The SororiTEA on Recruitment

Today is going to be a great day, not just a good day. For those of you who haven’t been consumed by Bama Tiktok, that’s because today, I’m tackling sorority recruitment.

This is one blog I’ve really always been wanting to write. Sorority recruitment….wow this one is a doozy. So to help me out, I recruited some people from 9 sorority chapters around the country, to hear what they had to say about the start of their Greek life experiences. Here they are.

How is Recruitment?

“One of my friends was our chapter’s recruitment chair. On bid day she was so anxious, she blacked out. To this day, she still can’t remember what happened.”

“Recruitment in itself can be terrible and can be hard for those that never had a parent in Greek life. Some houses will be very kind and you will have an easy conversation and other houses will just be plain rude. No matter the case, go in with an open mindset and go on from there.”

“Being informal was really easy, I went out for coffee with one girl. She sent a google survey out and said I was nice and easy to talk to and everyone voted yes to let me in. It was nice to get in quick so I could start going to events and everyone was super welcoming, but it was a little weird feeling behind everyone especially during initiation when I was a junior with all the freshman. But everyone was nice and I made the best of it. I think that’s all you can d

“Recruitment was very tiring. It felt like I had to impress everyone I saw and my character was being questioned which was very exhausting. It was like being put under a microscope.”

“I talked to one of my sisters recently and she put it perfectly. During the first few days where the conversations are shorter and its the same thing over and over again, its like you black out- no recollection of what you talked about- one moment you are screaming to be heard by the PNM and the next you are in your room taking your makeup off.”

“I definitely was cut from a lot of houses based on [the dorm I lived in] and probably the fact that I was pretty involved in band lol. For recruiting, to me it was based on who setups thought you would be a good fit with and sometimes they nailed it and you could have a great conversation and sometimes you thought why the heck would they put me with this person. One of my preference rounds I was put with a PNM who did not want our house and was so unlike me but because she figure skated we were together.”

“Formal Recruitment is a fulfilling, but surreal experience. Most of the conversations feel very short, and there’s a high chance you’ll never see the person you’re talking to ever again. By the end, it feels like a fever dream; many of the names and faces begin to blur together. But, I’ve also had some really meaningful conversations that will stick with me forever. Despite the hours and hours of hard work, recruitment is a fleeting experience that I will never forget.”

“Although it gives you a chance to meet so many new people and a group of friends to hang out with on a regular basis, it can be toxic at times. From my experience, people were very cliquey and seemed to be still “suck in high school”. I unfortunately wasn’t able to make long lasting friendships like I know other girls have. So I guess it really comes down to luck and if you end up with the right group of girls.”

“Sorority recruitment was the most intense process I’ve ever been through. I remember it being really emotionally taxing and a lot of the girls were a little cutthroat but there were others who were really kind and supportive. I felt like a bit of an outsider for most of it because I didn’t really feel like a “typical sorority girl” and I didn’t put a ton of effort into my outfit lol. Bid day was a lot of fun and really felt like the whole process had ended on a high note. Recruiting was actually kind of fun as I remember having a lot of really great conversations and just bonding with my friends. Being a [recruitment counselor] was the best because I felt like I was helping people in a significant moment in their life and I really loved talking to other people in Panhellenic.”

“Sorority recruitment is grueling for anyone with social anxiety. Even as someone who thrives as an extrovert, I found myself exhausted every day of recruitment. There is so much pressure to get sisters that I once cried while preffing a PNM. She did not join our house.”

“I was once so sick from sewer gas poisoning from the house and my sisters called me a pussy for not being able to recruit. Then when I felt better they stuck me in the basement and isolated me from everyone.”

