After sorority recruitment officially ended last Wednesday, 92 students received bids, with 66 coming from formal recruitment and 26 from shakeout, Panhellenic Council recruitment chair Alexis Wallace ’17 said.
In total, 106 students participated in formal recruitment. Of those, 40 did not complete the process, either accepting bids at Sigma Delta or Epsilon Kappa Theta sororities through the shakeout process or dropping for personal reasons, she added.
EKT had 20 potential new members show up to its shakeout and extended 13 bids, of which nine bids were accepted, sorority president Amara Ihionu ’17 said.
Sigma Delt had 50 PNMs participate in shakeout and extended 20 bids, of which 17 were accepted, sorority president Alanna Kane ’17 said.
Other sororities participated in formal Panhell recruitment. At Alpha Phi, 13 bids were extended; at Alpha Xi Delta, 11; Chi Delta, 12; Kappa Delta, 10; Kappa Delta Epsilon, 10; and Kappa Kappa Gamma, 10, Office of Greek Life director Brian Joyce wrote in an email.
Of the 66 bids extended by sororities that participated in formal recruitment, 65 were accepted, and one declined, Wallace said.
EKT and Sigma Delt held their shakeouts before sorority rush, which was delayed this term due to the death of Adam Wright ’17.
After a vote by Panhell and sorority presidents last spring, PNMs are no longer guaranteed to be called back for round two of the recruitment process, Wallace said.
She said that the vote created more transparency in the process by giving people more time to adjust should they be called back to only some of their preferred houses or none at all, since being extended a bid is only guaranteed at preference night.
“Girls would be called back when the houses would be at the bottom of the list and would be cut at the next round,” she said. “They could have four houses and get cut to no houses in a span of one round.”
Wallace said the recruitment process makes use of an algorithm that takes the preferences of both the PNMs and the houses into account. Preference night comes after rounds one and two, at which point the program tries to equalize the number of bids across sororities to avoid large discrepancies between those that issue more bids and those that issue fewer.
In addition, she said that the program gives a quota each term for how many members each house should take. The quota this term was 10, so the system tried to match the PNMs with houses that ranked them in their top 10 list, she said.
If a member did not rank the house that ranked her in its top 10 list, then the next PNM on the list would be moved up the rank.
Sigma Delt left the Panhell recruitment process last winter and moved to the shakeout process, while EKT conducted its shakeout process for a third year.
While the shakeout process usually occurs alongside the formal recruitment process, the Office of Greek Life wanted to separate the two processes this term so that PNMs could participate in both shakeout and round one of rush, Kane said. Once the PNMs receive their bids from either Sigma Delt or EKT, they would have to either accept or reject the shakeout bids before sending their preferences for other houses through formal rush, she added.
For Sigma Delt, shakeout involves two open houses that PNMs are encouraged to go to and a shakeout night at which they decide whether to shakeout. Then, members of the house vote and extend bids, Kane said.
She said that Sigma Delt started using the shakeout process because it provided more freedom for participants in the process.
“I think that overall, Sigma Delt as a house will continue going through the shakeout processes,” Kane said.
Ihionu said she thinks the shakeout process is a lot less complicated and involved than formal recruitment because rush is a long process where girls have to visit every house.
“I’ve talked to people who say it is like speed dating, where you talk to someone for five minutes, then they speed you along to the next person,” Ihionu said. “You have to be a certain kind of person to get the most out of it, and it is not good for introverts.”
