Sororities will be changing the way they recruit potential new members (PNMs) coming Fall 2018.

The Panhellenic Council decided to change the original format of recruiting after attending the National Panhellenic Conference and saw that an overwhelming number of sororities had better results in recruiting on other campuses by splitting recruitment into two weekends.

The previous recruitment process was on the third week of the fall semester and went from Tuesday through Sunday starting at around 5 p.m. each day.

The new process will take place over the first and second weekends of the 2018 fall semester. Sorority recruitment is broken up into three rounds open house, sisterhood and preference.

The three rounds take place over five days and the sixth day is bid day.

The open house round takes place on September 15 through 16 and is an open house round where PNMs can speak to different women from all the sororities.

The sisterhood round will be the following Friday on September 21 and is when the PNMs rank their top choices and visit the houses of each sorority.

The preference round will happen on Saturday, September 22 and is when the PNMs make their final choices of which sorority they would like to join.

Then finally, Sunday, September 23 is bid day where the PNMs find out if the sorority they chose also chose them to be a member.

The president of the Panhellenic Council, Haley Foster said that while they made the final decision on the change, the sororities did get a say as to whether they wanted the change or not.

“We hosted roundtables to allow them to voice their opinions and help us draft the recruitment rules, which get renewed or redesigned every year,” Foster said. “They helped us modify some pieces of the rules so that it would better serve them, and we are eternally grateful for that.”

The final vote came out to be six sororities for the change and two sororities against the change.

Former Panhellenic assistant vice president of recruitment and current recruitment chair for Alpha Xi Delta, Eyrn Gebacz thinks this will improve the number of PNMs who end up sticking with recruitment.

“From the Panhellenic side we saw that a lot girls ended up not sticking with the recruitment process because they had class,” Gebacz said.

She also thinks that this new process will really help freshman specifically since they also have to deal with juggling school work and adjusting to college life as a whole.

“Typically, recruitment was around the second or third week into the semester. So, that might be when your classes are starting to pick up, your starting to having tests, and different projects and quizzes due. So, especially if you are a freshman going through recruitment then it can be very stressful,” Gebacz said.

The president of Alpha Xi Delta, Andrea Gump is excited about the change not only because she believes that it will reduce stress for PNMs, but also the women recruiting into the sorority.  

For the sorority women recruiting it is an even more trying process. The days are even longer for them because they need to stay in their house and talk to all the PNMs. This process can last hours for them.

“I remember we stayed at the house for hours talking to PNMs and showing them around. It wasn’t until about 6 a.m. when we finished and then of course you have classes the next day so then you have to try and get up and function, then do it all over again,” Gump said.

There is some worry however that the gap in-between the recruitment days might make women change their mind about joining a sorority, but Gump believes that to actually be a good thing.

In a sorority, much like other organizations, they want their members to be committed and excited about being part of it.

Gump feels that if the break between recruiting makes some of the women realize that it is not for them then that is better than them joining and then dropping after having already gone through the process.

Whether the change in recruitment will benefit sororities in the future will be unknown until after it is tested next fall.

“I think it will give us more time to home in on what’s important and to focus on what we are and who we are and what we stand for, so it won’t feel as rushed so we can really focus on what is important,” Gump said.