“The best part about being in a sorority is definitely how welcoming everyone is when you first join. I remember at bid day everyone was so excited about getting to know me and my interests! It truly made me feel so welcome coming into such a big school.” ❤️

“As a PNM, I was super nervous during the whole process. Everyone says that once you reach the place you’ll end up in, you’ll automatically feel like you belong, like it’s magic. That’s not always the case. You can be incredibly happy in a sorority but not immediately click with the girls you’re talking to. Rush is supposed to seem like this mystical, mysterious process, but really it’s just a bunch of girls of similar ages talking to each other with some restrictions, once you take away the mythic element. So once you acknowledge that everyone around you is just as anxious as you are, you’ll find your way through😊”

“’Please take your shoes off’ is something I say to every PNM I meet. The look of relief and sense of home that they give me after I say this, makes me know that I made even a small difference in their day. It is important to feel at home at the chapter you eventually end up in. If you cannot feel comfortable taking your heels off after running from house to house - then that chapter is simply not for you. Stay true to yourself, and do not conform to something you are not - no one will ever benefit from losing their own individuality.”

“All I remember was being so scared. I told the sorority I ended up joining during preference that I had a twin brother whom I DEFINITELY did not have. That was a fun one to explain on bid day.”

“I once cried during a speech at a recruitment preference ceremony and everyone shamed me instead of comforting me because they thought it was embarrassing that I was emotional and said I ‘ruined’ that round.”

“It sucked. That’s it. Running around in full makeup and heels across campus in the heat… I hated all of it.”

“As the Recruitment Chair of my sorority, I learned leadership skills that will continue to guide me personally and professionally for years to come. I grew significantly as an individual all while being pushed to the brink of physical and mental exhaustion.”

“A warning to those going through recruitment. I recruited girls to a sorority I hated, shared about how much the “sisterhood” meant to me when the “sisterhood” caused me to break into tears almost weekly. The stories I shared were real-I did have friends and good memories due to sorority life- however, the stories were told through rose-colored glasses. In short, my warning for those going through recruitment is to be careful because sorority recruitment is a lot like social media … it’s fake.”

“Going through the recruitment process was definitely not what I expected. At times, it felt as though I was in an interview as opposed to having a genuine conversation with someone. For example, some of my conversations with the girls were very uncomfortable and with a lot of the houses, it was pretty evident that they were judging based off solely looks. Overall, from my experience, the conversations seemed very fake and it didn’t feel like a genuine process.”

“ ‘Join a sorority if you wanna be part of a sisterhood that always supports each other and other people, a judgment free zone where you can make your life long best friend’. That’s what I call bullshit. Join a sorority if you wanna feel less than, pushed around, charged money for missing chapter or other events, completely judged and put on a social ladder. You’re always not as great as your other sisters, because they’re cooler than you, prettier than you, and do more than you. During recruitment everyone already knows everything about you including if they think you’re “good enough” or “pretty enough” to join their cult. Good luck ladies.”

So that’s what everyone’s got to say: some good, some bad, some ugly. Some advice for future generations sprinkled in there too. But what do I think about it? What’s the aggregate of all of these testimonials?

Sorority recruitment is a long, complicated story that boils down to the question of “why?” Why do women who are independent enough to leave home and live in college towns practically by themselves WANT to have their independence extinguished like water over a spreading fire? Live in a house where their personal lives are on display 24/7, where there’s no room to cry or want to be alone because self care has turned into “sorority care”? Where your social media posts are monitored long after you’ve turned 21, who you date is extensively scrutinized, and your life becomes a bubble of social instructions?

None of this is felt more strongly than during the month of September, when sororities around the United States partake in sorority recruitment. For younger readers, I understand recruitment often has an aura of mysticism. The truth is that most sororities would prefer it to be kept this way, because the more potential new members (PNMs) that are like me – clueless about recruitment – the better their manipulation tactics work. Information is control and control is power and for recruitment to work, it’s a lot easier if the PNMs don’t get the power.

But I love fucking things up, so this blog is here to tell the real story of recruitment, some of which you probably glimpsed by reading the above testimonials. So here’s what recruitment really looks like:

What is Recruitment?

