I'm fascinated by sorority recruitment process

stairclimber
Wed, 21 Jan 2015 20:19:24 +0000

Racquetdad, and all those sharing his experience, welcome to my world as a heart sick parent 3 years ago. These next few days, weeks and in some cases, the rest of the semester will be very hard for your daughters. I tried very hard to have an impact on this cruel system and its aftermath 3 years ago with no success. Please check out the following forum for more insight into the sorority recruitment process at IU:
http://sororityparents.com/2011/01/sorority-recruitment-at-indiana-university_bloomington/#comment-342

This forum is very active!
You will see that you are definitely not alone and may be able to organize something more vocal and successful from the number of voices that are now demanding to be heard. Three years ago the number of outraged parents willing to take action were much smaller. The growth of this forum may suggest otherwise.

There are a few things to keep in mind and try to act on now:

1. Your daughter may feel very alone. Spring recruitment is very cruel, considering many friendships were made during fall semester and now friendships will be strained based on the fact that many of your daughters friends did have a successful recruitment outcome. Those “lucky” young women will be so busy with sorority activities and may be encouraged to distance themselves from their former friends. I hope no one on this forum challenges me on this fact, as this abandonment happened to my daughter and she was told specifically by her sorority “friends” that they no longer had time for her and that they really were being encouraged by their houses to bond with their new sisters and they needed to move on from their old friendships. There was no university support for these rejected young women 3 years ago, and my understanding is that it does not exist today. I was very vocal to the president of the university about the lack of psychological support and how this should be built into the process at IU considering the history of this cruel system. I was told that this would change, that rejected women would be encouraged to go to a specific support group or the support group brought to them, but my understanding is this hasn’t happened. Please let your daughters know they are not alone and help them find each other. They need each other!

2. Find nice housing for your daughter for next year immediately! This was a key factor in helping my daughter move on. There is going to be a huge number of disappointed girls scrambling for premium apartments this weekend and living in a nice, safe place next year with lots of other students will make a huge difference. These apartments will go fast! My daughter found 3 other girls from her dorm, who, as yours should have been included in the Greek system but now had to think about where they would live next year. They found a very nice apartment on College Ave. The apartment was beautiful, there was a very nice gym free of charge, a free shuttle that ran every 10 minutes to the IU campus, lots of other great students/people living there and this became an experience that we believe was better than being in a sorority house. It provided them with real life experiences. It was coed, varsity athletes lived there, the girls had to grocery shop and cook for themselves. All of this sounded overwhelming at first, but by the time the girls moved in at the beginning of sophomore year, they were excited and took pride in their situation.

3. Encourage your daughter to get involved in clubs/intramurals/extracurriculars immediately. Many clubs close off membership in the fall, so she needs to act fast to get into the ones that are still open. Call out meetings are probably this week and next. She needs to find something otherwise the pain of seeing her sorority friends in the dorms who are now too busy for her will magnify her pain. She WILL make new friends!!

4. Visit your daughter or bring her home for a visit during Mother/Daughter Sorority weekend. In the past it has been over the president’s weekend. The town of Bloomington absolutely caters to this weekend. I went to visit my daughter and was appalled at how both of us were treated when we tried to try on clothes in a shop, arrived for a scheduled manicure…we were cast aside and the sorority parents/daughters were given priority. We did not wear Greek letters, so that is how we stood out. It is a good weekend to not be there, but if you are there with her you can help your daughter stand tall and help her advocate for herself.

5. Encourage her to try to stay at IU. She will become a strong voice there and take pride in the fact that not only did she survive this but she pulled herself up, persevered, and succeeded. My daughter was in Kelley and we did not want her to quit. We encouraged her to try to make things work and helped her see many of the things IU and Kelley still had to offer her. If at the end of fall semester sophomore year, she just couldn’t remain there, we would have helped her transfer. Happily it didn’t take that long. Honestly, freshman spring semester was very difficult, but after living off campus for one week fall semester of sophomore year, she was happier than I had ever seen her. She made lifelong friends, found her niche in student government and business clubs and was learning to balance school, cooking, cleaning, and taking care of herself overall. What a tremendous boost to her self esteem after having felt so battered, humiliated and rejected from the sorority system. As her time at IU comes to an end this spring, she is grateful she found a way to make things work for her. She expresses that it will be hard to leave IU and say goodbye to all the great friends she has made. She will be graduating this spring, already has a job upon graduation in an executive leadership program (thanks to all her hard work in Kelley and the amazing coaching from the University Career Services Office) and I am proud to say that she is one strong, independent woman.

Please pm with me if you think I can help you or your daughter.