What If We All Wore Nike Shorts During Recruitment?

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.  

In Their Words - A Sorority President Reflects on Improving Her Chapter's Sisterhood

Our facilitation team at Dyad recently had the opportunity to visit the University of Maryland for two days of data-driven workshops. These workshops involve sending surveys to student groups in advance of the visit, and then facilitating chapter discussions around brother/sisterhood, using the data to help us understand each chapter’s unique strengths and weaknesses. These conversations are often very illuminating, as chapter members diagnose the reasons for their challenges and begin developing strategies aimed at addressing those deficiencies.

As this was our second year doing this project at Maryland, we were also able to help chapters understand how their brother/sisterhood had changed over the last year. One of the sorority chapters on campus, Alpha Xi Delta, saw tremendous gains over the past year – on a five point scale, both the Belonging sisterhood and Support and Encouragement sisterhood increased by between .2 and .3, incredible jumps from the previous year. The chapter also saw gains on measures of organizational commitment and identification, including almost a 1 point jump on overall satisfaction with the sorority experience. After facilitating our workshop this year with the chapter, it became obvious that the chapter had made some significant changes over the last year.

We asked their chapter president, Laura, if she would be willing to share her thoughts on some of the changes the chapter made in the last year that caused the drastic improvement in their sisterhood, and this is what she shared with us:

As a newly initiated member of my sorority at the University of Maryland last year, filling out the “Sisterhood Survey” facilitated by Dyad Strategies through our campus Panhellenic Council, I was optimistic about my chapter and our bonds of sisterhood.  I had made close friends in my first semester within the chapter and wasn’t aware of any dysfunction or issues on a chapter-wide level.  I knew that the seniors were distant and that there was occasional drama between cliques, but I assumed this behavior was just a normal part of being in a sorority. When Gentry came to a chapter meeting to review our results, my eyes were truly opened to some of the serious issues we were facing as a chapter. 

I remember being told that so many components of our sisterhood-- from feeling a sense of belonging to accountability among sisters—was not where it needed to be.  Compared to other chapters on campus and nationally, our chapter showed serious signs of conflict.  Among many of the issues discussed were a desire to be “top tier,” unsafe drinking habits, and an obvious disconnect between pledge classes.  These issues went deep, influencing many aspects of our sisterhood.  Throughout the meeting and subsequent discussion, many members were teary-eyed or crying.  It was clear that as a chapter, we were not genuinely happy with the sisterhood that we were a part of.

The consultation was a wake-up call.  It proved that our next executive board would need to make drastic changes to our current system, and that each and every member would need to consider what role they could play to be a part of working towards that change.  During our executive board transitions last year, the outgoing officers shared their hopes for what they thought our sisterhood could become.  They shared advice and ideas for making those improvements.  At our first executive board meeting, we broke down which ideas we felt would work, and which practices from the past executive board term should be abandoned.  We ultimately decided to start at the roots of our sisterhood-- the new member process.  All members of the executive board, and even other general chapter members, dedicated so much effort and time to making the new members’ experiences a positive one, doing everything imaginable to help get them socially integrated into the chapter. 

Changes to our big-little process played a large role in our transition; members from the sophomore pledge class went above and beyond in their efforts getting to know the new members.  People went on group dates so that they could meet and get to know even more women and were not afraid to invite people they had never spoken to previously. This really helped make sure that freshmen had a chance to get to know all of the sophomores and not just a few.  I recall one night where there were about forty of us, a mix of new and old members, that had taken over the back half of the Applebee’s on Route 1.  It was a great way to get to know everyone in the new pledge class, and I think the closeness that was formed between members has transcended to many other aspects of our sisterhood. In addition, our seniors this year also focused on getting to know our new members, and those mentoring relationships really helped the new members feel welcomed and valued in the chapter.

Along with focusing on an improved new member process, we rolled out a new accountability system.  Judicial matters, that had once been handled by the executive board and a chapter vote, now are handled by an Honor Board system.  The new process allows us to hold more women accountable and set clear expectations for everyone.  This has led to a sisterhood where everyone places a high priority on acting in a way that is beneficial to the chapter.  As our relationships with one another have become stronger, sisters are more willing to hold each other accountable and expect a lot from one another. It has also helped us to focus less on comparing ourselves to other sororities and, instead, to focus on the sisterhood and the relationships we have with one another.  

Our second consultation with Gentry last week was a complete 180 from our past experience.  We were nervous to see the results because we had spent the last year working so hard to change the chapter culture surrounding our sisterhood. When our new scores were projected on the wall with a comparison to our previous scores, a sense of pride and relief washed over many of us.  We were all optimistic about the change that had occurred over the last year, but seeing the quantifiable results really validated all of our hard work.  The following discussion focused on why we all felt this improvement occurred-- new members shared their positive experiences and older members discussed their renewed commitment to the chapter.  It was overall a much more uplifting and positive experience than the prior year.  I hope that as a chapter we will continue moving on this path and our sisterhood will make even greater strides in the future.  The consultations have been such an eye-opening and learning experience for our chapter, helping us focus on real, tangible ways we can improve our sisterhood. This will be something we look forward to each year.

For more information about our campus cultural assessments (based on our award-winning research) and our Assessment + Programming chapter workshop option, visit our website.