Whether you’re about to go through recruitment, already have, or thank god every day for the fact that you never will, we’re here to answer all of your burning questions!
Hi yes, hello! We are two former ~sorority women~ who were very involved in Greek life in college. Terri was a Delta Gamma at Northwestern University, and she embraced it with both arms: She lived in the house two years, was vice president of member education (aka she oversaw all the new baby pledges after recruitment), served as a recruitment counselor, and held other various, minor, self-important positions. She once surprised her little with male "strippers" (aka fraternity pledges) during big/little week, and was banned from drinking at the next sorority event. She drank anyway.
Rachel was a Sigma Kappa at Michigan State University. She lived in the house for two years, was the vice president of membership (aka VPM, aka the person who runs the house's recruitment), won best recruitment at MSU's Greek Leadership Awards in 2007, and brought in future Miss America Nina Davuluri. She also got caught by the "House Mom" having sex in the house on formal night her senior year and was sent to Standards a week before graduation. She has yet to do her community service. :(
Recruitment is the formal process through which sororities find new members and officially ask them to join. In any given year, a lot of girls are going to be interested in joining sororities, and there are often a lot of sororities at every university. (When Rachel went through recruitment, Michigan State had 13 NPC sororities; when Terri went through at Northwestern, there were 12.) So to make the process less of a shitshow, recruitment is divided into highly structured rounds that take place over the course of several days. During each round, the potential new members (also known as PNMs) visit fewer and fewer houses and, ideally, talk to different girls in the house each time so they can get a sense of where they fit in best, and the girls in the sorority can get a sense of the PNMs and figure out who they should extend bids to.
Ding ding ding! Sororities started calling it “recruitment” instead of “rush” to try to distance themselves from its hazing-heavy '80s-movie connotations. In fact, a lot of traditional sorority jargon has been replaced with vague-sounding acronyms for the same reason. (More on that in a second.)
It does, doesn't it? And it. sort of is. But each step of the process is tightly choreographed, and the whole thing includes a ton of logistics, rules, and traditions that confuse the shit out of (and appear totally nuts to) people who aren't familiar with the process. There is a lot to keep track of — the University of Michigan's recruitment guidelines are 14 single-spaced pages long.
Um, because the Sorting Hat hasn't come to Muggles yet?
JK, it's actually about fairness, to a large degree. The rules — which are set and enforced by Panhel (also known as PHA), a sort of sorority-wide congress — are there to ensure that all PNMs are given a fair shot and feel welcome and comfortable, and that all the sororities are operating on a level playing field.
Despite the persistent stereotypes of mean sorority girls, they actually do want to meet you — and genuinely want people to like them and want to join their house. Having a full pledge class (each sorority has a quota to fill every year) literally secures a sorority's spot on campus. A full chapter more easily pays the rent for the physical sorority house, covers other necessary expenses, and ultimately keeps the executive office in the black. The desire to get "good" new girls is definitely driven by the social reputation ramifications (and is what motivates most active sorority members, TBH), but their national organizations also have a financial interest in rushing hard.
So with that in mind, consider that recruitment of any kind — recruiting athletes, employees, etc. — is a competition, and competition tends to make people act crazy, and tends to favor those who have the money to make grand gestures. So the seemingly arbitrary rules keep sororities from doing things that are stupid, irresponsible, and bad from a PR standpoint, or likely to get the sororities/universities sued. If a sorority is caught breaking the rules, they'll have to pay fines.
Mmkay, it all starts with the rule that prohibits bid promising, which is any kind of behavior that implies a liiiiitle too much interest on the sorority's behalf, makes a PNM think she'll definitely get a bid (a formal invitation to join the sorority), and encourages her to rank that house higher on her list. If she gets cut after you swore she had a spot, it's going to look pretty bad. And if other PNMs see you fawning over other girls and not them, they are going to feel bad or unwelcome, rank your house lower, and/or talk shit about you (and sororities in general).
"No bid promising" is one of the most important, ironclad rules of recruitment, and that trickles down into some other, more petty-sounding guidelines:
• No hotboxing. Although it sounds like some sort of drug- or sex-related activity, hotboxing is just when two or more sorority members take a PNM into a more private/isolated part of the house during a recruitment party. (Think: Everyone is in the formal living room, and then two sorority members invite a single PNM upstairs to ~chat~.) It's both terrifying for PNMs, and reeks of favoritism.
• You can't give PNMs any sort of gift. Now, obviously, a real “gift” like a T-shirt or an invite to come on your family's boat next weekend is the sort of thing PHA is worried about, but everything counts — so PHA will literally fine you if a PNM leaves your house with so much as a tissue. This leads to some very awkward grabs at the end of each round.
• No touching. No hugging or even shaking hands with PNMs. Aside from the fact that getting an embrace or affectionate tap on the arm from someone you just met is a little creepy, it can also make PNMs who don't get any physical contact feel left out. So if the girl who greets you at the door has her hands clasped behind her back, this is why.
• No alcohol. Like, you can't even talk about it. If, during the requisite sorority life montage video that each chapter shows during recruitment, you spot weird some weird blurred-out blobs at hand-level, assume this is the reason — and that behind those blobs you'd find Solo cups and cans of Coors Light.
• No "I'll see you tomorrow" or "I'll see you later" when bidding a PNM adieu. This type of of seemingly innocuous statement falls under bid promising — basically, you're implying that you will see her tomorrow, which could be interpreted as her definitely getting invited back.
