We are aware that there is still a need to place more women in sororities and will work with the Panhellenic community, their alumnae and national organizations to address the concerns that have been raised. A committee comprised of staff, students, alumnae and relevant constituents will be charged with reviewing the recruitment process and providing suggestions to the Panhellenic community to address these stated concerns. The Panhellenic Association is also reviewing extension and the opportunity to bring additional chapters to campus following Alpha Sigma Alpha’s colonization in the Fall of 2012. Please continue to send your suggestions to iupharec@gmail.com and they will be compiled and utilized during the recruitment review process.

“Dorthy (Sic)

Thank you for your past two emails and sorry for the delay in the response. We appreciate all suggestions and we are collecting and reviewing all of them and passing them along to the Greek Community.

The Recruitment Team”

Unfortunately, I’m not satisfied with this answer. I feel as though this is simply an attempt to pacify me rather than a sincere commitment by IU to recognize our concerns as a problem that it has any accountability for. IU needs to accept more responsibility over the Greek organizations on their campus beyond simply ensuring that no laws are broken. While I understand that the Sororities have a significant degree of independence, they are part of the University culture and I don’t think that IU can remain a neutral party to this particular issue. Many of the young women who chose IU did so with very high expectations that they could participate in the Greek system and there was no information provided by the University indicating how exclusive the IU Greek system is compared to other Universities.

As several contributors to this dialogue have suggested, why can’t the University advocate more vocally for their students and formally request that sororities add membership to more young women beyond the bed limitations of the existing houses?

Here are some excerpts from the NPC mission statement from their website:

“This We Believe

Mutual Choice

The young woman who wants fraternity experience will find it possible to belong on most campuses today. Fraternity membership is a social experience arrived at by mutual choice and selection. Fraternity membership is by invitation.

Fraternities Exist Because They…
.
* Fill the need of belonging.

Fraternities Continue Because:

Young women feel a continuing need to belong. Parents appreciate fraternity values and standards and cooperate to make membership possible. College administrations, recognizing the values of fraternities, continue to welcome them on their campuses and to invite them to establish new chapters.”
____________________________________________________________________

The IU sponsored Greek system is significantly flawed and seems to stray from the NPC mission in that it’s an exclusive system that leaves a significant number of young women with a less than a 50% chance that a “mutual” choice is possible. More than half of the young women who participate in recruitment will have their need to feel belonged “filled” with a highly public process of rejection.

I’m also concerned about some of the post-recruitment experiences my daughter recounted and I wonder if others have heard similar stories from their daughters. Last week my daughter and a friend were heckled publicly as “(expletive) GDI’s” after being turned away from a Fraternity party that they had been invited to by friends who were part of that fraternity. Some of their close friends who did ultimately receive bids have suddenly become quite distant and unwilling to socialize with them. Again, I understand that this is the de facto social engineering that occurs among any group of people in a community, but it seems that IU and the NPC would hold their students and members to higher standards of acceptable conduct to mitigate mean-spirited or outright bullying behaviors. I wonder if the University would have a different level of engagement and tolerance if the exclusionary criteria and heckling had undertones of racial, biometric, or religious discrimination.

Today’s freshmen were in kindergarten or first grade in 1999. Prompted by tragic events that year, most Primary and Secondary schools enacted comprehensive anti-bullying education and policies to minimize if not eliminate the corrosive effects of social ostracization. Most were zero tolerance policies because of the correlation noted between these types of behaviors and subsequent adolescent mental health disorders. I hope that IU can consider this a problem that is worthy of more than just acting as an e-mail conduit between this blog and the NPC. They need to advocate for this segment of their student body and wield some of the influence they have. While the exclusivity may be something the IU sororities wish to maintain as part of their culture, I cannot see how it is in the best interest of the University or most of the student body.

At this point, my goal is not to get my daughter a place within the Greek system. It’s about making it better for those women who do want a second chance and for the upcoming Freshman class. At minimum, the following needs to happen:

1. IU and the IU Greek organizations need to be much more transparent about the exclusivity of the Greek system at IU. The campus tour guides need to speak to this up front so that students (and their parents) can make informed decisions about \where they spend the next 4 years and their $160,000.

2. Do what we can to collaborate with the University and the NPC to have the IU Greek houses increase the number of bids they give to women who will live outside of the house. It will be more affordable for many and make the recruitment process less destructive and more equitable with what is done across the country.

Again, I am not out on some rampage to sully the reputation of the University or the IU Greek system as long as I feel that the problem is not being discounted or being suppressed. I view an effort to educate current and future applicants about this situation as the right and ethical thing to do given what I know now. IU and the NPC can join in this effort in a collaborative manner or continue to remain in more passive roles.

Please help me get the word out to forums that will have a broader and more influential audience. Contact me at Dotty.N@comcast.net so we can organize and be heard.

For the person wanting pledge class sizes they are all over. As small as 33 and as large as 70 depends on how big house is, seniors graduating etc. most pledge classes average around 40.

Unfortunately it happens that women dont get bids but in all honesty the women who dont get a bid anywhere totally played the name game. I was a Rho chi (now called rho gam) otherwise known as recruitment counselor. I had two bidless girls and they were ones that totally played the only top tier house is good enough for me game and they didnt win because those chapters take high 30′s low 40 pledge classes because physically are smaller houses.

The newest sorority was ready to take a huge class and i believe they took 50 something. I bet most of the bidless women ranked them
Last got them off their rotation list but now are thinking twice about that. Probably very nice women all developing a sisterhood. I bet if they opened up informal reruitment right now the women who would go would be sophmores who did not have favorable recruitment around 8 party so had to drop out and the bidless women wouldnt go. Lets just be honest go ask your daughters friends who didnt get a bid “if theta phi alpha offered you a bid would you take it”