Calm Before the Storm

Welcome back after a long Winter Break, Deac families!  Hope it’s been a good one for you and your Deacs.  Though administrative offices reopened officially this past Friday the 2nd, today’s the day when most of my building seems to be back at work.  People are digging out from inboxes and looking at the spring semester’s projects to come.

It feels a bit like the calm before the storm right now.  While the full cohort of students won’t return until the 10th, we’ll have a stream of women returning tomorrow and Wednesday – active sorority members and PNMs (Potential New Members), respectively.  Sorority recruitment starts with a meeting on the evening of the 7th, and then the PNMs start the process the next day (see timeline here).

In years past, the Daily Deac has given up a fair amount of real estate to coverage of sorority recruitment.  That may well happen again this year, so let me make a few editorial disclaimers.  Coverage of recruitment is not because of any particular bias on my part, or because I have a desire to push a Greek agenda.  I was not Greek, my best friend and roommate of 3 years was.  The reason I talk about it a lot this time of year is threefold:

– it will be the only highly visible activity on campus this week

– our Parent Programs office gets a good amount of questions/feedback from parents of PNMs as they go through the process, typically when their daughters have experienced some disappointment

– it tends to be a highly emotionally-charged week for the PNMs, and you as parents and families might be hearing some of that as you talk to them

If your daughter is a PNM getting ready to go through recruitment, we do have some resources online that might help you:

Email about recruitment sent to families of PNMs

A description and Q&A of the process

Several perspectives about recruitment from our Messages to First Year Families

My best advice to the PNMs is keep an open mind and if you think you like the idea or sorority life, see the process through to the end.  I truly believe you can find sisterhood, fun, parties, philanthropy, great young women and wonderful networking in EVERY group.  Let go of the idea that you have to be in [this one] or [that one] and no other.  If you give all of them a chance, you might find a wonderful sorority home.