Sorority recruitment week ended Sunday afternoon with over a thousand female students screaming, cheering, crying and hugging on Main West Quadrangle. But those involved in the events remained relatively close-lipped Monday and Tuesday about how the week went.
Panhellenic Council officials would not release statistics or comment on any specific rush violations, but called this year's process--which involved several new or altered elements--a success.
Nicole Manley, Panhel adviser and program coordinator for the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life, said sorority recruitment was generally on track with previous years, but the computer containing statistics for this year's recruitment crashed and that it would take her about a week to compile the numbers again. Such information, however, will not be made available to the public, she added.
"The numbers aren't exactly explanatory. They don't really indicate anything, so we're not going to release them," said Panhel President Kerianne Ryan, a senior.
In 2002, 88 percent of the women who completed rush received a bid from their first choice, the highest percentage in four years. Although each sorority except Alpha Phi and Chi Omega met its quota of 40 pledge class members last year, those statistics--as well as the number of students who did not receive any bids--were not available this year.
"Recruitment is a mutual selection process," Manley said. "The women who were not matched chose not to maximize their options. There was no one who was horribly surprised." Last year, three students received no bids, compared to four in 2001.
This year's process included new features intended to ease the process, such as providing two recruitment coordinators for every group of about 30 rushees, maintaining chapters' locations for each round and delaying payment of the $50 rush fee.
"A lot of changes to the [recruitment coordinator] program was to make sure that [rushees] really felt informed and understood exactly what their options were," Manley said. "It was met with a lot of positive feedback."
The changes also included a more public bid day, held Sunday. "We made some decisions based on what the national Panhellenic Council is recommending and other schools are doing," Ryan said. "We wanted to make bid day a little more exciting. In the past, bid days have been a little anticlimactic."
Previously, recruitment counselors delivered bid cards to rushees in their mostly East Campus dormitory rooms, and the rushees traveled on buses several hours later to find their sororities scattered in rooms throughout West Campus.
Recruitment coordinators gathered their groups in the Bryan Center Sunday to hand out the bid cards. Afterward, the rushees--some excited about their selection, others upset--ran or walked down the Bryan Center walkway to meet their new sisters, who were assembled on various Main West quad locations.
Male students gathered along the side of the walkway--some jeering, some throwing beer and some videotaping the proceedings.
The event was inspired by similar ones at schools like the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
"This was a first shot of how something like that would look like," Manley said. "We might see a change next year.... Obviously, we don't want to embarrass people. We had folks taunting and ogling. There is a lot that we can do to make it more visible, but less discomforting."
Although rumors have widely circulated among the undergraduate student body about alcohol violations, "dirty rushing," unfilled quotas and discomfort with the new bid day system, no Panhel officers, sorority rush chairs or sorority members returned calls or e-mails to The Chronicle regarding those issues.
Manley said the newly-created greek judicial board will hear some cases over the next few weeks, but said nothing out of the ordinary occurred.
"You hear conversations around the office, but nothing that I'm too worried about," Manley said.
Manley said she will convene sorority leaders over the next few weeks to reflect on this year's process.
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