Evan Freedman | Student Life

Of the 376 women who participated, 345 in recruitment received bids. The total number of women participating has expanded by about 20 to 40 people for each of the past five years.

Washington University’s Greek Life Office is currently working to figure out the causes of the increases through pre-surveys and follow-up surveys about the recruitment process, according to Lucy Morlan, coordinator of chapter development for Greek Life.

“We still need to analyze the data,” Morlan said. “We’re obviously excited about it but are curious to know what’s changed in the course of the past five years that’s gotten interest much higher than it’s been in the past.”

She noted that one possible factor for the elevated interest could be that students who have positive sorority experiences promote Greek life to their friends.

Morlan added that sorority recruitment has begun to see greater involvement from athletes due to a more flexible rush schedule.

Previously, women participating in rush had to attend all of the activities for the full amount of time. But for the past couple of years, recruitment has become more accommodating to athletes’ practice and game schedules.

“We do more individualized schedules to allow them to still be able to participate,” Morlan said.

While about 100 more girls rushed than four years ago, she said that sororities are not more selective in their bids.

“When you look at the percentage of people that go through versus the number of people that actually receive bids, the numbers are about the same,” Morlan said. “The way that recruitment is set up is to maximize the number of people that actually get bids. The goal is to put you someplace in our Greek community that matches up with you.”

She said the increase in recruitment numbers is causing chapter expansion as well. For this semester, the average chapter has 158 members.

Morlan noted that the larger numbers are pushing chapters to find new ways to make sorority involvement a special experience.

“If these numbers are going to increase, how do we still make this an intimate setting and experience [so] that it’s not just this really huge group there?” she said. “It will be interesting to see where the women take that. I think it will be fun for them, but I think it will also be challenging at times.”

Freshman Emi Tagashima, who accepted a bid from Alpha Omicron Pi, explained the efforts of her chapter to introduce new members to the rest of the chapter community.

“It will probably be hard to know all [members], but they do a really good job of introducing you to a lot of people. But there’s a lot of people and a lot of names,” Tagashima said.

The Panhellenic Council has been searching for a new sorority all year to reduce pledge class sizes, make the sorority experience more intimate, and ensure that more prospective new members can be accepted into a sorority. 373 women are slated to go through recruitment in January, meaning that each pledge class will be around 50 members.

The committee announced Tuesday that it had chosen Kappa Delta over Kappa Alpha Theta and Alpha Delta Pi. Kappa Delta will be on campus in 2013.

“[Kappa Delta] really understood that we’re a very academically focused school [and] in no way will let it take away from academics,” sophomore Reyshma Cragg, the committee delegate from Delta Gamma, said. “They were very laid back, which was like what the Wash. U. vibe is.”

Kappa Delta urges all its members to “live G.R.E.A.T.” The acronym stands for “Growth through lifetime learning, Responsibility for our own integrity and ethical actions, Engagement in social and civic interests, Altruistic service to others, Truth and loyalty to each other” according to its national website.

The committee chose the sorority not only because it recognized that Washington University does not have a traditional Greek community, but also because of its philanthropy called the Confidence Coalition, which promotes self-confidence in women and girls.

“The national office puts a lot of money aside to bring speakers on campus and promote strong self confidence with their women and Greek programming as a whole, so we felt that would fit in well with our campus and all the other programming that we have to create a positive self image,” Cragg said.

Kappa Delta applied to be a Washington University chapter the last two times the University added a sorority in 2009, when it chose Alpha Omicron Pi and in 2000 when it chose Chi Omega.

Editor’s note: This article original said that the decision had been made Sunday, but it was actually made on Tuesday.

Some fraternities and sororities hold a rush period during the fall. While 240 men and 250 women rushed last year during the formal recruitment period, about 75 chose fall rush this year.
For sororities, the fall process is sharply different from the elaborately planned spring recruitment, which is run through the National Panhellenic Council. “Informal is kind of the exact opposite,” said Lucy Morlan, coordinator for chapter development. “They don’t necessarily have to hold events.”

Each sorority has its own process and voting procedures for informal recruitment, she said. “If you want to hold an event—open it, broadcast it, advertise it—you can do that,” she said. “If you just want to approach two or three people that you already know, you can do that as well. There really is no structure to it.”

The process also differs for fraternities from formal recruitment, said Dave Wallace, coordinator for Greek housing programs.

“The formal process is display oriented. The fraternities will have events, show off their house, talk about their accomplishments, what they’re engaged in—a couple weeks of that,” he said. “Then they have closed events, which are more brother oriented: those people that the men have clicked with.”

“In informal, it’s basically that closed event without any of those open events. It’s more targeted, it’s more, ‘I have a friend; I think he would be very much interested in being a part,’” he added. “It is basically a time where you don’t have event after event after event, and it’s more dialogue driven than event driven.”

The makeup of the students and their reasons for pledging can also differ from those of spring recruitment. “Only women who have been in college for a semester can participate in recruitment, so fall informal recruitment is only available to sophomores and above,” said junior Melissa Bryan, vice president of recruiting.

