Last year, I was a PNM (potential new member) hoping to find my home on the row. It was quite the experience, but I’m grateful I went through it. Now I’m on the other side of the largest sorority recruitment in the country. While I wasn’t on the PNM facing side of recruitment, I still heard the horror stories from my sisters as we passed each other in the halls, or as they told me with tears in their eyes.
I was in the basement managing recruitment information. Prior to recruitment, every PNM fills out a form with their high school activities, leadership positions, honors and awards. Every active does the same thing. It’s totally intentional that you talked to a girl from New York who was in marching band if you were also a Northeastern band kid. On our little team, we combed through all 2,500 PNMs and paired them with an active who would be a good fit.
Upstairs, actives learned how to talk to PNMs and practiced bump groups (those awkward in between conversations when another active comes up pretending they knew nothing about you). Some girls were hurt that they weren’t on the schedule for every day of recruitment, meaning they wouldn’t be talking to girls every day. Other girls got cut from the floor and “exiled to the basement” to work on signs and paint. Feelings only got more hurt as work week and recruitment went on.
The first day was rough, to put it simply. A couple of the parties got messed up, and of course the basement got blamed for it. Actives were mad because they weren’t paired up properly, advisors were mad that we didn’t do our jobs correctly, and the basement was mad we were getting blamed for things that weren’t entirely our fault.
Tears were flowing from everyone. Tears from girls who hadn’t recruited a single party. Tears from girls who didn’t get a break from talking to girls all day. Tears from rush chairs because things just weren’t going A-okay. However, as the week went on our jobs got easier, and people started to feel more confident!
At 5:00 a.m., the basement saw the party lists—everyone who had made past the last round of cuts. Despite never meeting the PNMs in person, we grew an attachment to them based on their resumes, pictures, or the fact that we heard their names so many times. We were sad to see some of our favorites go, and happy to see some of them back.
The biggest drama that occurred was when actives who did not have a chance to be on the floor recruiting girls complained to the advisors about their disappointment. The advisors then told the matching committee to throw them in for a party or two, requiring us to restructure matches and parties that had already been made. In two days, the entire rush system which had been created and curated since January was changed. It was a good thing that the advisors stepped in. It allowed for more diversity in the recruitment process and allowed more actives to feel connected to the PNMs.
Despite two long weeks of work, every house got their pledge class. Each pledge class is filled with smart, beautiful, young women who found their home. Special shoutout to every person behind the scenes of recruitment (you don’t get thanked enough), and every girl who stuck through it all despite the blood, sweat, and tears (literally).