· Work Week/Pre-recruitment

This looks a lot different depending on if you’re an active (someone who is already in sorority recruiting people) and a PNM (someone going through recruitment). For actives, this is hell week. Turns out those perfectly choreographed Alabama rush tiktok dances actually take hours of preparation, who knew? What people might not know is that those dances happen on top of five 8-10 hour workdays, featuring everything from mock practices to bonding activities to screaming chants until voices are gone (and for that matter, so is your will to live). For PNMs, you’ll meet your recruitment counselors, meet your rush group, get a cringey presentation from some sorority alumni whose “life was changed by trusting the process”, and you’ll get your first social instructions ever!

· Open House

At UIUC, we have 19 sororities, and I know this because during open house, we ran for 10 hours from house to house to house. Shoving our faces with pizza to get some food in between rounds and doing homework at 3 am after getting home exhausted are some highlights here. And I have to agree with one of the testimonials above. As an active, you black out a lot during this round.

· Sisterhood/Philanthropy Rounds

With each round, both the houses and PNMs preference each other, and each day you get back a list of the houses you got back. And you can trust me when I say that there are A LOT of tears. Two girls in my rush group threatened suicide after not getting invited back to their top houses, and because mental health is SUCH a priority in the Greek community, absolutely nothing was done about it.

· Preference round

The final day of sorority recruitment, where you go to your final two houses and are usually serenaded by overeager sorority girls who claim they “can’t wait to call you a sister”. After this, you preference your final chapter that you’d like to pay thousands of dollars in dues to over the next few years call home.

· Bid Day

Where thousands of PNMs gather with each other, find out what houses their recruitment counselors belong to, and finally open their bids! There’s nothing like getting a house you weren’t expecting and staring blankly at a bid while everyone around you shouts excitedly and hugs one another. And if that weren’t bad enough, then all the girls run to their individual chapters (or in my case walk because it was all the way across campus) while frat guys cheer and harass the girls from the windows of the frat houses.

Throughout all of this, there are plenty of other tidbits most PNMs wouldn’t know. For example, the fact that every single thing that seems so effortless, natural, and “meant to be” is actually so planned, calculated, and set up. I use that phrase intentionally, because there are often “set up” teams designed to pair girls based off extensive stalking of their social medias. So for all the soon-to-be PNM’s, when you get matched with a girl who “just so happened” to work at the same Jewish camp as you, is in the same major, dated your current boyfriend, and lived in the same dorm hall as you….it’s not as much of a happy coincidence as you would like to think.

As for my own embarrassing testimonial that I owe my readers, I rushed because my best friend and roommate at the time rushed and begged me to do it with her. I had absolutely zero expectations, and had to look in the dictionary to fully explain what sororities were to my parents. Because truthfully, all I knew were the scary hazing videos our fifth grade teachers showed to us and what our recruitment counselors told us: wear cute outfits, don’t judge the sororities, and above all, always ‘trust the process’. There was no Bama recruitment and no Sharon Zavlins who would break the process down for me.

Sorority recruitment, for me, was a disaster. I realized after the first round that I didn’t have any cute outfits in Champaign to wear and had to immediately schedule a trip home to bring something better. Despite having a notebook to take notes on the chapters, by the end of the process, I still couldn’t understand what the difference between Alpha Epsilon Phi and Alpha Phi was. My first chapter I visited, I was so anxious that I lied and said I loved country music and improvised country artists that were my favorite (90% chance it’s a Luke, right?). When actives put their hands out to take my notecard, I routinely thought they wanted to shake my hand and stuck my hand out at them. I knocked over the fireplace setup at one house I went to, apologizing to everyone over and over. And for the crowning memory, at one chapter, I tripped in my tall heels and fell from the house platform in front of EVERYONE, knocking my recruitment counselor to the ground and stopping the chapter president in her tracks.

At preference round, I was exhausted but excited to preference a sorority that I thought had seen me for me, all the clumsiness and awkwardness included. I was so excited that I wore a rose necklace to bid day, the symbol of their sisterhood. When I read that I had gotten a bid from another house and not them, I was devastated.