“Transfer students, sophomores, juniors, seniors, all go through informal recruitment,” Wallace said.

“I believe people usually join that process later because of relationships they’ve built with members of that organization. And a lot of the time they’ve been asked,” he added.
Sororities see similar reasons, Morlan said.

The additional time allows some students to develop a more accurate perception of Greek organizations. “I would say that as juniors and seniors join, some of their early notions of fraternities and those organizations have been dispelled by some of the relationships they’ve built,” Wallace said. “Some people come to the University and say adamantly, ‘I will not join,’ and then some of their friends join and they realize that it’s really not this heinous media thing that has been created.”

They added that students who are unable to return early from winter break or whose schedules do not permit an intensive time commitment during the spring often choose fall rush.
“It all kind of depends per [person],” Wallace said. “There’s no cookie-cutter reasoning.”

The experience of the fall pledges is little different from that of spring pledges, Bryan said, although in that first semester the small size of the pledge class creates a more intimate experience than in the spring. Because of how they are structured, fraternities are able to make greater use of informal recruitment than sororities.

The National Panhellenic Council rules include placing a cap on membership to ensure a quality experience, Morlan said. “Historically because that number is set at 90, and our groups are already significantly above that mark, that’s why we haven’t done informal recruitment before,” she said. But the number was raised two years ago to 115 per sorority, giving some sororities with remaining spaces after formal recruitment the option to fill them in the fall.

“About half of our community was eligible to do it,” Morlan said, although not all chose to.

Twenty-six women pledged this fall—an increase from 15 last year. But Morlan attributed the rising number to the presence of a new sorority last spring: Alpha Omicron Pi (AOII). As a new sorority, AOII also engaged in informal recruitment last year, holding a rush period in the spring the week after the formal period.

Morlan anticipates that in the upcoming years, informal recruitment may not be an option for sororities because different pledge class years have recently been the same size, leaving no gaps in younger classes. But she added that this could change if the cap size were changed, and that it is reviewed and reconsidered every year.

Fraternities, on the other hand, have no cap on their memberships, so they may hold informal recruiting at their discretion. According to Wallace, the number of men rushing in the fall has risen from 40 to 70 during his three years here.

“I think that’s a positive direction, because I think there was a thought process out there, ‘If I don’t join my second semester freshman year, I don’t join,’ and that’s not necessarily the case in all of our organizations,” he said.

Morlan, however, cautioned women against thinking of fall rush as an alternative to formal recruitment.

“We don’t want women to miss out on the opportunity of joining here and bank on the fact that it’ll be available next year when it might not be,” she said. “If you don’t want to go through formal recruitment, that’s completely fine, but there might not be a chance for you to join during fall semester, and we don’t want you to get the wrong impression.”

Now, the chapter is preparing for its first large philanthropy event to benefit the sorority’s national cause, the Arthritis Foundation.

“We’ve been working really hard to get our philanthropy off the ground,” said senior Sandy Chen, chapter president.

According to information published by the sorority, 70 million American adults are affected by arthritis, and several types are more prevalent in women than in men.

“Arthritis is one of the most widespread diseases in the U.S. It affects a lot of people—one-third of all adults—and yet is really one of those that fly under the radar,” said senior Alex Choi, philanthropy chair for AOII. “You don’t hear a lot about it or see a lot of fundraisers for it.”

The entire philanthropy effort consists of a week of events for fundraising and raising awareness about arthritis. The week will culminate in a flag football game on the Swamp next Sunday called the Rose Bowl—named for AOII’s rose symbol.

The football event will draw participants from other campus Greek organizations—the 12 fraternities, six sororities, in addition to AOII, and other Greek organizations.

The new charter members of Alpha Omicron Pi pose at last April’s Rose Banquet, a formal dinner following the initiation ceremony that took place earlier in the day. The sorority is preparing for its first charity event, which will benefit the Arthritis Foundation. (Scott Bressler | Campus in Focus)

Chen said that in the future, the event will feature participants from other student organizations and the broader campus community as well.

“We want to set the trend of trying to be more inclusive to the community as a whole,” Chen said.

Since the event is the chapter’s first one of this scale, the decision was made to have Greek organizations participate only.

The sorority is encouraging University students to attend its fundraiser dinner on Thursday night at Racanelli’s Cucina on the Delmar Loop. A portion of the proceeds from that night will go to the Arthritis Foundation.

“A lot of our event is about incorporating campus groups into this particular philanthropy event,” Choi said.

To raise awareness about arthritis, Choi said the sorority will be encouraging students on campus to get arthritis facts from its members for points.

“Education is so important in this particular cause, because if you start taking medication early for arthritis, it is pretty much treatable.”

According to Chen, the chapter’s women have done a great deal of work during the colonization process, as well as after the chapter became recognized under the national Alpha Omicron Pi (AOII) sorority, such as writing bylaws and several other important aspects of starting a new chapter.

“Last year was crazy. Usually it’s a 10-month process [for colonization],” Chen said. “We had three months to do the work of 10 months.”

—With additional reporting by Kat Zhao.