THROUGH MY EYES: Sorority recruitment

During Ball State's 2016 Formal Sorority Recruitment, Daily News reporter Lauren DeLorenzo blogged about her experiences while finding her perfect sorority.

Sorority recruitment took place in the Student Center from Wednesday, Sept. 7 through Sunday, Sept. 11 — the first time Bid Day has been held on a Sunday.

Recruitment Orientation: Night 1

The first two days, Thursday and Friday, will be Welcome Rounds. This is where we will have the chance to meet current members and ask them questions. It's an opportunity to see which girls we connect with the most, and to narrow down which ones we might be interested in joining. We're going to meet girls from five different sororities on both of these days from 5 p.m. until 10 p.m.

Then on Saturday we have Values Round. After meeting with all ten Panhellenic Councils, we will choose the ones we are most interested in joining in order of preference. Our preferences will be matched with the chapters that are interested in us, and we will meet with between one to six organizations on that day. This is an opportunity to learn more about what each of them stands for and to learn about their philanthropic opportunities and events.

Sunday, finally, is the Preference Round and Bid Day where we'll meet with one or two organizations for an hour each. This is a formal event, which begins at 8:30 a.m. Bid Day activities commence at 6:30 p.m., and this is when potential pledges will find out if they have been accepted into a chapter.

All of this information was quite overwhelming. The hours of "rush week" were long, and it was difficult to imagine how we would fit homework into our week, let alone sleep.

Tomorrow we will be assigned group leaders, known as Pi Chi members, to guide us throughout the week. These girls are sorority members who were temporarily unaffiliated with their chapter in order to remain neutral when helping us make our decision. They are there to answer our questions and to look after us during the recruitment process. They were involved in helping us figure out what to wear, how to interact with members and reminding us to bring snacks and water. It's going to be a long week, and we'd better be prepared.

Recruitment Orientation: Night 2

Tonight, we were assigned a group number and were able to meet our Pi Chi leaders.

As I walked into the room, the leaders were wearing bright T-shirts and stood in the Student Center Ballroom holding large, colorful signs indicating their group numbers. Despite the chaos of the 500 potential pledges in the room, it was easy to see how well the community had organized this event. As soon as we had all arrived, the groups broke off into different sections of the Student Center to get acquainted.

After some icebreakers, we made a list of our most important values and wrote down why these values were important to us to help us decide which chapters held some of the same values that we did.

The Pi Chis gave us some important information, too. They told us the times and places we would meet during recruitment and the attire we were expected to show up in. 

It was comforting to know that even during this chaotic and overwhelming week we would at least have people to help us through the process.

Welcome Round: Night 3

We arrived at the Student Center at 5:30 p.m. on Sept. 8 to meet up with our Pi Chi groups from the previous day. Our three Pi Chis greeted us excitedly. The dress code was cute and casual, but girls were already worriedly fixing their hair and adjusting themselves before the event began.

There was a sense of nervous excitement as we lined up along the hallways, waiting to meet the first group of sisters. We would spend 25 minutes at each of the five sororities, speaking with various members about Greek Life and asking any questions that we had. After each meeting, our group would have a 15-minute break to write down our impressions and thoughts of that group.

Welcome Round: Night 4

The second night of Welcome Rounds commenced with the same routine from the previous night. We had the opportunity to spend 25 minutes with each chapter to meet with different girls before moving on to the next one. 

When the rounds were over, we met back with our Pi Chi groups to rank each of the sororities we met with in order of preference. The first six chapters that we ranked would be considered first, however, if we did not receive an invitation back from them, we would return to the groups that had invited us back.

Values Round: Night 5

Today we arrived at the Student Center at 8 a.m. dressed in formal business attire – dresses, pencil skirts and blazers were appropriate. Today we would meet the chapters that had invited us back.

This time, we would meet with each of the chapters for 40 minutes and learn more about them. We had an hour's break for lunch, and food was provided – thank goodness. Before we went off to meet with the current members, we were told to write our most important value in life on our name tags. 

Because this was Values Rounds, it was important to compare what we considered to be important with the values of each of the sororities. This helped some of the current members when asking about which value we chose as most important to us and why.

Later, there were some tears in the hallways as girls found out they hadn't been asked back to a chapter that they had wanted, but Pi Chi leaders kept telling girls to "trust the process," and if a chapter didn't ask us back, it was because they knew we would fit in better somewhere else.

The rounds were otherwise quite similar to the Welcome Rounds, however, most sororities spent part of the time speaking specifically about the values and philanthropies that are specific to their group. 

At the end of the day, which finished around 10 p.m., we ranked the sororities -– the top two were the ones we felt most connected with, and the rest were ranked in order of preference.

Preference Round: Night 6

Today is Preference Rounds, which focuses on sisterhood. Each of the remaining girls received their schedules for the day, showing the one or two sororities that invited them back. Our group had dwindled since the beginning of recruitment. 

The Pi Chi leaders encouraged us throughout the process to go to all the rounds, even if they were sororities that we hadn't considered joining. If a PNM (Potential New Member) missed one of the rounds, they were automatically taken out of the rest of the process.

This time rounds went for an hour each, and we met with a maximum of two sororities. Before we left, we ranked them one last time, in order of preference, and then left the building to wait for Bid Day that afternoon.

At 5:45, all the girls gathered again at the Student Center Ballroom. Despite all the tired eyes and croaky voices from yelling over the crowd, everyone was bubbling with excitement. Finally, the doors to the Ballroom opened, and a wave of screams ran through the crowd. Pi Chi leaders stood around the room holding group number signs and wearing all sorts of costumes and jackets to cover their sorority shirts. Then, all at once, we opened our letters. And it was the kind of screaming you only hear at boy band concerts — one continuous sound of excitement and joy. Girls jumped up and hugged. A select few seemed underwhelmed with their bid, but they were immediately met with support.

We walked from the ballroom to the West Quad. Lined up in a large circle in front of us were the members of all the sororities, each holding signs and waving banners, wearing their shirts and decorated with glitter. The new recruits sat in the center of the circle, and watched as each of the Pi Chi   threw off their jackets revealing their sorority t-shirt, and ran to the other members, who all hugged and fell to the ground in a heap.

There was a moment of silence as the speaker reminded us of the significance of this day, 9/11. The Star Spangled Banner was sung, and it was met with cheers and applause.

When that was done, the new recruits ran to join the other members. We were greeted with cheers and exclamations of "Welcome home!"

We were given shirts and large signs, and gathered on the steps of the David Owsley Museum of Art for a group photo. 

Each sorority then left for their own post-bid day activities The feeling of being some place where everyone was so welcoming and friendly to each other was awesome, and not something I had expected at first. This process definitely made me realize how different Greek life is from the stereotypes — I'm excited to be a pledge!

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