By Sarah Cohen, Dyad Director of Education
While presenting at a conference recently, I asked a large group of Panhellenic women what they thought sorority ‘recruitment’ looked like in the early 1900’s. Outside of the one suggestion that it may have been a group of women smoking cigars and playing card games, the majority felt that recruitment in 1900 would have been much less formalized and structured than what we see today. You’d get to know prospective members, extend invitations to the women you like, who also liked you, and call it a day.
When asked what recruitment looks like
today, we got into a great discussion about the competition, the need to be
perfect, the ‘look’, the rules, and the regulations. Over the years, Panhellenic
sorority recruitment has turned into an incredibly elaborate production for
many campuses and organizations. The
time, effort, energy, money and emotional labor that get poured into the
process on all sides makes me wonder: Why are we doing this to ourselves?
I’ve spent the last 9 years working
closely with Panhellenic sororities, including a stint as an Educational
Leadership Consultant for Delta Zeta and now on coming up on my fourth
recruitment at Indiana University. I’ve
had the opportunity to work with countless Recruitment Chairs, Advisors,
Consultants and Recruitment Counselors and year after year I am struck by the
fact that we seem to be terrified to deviate from the norm, and yet at the
exact same time- want to express how different and unique our chapter are. We go
to great lengths to blend in, while claiming to be unique. “We’re the laid-back
sorority.” “We have the most fun.” Or, my personal favorite, “We love each
other soooo much – we just have the BEST sisterhood.”
Overwhelmingly, when I ask a Panhellenic
sorority during recruitment what makes them unique- I will hear “We have the
BEST sisterhood on campus” - which is great, until you ask a few follow up
questions and learn how shallow that statement truly is for most women. I hate to be the one to point this out, but,
if every single sorority on your campus is promoting themselves as the place
with the best sisterhood and can’t say anything more than that- we’ve got
ourselves a problem. It’s important that we understand sisterhood and know how
to discuss it during recruitment before we can proclaim it “the best.”
Earlier this fall, I had the opportunity
to work with the Panhellenic community at East Carolina University (they gave
me hummus - 10/10 would recommend the southern hospitality). I met with each of
the Panhellenic sororities one-on-one and shared with them the results of their
Dyad sisterhood assessment and
talked through how to use their results to improve their recruitment
conversations. I opened each session the same way: “If I came back to your
campus next week during recruitment, would I get the same version of your
chapter I am getting today? Would I see the baseball caps, ponytails, over-sized
t-shirts and Nike shorts, or something else?”
And every single group was shocked at the
idea, and when asked why they wouldn’t show that authentic version of
themselves, the answer always came back to appearances and blending in. There was
tremendous fear of appearing to be different from the other groups on campus. But here’s the problem - we are creating a
system in which potential members feel the need to meet a certain level of
appearance standards and feel the need to present an unauthentic, sanitized, perfected version of themselves. The reason our
potential member are faking it is, at least in part, because our chapters are faking
it. Inauthentic chapters lead to inauthentic PNM’s, which leads to an
inauthentic recruitment process wherein chapters and potential members are mutually
selecting one another based on false pretenses. Everyone has their mask on, and
when the masks go down after bid day, everyone realizes that mistakes were
made. New members realize they joined the wrong chapters. Chapters realize not
all of their new members are as great as they seemed during recruitment.
How can we expect to have any kind of genuine,
meaningful connection when everyone is just putting on a show for one another?
We know from the research we’ve conducted at Dyad that belonging is the key to
a successful new member experience. We
can foster that sense of belonging during the recruitment process by showing
that we value the individuality of our sisters and care more about everyone
being themselves than everyone looking the same. We communicate our values
through everything we do – and we send a clear message to prospective members
about our priorities when we value conformity over belonging, image over meaningful
connection, and “looking the part” over “being true to ourselves.”
Sorority recruitment should be about
finding the women you like, who also like you, and calling it a day. If one of your sisters wants to wear Nike
shorts instead of jeans, who cares? I guarantee she will recruit at a higher
level and be a stronger asset in the process if we allow her to be
herself. Everyone is doing the same
thing, so if you truly want to stand out – focus on showing prospective members
how much you all belong in your sisterhood and how easy it will be for them to
find that same sense of belonging once they join. Take off the mask, let
potential members see you for who you really are, and perhaps they’ll show you
who they really are, as well.
In addition to serving as Associate
Director of Sorority and Fraternity Life at Indiana University, Sarah Cohen is
the Director of Education for Dyad Strategies. In that role, she heads up Dyad’s
programming arm, working with campus clients on data-driven education around sisterhood,
recruitment, social culture and sexual violence. A former traveling consultant
for her sorority, Delta Zeta, Sarah is a graduate of UNC-Wilmington and the
University of West Florida. She is currently a doctoral candidate at Indiana
University, studying the intersection of social culture and support for sexual
assault survivors in sororities.
