Elaina Eakle
ehe001@marietta.edu
Recruitment numbers for sororities at Marietta College improved after lower than average numbers last year.
Laura Knobel, the adviser of the Panhellenic Council, was pleased with the recruitment results this year.
“Out of 45 women who attended the Open House Round, 30 women accepted bids, meaning we had a 66 percent retention rate throughout recruitment,” she said. “Last year, our retention from Open House to Bid Day was just 48 percent. We also had two more women accept bids this year than last year, which is very impressive, considering the number of women on campus has declined.”
A year ago, the National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) instituted a new method of calculating “total,” which is the allowable chapter size based on the campus average. Following this method, the total for each sorority resets directly after recruitment.
“The National Panhellenic conference is sort of like an umbrella governing body of all 26 of the national sororities in the country,” Katie Transue, the president of MC’s Panhellenic Council, said.
“We have four of those on our campus: Alpha Xi Delta, Chi Omega, Sigma Kappa, and Theta Phi Alpha.”
NPC’s method for calculating total was designed to balance the size of sororities on a campus.
“The reason NPC instituted this rule was to allow all chapters on a campus to achieve parity, meaning, setting a total number somewhere in the middle of all the chapter sizes would allow smaller chapters to continue to invite new members until they were at total,” Knobel said.
While this change did not affect recruitment numbers last year, it did prevent some of the larger sorority chapters from hosting Continuous Open Bidding (COB) events, which are events held throughout the year to recruit new women, according to Knobel.
Knobel predicts that the implementation of the policy will continue to improve, and that the changes will ultimately benefit MC’s smaller sororities.
“Now that NPC has watched the rule play out on campuses across the country, they are better able to predict the ideal size of our sorority community and recommend a method of total calculation for our campus,” she said. “Since our campus has significantly less women than last year, and less women than other campuses with NPC sororities, they plan to customize a method of total calculation for us this week that will allow the two smaller chapters to COB up to total.”
Transue believes that better communication about the policy lessened its negative impact this year.
“A lot of our members didn’t understand completely what [the policy] meant and so this year we’ve made a lot of changes in how we communicate the national policies,” she said. “We have definitely increased our positivity in the community by just making sure that everyone understands that these are national policies and that we’re not just making them up.”
Transue also feels that changes in the structure of recruitment led to a more positive response and a higher retention rate. While recruitment has previously been a week long, this year recruitment was shortened to a four-day weekend.
“We think that that really, really helped,” Transue said. “We had a lot better retention this year than we have in years past, because as the week goes on, we have some women who just feel very overwhelmed by the process.”
Kindle Crossley, the president of Sigma Kappa, agrees that the changes to the recruitment process were beneficial.
“The shortened recruitment week seemed to make a positive impact on keeping women involved in the recruitment process and ultimately placing them in a chapter,” she said. “ I am excited to see the Greek community grow with the new members of our sororities and fraternities as we continue to have a positive impact on the community within this next year.”
