Diego De Jesus
This semester’s sorority recruitment week was different due to the COVID-19 pandemic with concerns for safety due to partially in-person Bid Day.
Allison Tracey, a sister of Gamma Phi Beta, is the Outgoing New Member Educator. She was in charge of planning Bid Day and the education of new members; getting them ready for their initiation into the organization.
“The whole recruitment process is a lot different this year, but in my opinion, it is a lot less overwhelming than in-person recruitment,” Tracey said. “It is nice to recruit from the comfort of my own apartment and not have to rush from my internship to RP Funding.”
COVID-19 caused recruitment to be held over Zoom and many like Tracey find it more convenient than doing it in-person.
However, due to the virtual setting of recruitment, sororities’ bid numbers dropped. Most sororities are currently going through continuous open bidding to make sure that they hit their house total numbers.
“I don’t know the exact numbers, but I do know that the number of girls who signed up for recruitment was less than last year,” Tracey said. “I don’t think COVID is part of the cause, I think that some girls who are waiting to sign up until they know that they will be able to do events safely in-person and not via Zoom.”
Jacqueline Inskeep, the Director of Student Involvement, provided COVID-19’s effect on recruitment number-wise.
“We did expect to see a decline in recruitment numbers as a result of the pandemic, however it wasn’t as much as we were anticipating,” Inskeep said. “This year we saw 55 less women go through the process. All things considered – we are quite pleased with that. Registration for men’s recruitment is still going, but we anticipate roughly the same difference.”
Rushing for sororities is different from fraternities. Sororities mutually select their recruits which depends on how each person ranks the sorority and vice versa.
Freshman Kaitlynn Rogers went through formal recruitment as a potential new member and was the first class to experience going through recruitment in a virtual setting over Zoom.
“It is all virtual, so I am not concerned about it,” Rogers said. “And for Bid Day it is broken up into groups so not everyone will be there at once.”