Over the following few weeks, I realized what a joke recruitment had been. Everything I thought was so personalized and special was actually staged to manipulate me into making the wrong decision. And I learned to love AEPhi, not because it was the house I chose but because the house chose me for the values I possessed and dreamt of in a sisterhood. I have never regretted the choice I didn’t make for a second. As cringey as it is, recruitment worked for me when I stopped trusting the process and learned to trust myself.

Why is Recruitment?

Some future PNM’s thoughts on what they want from rush:

“I want to have a group of friends and planned activities that are a safety blanket for me.”

“I want a set group of friends right off the bat.”

“Honestly, if someone said ‘that’s what she said’, or anything that just appealed to me, I would instantly be drawn to them. But also just being comforting and gentle and announcing that this is a safe space. I feel like if people value mental health issues and taking breaks that would draw me towards them more.”

So we’re back to that question of why people do this to themselves. There’s two answers, one obvious and one more subtle. The obvious answer is that we as a society, especially as women, crave belonging. We assign value to being a part of a group, and at no time is this search for belonging more intense than our freshmen year of college, when we lack that kind of social identity. We want a set group of friends to take that uncertainty off our shoulders for us. In other words, social instructions are valuable when we feel hopeless at instructing ourselves.

But the second reason that I picked up after reading these testimonials comes down to one observation I made somewhere between seeing girls cry when I went through recruitment and having conversations as an active with PNMs who dropped the process because they didn’t get certain sororities. Recruitment is much more about the sororities you CAN get than the one you ultimately choose.

As much as we claim to hate labels, We. All. Love. Them.

I’ve made up a title for this: the mirror effect. It’s not just that we like having friends that are similar to us, it is that we don’t really know who we individually are until other people tell us. Freshman year, when we are at our most vulnerable and confused, we just can’t put a finger on who we are. In high school, we hid behind goals and achievements, but college is the first time we are confronted with reality: those achievements need to go somewhere. Where are yours going? Who are you?

So people look at the mirror, like I did, and they freak out. They keep waiting for something to reflect back at them, but what they’re seeing instead is their own confused selves. So they go through recruitment. Someone else can validate that, can tell me where I belong….right?

If you need any more evidence that first years in college are most susceptible to feeling this way, here it is: the reason more freshmen rush than juniors and the reason sororities often have a quota on the upperclassmen they accept.

It’s not that freshmen have a low self worth, but rather that many don’t have self worth of any kind. And they want –no, need -- labels – to stick them in a box so that it becomes easier to breathe normally, to look yourself in the mirror and see something, anything at all.

Why is it that sites like Greekrank exist, that sororities have become a social ladder, or that Chi Omegas are ‘sporty’, Alpha Phis are ‘hot and ditzy’, and Zetas are ‘rich and self-obsessed’? It’s because we thrive off the labels. It’s because we want to know whether other people see us as the prettiest, most spoiled, smartest, or best-dressed. We’ve lost sight of our own direction and so we let the mirror effect work its magic. We go through recruitment and sob at our lists because we assign value not to the houses printed on the paper, but to the labels that lie in between the lines. I used to judge and roll my eyes when I saw girls cry while opening their bids and their lists, but now I understand. It feels awful to have a door closed on you when you’ve based your individuality and identity off of it, pictured it as your home, seen the sisterhood as your family. It’s literally soul crushing, and recruitment mirrors our insecurities like a boomerang that you’re just not expecting to come back.

The end-all be-all is that sorority recruitment is so appealing to us because we secretly are begging to know what people think of us. It isn’t until months or years later that we figure ourselves out and understand what we didn’t before, that what the world thinks of us is usually a reflection of what we think of ourselves. So the very answers we’re looking for during recruitment, the labels we’re searching for, are colored by our lack of self-worth and self-direction.

My advice to all my friends going through recruitment this year therefore is not, don’t do it. It’s to think about who you are before, not after, going through recruitment. Seek your own personal validation. And my advice to actives is to make the most of your conversations, not black out during them. Your PNMs are just as anxious if not more than you, so stop putting them in boxes and take some time to listen to their needs.

Most importantly, do not trust the process. Trust yourself. You’re worth a lot more than the process.