• Parties have a strict time limit. And a party is "over" when the last PNM is on the lawn and the door is shut. The house will be fined for literally every minute they go over (the recruitment counselors are on the lawns with their watches ready). That means that when the sorority member who is put in charge of watching the clock walks through and gives a subtle signal, your ass is going to be hustled to the foyer. If you basically get shoved out the front door, assume it's because they didn't want to get fined.
There's so much, but here are the most common/important terms:
• House: Another name for a single sorority or fraternity (Like, “What house is he/she in?”)
• Party: This may either refer to each individual recruitment event (“I have five parties today”) or the group of PNMs that visits a sorority during a particular time slot (“The next party is waiting outside").
• Dirty rush: a catchall term that refers to the ways sororities attempt to circumvent PHA's rules to try to get whoever the hell they want in their new member class.
• Chapter: The particular branch of a national sorority at each school. So, you’d say “The USC Pi Phi chapter” to differentiate it from Pi Phi at other schools.
• Bid day/bid night: The day you receive a card informing you which sorority invited you to be a new member. (If you’re going through formal recruitment, you’ll only get a bid to one house.) Many (but not all) sororities plan big events or parties on bid night, like bowling, hiring a hypnotist, or roller-skating. There will be lots of shrieking and singing, and TBQFH it is overwhelming as h*ck. You may also get a special new T-shirt (the first of many).
• New member: What people are called after they receive a bid but before they are officially initiated. They are NOT called pledges, but yes, they are what you would think of as pledges. A lot has changed since the days of Animal House, and this is a big one.
• “Mutual selection process”: The computer program that most big schools use to match PNMs to houses. After each round of recruitment, the PNMs rank the houses they went to in order of preference, and the sororities will rank the PNMs in terms of preference. Then there will be some bleep bleep bloop bloops, and just before the next round starts the next day, the PNM will get a list of the houses she’ll be going to during the next round (and the schedule of when she’ll be going to each), and each sorority will get a list of the PNMs coming through during that round. If this is starting to make your head hurt, you’re not alone.
• DOTS: Short for "depends on the school," and it's a term we just invented because we're going to be saying it a ton here.
Hi. Yes, right, of course. We'll come back to you later.
Actual recruitment generally lasts for a week. And even though the process itself SOUNDS complicated as fuck, it’s actually pretty straightforward because it’s broken up into distinct days/rounds. Every sorority and university operates a little differently, but here’s a general overview:
Round 1: Groups of PNMs visit every single sorority and chat with 2 to 3 sisters at each. These "parties" are typically pretty short because the PNMs have so many sororities to go to, and they may take place in sorority houses or at booths in a ballroom or gymnasium, sort of like a really surreal, all-female career fair. At the end of the day, PNMs rank their favorite sororities using the ~mutual selection~ computer program, and vice versa.
Round 2: PNMs visit ~75% of sororities; the exact ones depend on how their rankings matched up with those of the sororities. Getting the shortened list of houses you’re going to during Round 2 can sting a little; you’re literally getting cut from houses based on less than 30 minutes of conversation! It’s very easy to think it’s all very superficial and arbitrary at this point, and sometimes, it is, TBH, but the process weirdly works in the end. Anyway, Round 2 is sometimes a day for sororities to present a speech and a video about their philanthropy, or the PNMs and sorority girls might do a little craft project that’s related to their charity. It might also be the first time the PNMs are seeing the inside of the sorority houses, which is always fun! If you go to a bigger school, Round 2 could be divided into two days, during which you go to, say, five houses the first day and four houses the second.
Round 3: Another day, another round of cuts. PNMs tend to visit ~50% of sororities, where they’re treated to more awkward chitchat, hopefully with new people this time. Again, DOTS, but Round 3 is sometimes skit day (sisters literally perform skits or songs about their chapters — it’s a whole thing) or a video day (where they show a video about how cool and fun their house is). Round 3 may include a house tour (the girls are taken upstairs and shown some of the different bedrooms, study areas, and “get ready rooms”). It’s sometimes philanthropy day. Or it may be something else entirely.
Round 4: This is the legendary pref night, the evening when PNMs visit up to three sororities that the mutual selection process has led them to. It is very rare for a PNM to be thrilled about all of the houses she’ll visit that night, but such is life. Every house has a different pref night ritual, which is often imbued with the sororities’ tradition and lore, and some kind of sendoff for the seniors. The sorority girls typically all wear black cocktail dresses and sing soft, pretty songs (instead of the wailing chants they’ve been doing all week) and there are a lot of candles*. It’s honestly a pretty awkward night for PNMs, because things go from being loosey-goosey “fun” to extremely formal and almost somber. PNMs talk to at least one sister who they’ve already met and, unlike the other days when everyone is supposed to keep it cool and play hard to get, the members of the sorority try to hard sell you on their house without crossing the line. The PNMs will definitely hear many times "I can definitely see you being happy here" and things of that nature, and at the end of the night, they rank their favorite houses one last time. Meanwhile, the sororities change from their black dresses into their pajamas and head into their “chapter room” (meeting room) for a process called "member selection" or MS. It’s going to be a long night for them, and especially for the VPM.
*Depending on the house, the candles may be fake, which makes these rituals very, very awkward. Like *many* of the weird things sororities do, this is related to house insurance/liability.
