170 students offered sorority membership following rush

Two-hundred forty-six students registered for sorority rush and about 170 students were offered membership in a sorority last week, three years afterfreshmen were banned from rushing on campus, the University’s Panhellenic Council president Caroline Snowden ’17 said.

Around 60 students were offered bids for Pi Beta Phi and Kappa Alpha Theta and around 50 were offered bids for Kappa Kappa Gamma, Snowden said.

Pi Phi president Cameron Ruffa ’16 said that 58 students ended up pledging, or accepting bids, with Pi Phi while sources within the other two sororities said that 58 students pledged with Theta and 32 students pledged membership with Kappa.

Around 100 of the initial rush registrants did not join any of the three Panhellenic societies.

This year’s recruitment process had a lower number of students registering for rush thanlast year, when 283 sophomores, juniors and seniors registered. Snowden said that she did not know of any particular reason for this drop and noted that while there was a lower number of students who registered for rush, the number of students who actually showed up was about the same.

The number of students rushing sororities has increased substantially in the past five years. Before the rush ban, an average of around 200 students had been rushing the sororities, with 210 students rushing in 2010, and 206 students rushing in 2011. The number dropped to 74 in 2012, the first year of the freshman rush ban, and consisted of students who had already had the chance to rush during their freshman year. 209 students rushed in 2013, and 283 rushed in 2014.

Pledge membership numbers for Theta and Pi Phi are about the same as those of last year, when 58 pledged membership to Theta and 59 pledged membership to Pi Phi, and higher than two years ago, when 51 pledged with Pi Phi and 50 pledged with Theta. However, this year’s 32 new pledges to Kappa are lower than the 55 who pledged membership last year.

Kappa president Sophia Robertson-Lavalle ’16 did not respond to a request for comment, and Theta president Devon Naftzger ’16 deferred comment to Snowden.

Snowden explained that the sororities initially reach out to potential new members at the end of the summer, and students who decide to register are taken to the three chapters to get a feel for them and talk to the members. After the second night of rushing, the students rank their preferences and the sororities make lists of what students they would like to take. These results are then matched in a manner that tries to make everyone as happy as possible, she said.

This method of rushing differs from fraternities. Male students rush one individual fraternity and recruitment differs for each organization.

The University prohibited freshmen from rushing in September 2012 and does not officially recognize fraternities and sororities on campus.

Get the best of ‘the Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

Fall recruitment took place Sept. 23-25.

Snowden said that although rush gets a bad reputation and is considered exclusive, exclusivity is not the goal of the process. The difficulty, she said, is that there are only three sorority chapters on campus and each one can only take so many new members without it becoming infeasible.

“It’s not our goal to be exclusive,” she said. “In an ideal world, we want everyone to find a place.”