My advice to those who are going through recruitment this year.
Be prepared. If recommendations are strongly encouraged on your campus, make the effort to obtain recs from as many of the National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) groups on your campus as is possible. Ask teachers, family friends and acquaintances, co-workers, etc. if they are members of NPC organizations. The proper forms are available from the respective NPC organization from their magazine, website or headquarters. Alumnae Panhellenic organizations often offer sessions to guide the new college student in this task. Do it now if you are participating in a fall recruitment, if you haven’t started this process already.
Be open to all organizations. The badges, songs, colors, and mascots vary, but the experience of being a member in any of the 26 NPC organizations is essentially the same. The values and basic tenets of the organizations are very similar.
Be yourself and be true to yourself. Don’t try to be someone you’re not. Be the very best version of yourself that you can be. Just because your mom, sister, grandmother, or cousin twice removed belonged to XYZ, it doesn’t mean that you need to follow suit. Being a legacy does not mean an automatic bid; some chapters have two, three and four times the amount of legacies going through recruitment than the number of women (quota) to whom they can offer bids.
Be hospitable and gracious. Do not talk up or down any organization with the other women going through recruitment. When talk turns to gossip, be the one who stops it. Remember that golden rule; if you can’t say something nice, then don’t say anything at all.
Be at Bid Day. See the process to the end. If you are not invited back to the chapter you had your heart set on, pick yourself up, dust yourself off and visit the chapters which invited you back. Don’t just drop out because the scenario did not play out the way you wanted it to. Sometimes things work out for the better despite the fact that they aren’t as we had anticipated them. I could fill a book with stories of women who could never have envisioned themselves in VWX chapter and yet, on graduation day, they couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.
© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2018. All Rights Reserved. If you enjoyed this post, please sign up for updates. Also follow me on twitter @GLOHistory and Pinterest www.pinterest.com/glohistory/
