phi President junior Natalie Copeland thought that the recruitment process was a success. "I think it went really well," she said. "We have a lot of great new girls."

Because Pi Beta Phi has only been at Hopkins for two years, they have not met chapter total yet, which is newly 146 members. This means that they are allowed to participate in continuous open bidding (COB), which will start on Feb. 19.

In the event that any Panhellenic sorority is not at total (a number recalculated each semester), the group is allowed to participate in COB. This is a more informal process.

Even though Pi Beta Phi was recently brought to Hopkins, the Office of Greek Life is considering adding a fifth sorority.

"We're starting to kick around the idea. It's an interesting process because it's not a decision made just at Hopkins, it involves the four national headquarters, "Turning said.

"Our statistics are starting to show that we're kind of bursting at the seams. Our undergraduates really want another group because it would make their group smaller. I'd love to have a fifth group going into next year but I don't think that's a realistic timeline."

In previous years, sororities have participated in frat hopping on the Friday night after bids have been handed out. However, this year Panhellenic decided to ban frat hopping due to safety concerns and noise complaints.

Instead, each sorority had their own activity for their new members. Alpha Phi had a date party, Kappa Kappa Gamma hosted a "Karnival," Phi Mu had their new members over for dinner, and Pi Beta Phi went to bowl and karaoke.

Junior Alpha Phi Vice President of Membership Recruitment Emma Houvos thought that this was a great way for sisters to get to know their new members even better. "We welcomed our new members with a fantastic date party at the Pratt Street Ale House downtown," she wrote in an e-mail to The News-Letter. "Everyone had a lot of fun, and it was the perfect environment for new members to get to know the rest of the chapter."

For Student/Community Liason Carrie Bennett, this change made an immense and noticeable difference. "For years, [frat hopping] has been a problem for me," she said. "It causes a lot of noise complaints [and] it looks bad to our community members."

However, last Friday there was only one noise complaint at Phi Kappa Psi that could not be directly correlated to sororities. "I didn't see large bands of, in this case, sorority girls together, singing loudly, and moving in mass from one address to the next," Bennett said. "For me, it was huge."

While she was very pleased with how last Friday night went, there are still possible problems that could occur in the future, as many of the sororities went off-campus for their events.

"I'm fine with the way it went, but I had just that very limited view. I haven't been approached with any discontent about what happened or how it went that night," Bennett said. "If it works that great for me every year, then I'm great with us continuing it just the way it was. If there are other issue' on somebody else's end, maybe there's some tweaking we can do, but for me, personally, it made a huge difference."