Happy New Year

In this Issue:

• Dukes Mayo Bowl recap
• Reminder: RA applications due Jan. 14
• MindfulWake community resources
• Sorority recruitment

Happy New Year, Daily Deacdom! I hope you and your Deacs had a happy holiday and that 2026 will bring you and yours nothing but the best.

I am digging out of my inbox, so will cover a couple of quick items, then will spend the latter portion by sharing my annual post about sorority recruitment. Let me also make my annual disclaimer: I am neither pro- nor anti-Greek life. I am pro every student making the right choice for them. I am not trying to push sorority life on any women who are not interested. But because many are, I like to share some perspectives.

I will share a past blog about fraternity recruitment sometime this week, but for families of sons, I just want to manage your expectations: the men’s process is very different, and nowhere near as structured, so it is not as easy to describe.

As always, read the things that serve you and skip those that do not :)

Dukes Mayo Bowl recap

Wake rang in the New Year in high style at the Duke’s Mayo Bowl in Charlotte. Congratulations to Coach Dickert and the team on the 43-29 victory over the Bulldogs of Mississippi State. You can read the game recap here.

There was a terrific contingent of Wake Foresters there and you can see some of the festivities of the day in this video as well as our Duke’s Mayo Bowl photostory. You can subscribe to photostories at the link at the bottom of the photostory page, and they will be sent straight to your inbox.

Reminder: RA applications are due Jan. 14

If your Deacs were thinking over the break about applying to be an RA (Resident Adviser) for the 2026-2027 academic year, they will want to get started (or finish) that work. Applications are due Wednesday, January 14.

Students can view the RA info session here. RAs receive a $5,700 stipend split into bi-weekly payments over a 10-month period and a single furnished room at a reduced rate.

MindfulWake community resources

I have long been impressed with our MindfulWake community. We are a campus filled with high achievers who put a lot of pressure on themselves, and anything we can do to help our students nurture balance and inner peace is a good thing. Mindfulness is one way to do that.

There is a MindfulWake Google group that your Deacs can join if they wish. This will keep them apprised of MindfulWake opportunities, and it also offers a reflection from a MindfulWake teacher each Monday. This passage below was from today’s reflection from Dr. James Franklin, and I thought you might enjoy it too:

“I’ve been thinking a lot about thresholds lately. Especially in this new year – crossing the threshold into the newness of 2026, like most other liminal spaces, may require an attention reset. The poet John O’Donohue writes: ‘A threshold is not a simple boundary; it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms, and atmospheres‘…

As you cross thresholds this week, cut yourself some slack and pause there momentarily. Perhaps take two longer than normal breaths. Approach with acceptance and gratitude, and step into newness.“

Sorority recruitment

Women participating in sorority recruitment move back to campus tomorrow, so I wanted to share my annual thoughts on the process. But before I begin, let me be clear that I don’t work in Fraternity and Sorority Engagement; these opinions are mine, not Wake’s, formed over my many years here.

First let’s talk process. Here are some basics about how sorority recruitment has historically worked:

Sororities may use the formal recruitment period in January to refine a list of women that they have been getting to know in the fall to make sure that there is a good fit between that woman and the chapter. 

Whether they knew people in the sorority already or not, all Potential New Members, or PNMs, initially meet all of our chapters so they can have exposure to all groups. After the first day, the mutual selection process begins: all PNMs will rank the chapters based on who they would like to get to know better, and the chapters also rank the PNMs based on who they are most interested in.

With each successive day of recruitment, PNMs will be invited back to fewer chapter events as they and the chapters continue to submit their preferences and narrow down their options. During any given round, a PNM may find herself released by a sorority she was interested in. Sometimes PNMs are “fully released,” which means they are not invited back to any of the groups. While the goal of sorority recruitment is to place as many PNMs as possible, it is not a guarantee that a woman will receive a bid to join a chapter. 

On Preference Night (Jan. 10), women can rank up to 2 chapters that they are still being considered for (though it is possible they will only have one active invitation). PNMs will get a phone call on Jan. 11 to let them know if they got a bid, or were not placed. Those with bids go to an assembly in the afternoon and then are welcomed by their new chapter.

When I talk to young women about the Panhellenic recruitment process, I do it by story and with a visual. NOTE: these are not actual numbers for 2026; these are round numbers for example purposes only.

I stink at math, so I need to use round numbers. Assume there are 500 PNMs. We have eight active sororities (though one chapter is not doing formal recruitment now, but will do COB – Continuous Open Bidding – once classes start) – so there are 7 chapters recruiting this week.

Each sorority going through formal recruitment will have a new member (pledge) class of approximately the same size; the recruitment process is built to place as many women as possible. But that does not mean every woman can join her top-choice chapter. 

As long as I have been at Wake, there has been an informal ranking of which sorority is the most desirable, and which are less so (though the most/least popular can change from year to year). Most of our young women are high achieving students who throughout high school had come out on top in terms of leadership positions, club membership, etc., so many of them enter recruitment expecting that things will go their way (since they always have in the past). The reality is that we might have 500 young women who would love to be a member of the same one or two sororities, and that math doesn’t work: if 500 women are vying for 140 spots, not every woman will get her first choice, or maybe even her second choice. 

As recruitment progresses, it is not uncommon for women not to be invited back to the sorority(ies) they hoped to join. Sometimes in that moment, when their feelings are hurt, PNMs withdraw from the whole sorority recruitment process, thinking “If I can’t be a [insert sorority name here], I don’t want to be anything at all,” assuming (wrongly, in my opinion) that they can only be happy in certain sororities and not others. If your Deac finds herself in this situation, please encourage her to pause before deciding to withdraw. Withdrawal can be a hasty decision she might later regret. 

I always urge PNMs to stick with the process and see it through. Don’t drop out if you don’t get invited back to your first, second, or even third choice of group. I deeply believe that every single sorority has a wide range of sisters in their chapter: studious ladies, party ladies, people on both sides of the political aisle, people of religious practices (or none at all), etc. in every single group. It is a myth to think that you can only find sisterhood in certain groups. And like the Harry Potter sorting hat, ladies seem to land in the chapters they are well suited for if they will just trust the process. 

Sometimes there are women who don’t want to accept a bid to a newer, smaller, and/or less established sorority – they want to join a chapter with a higher profile on campus. When I was a student, a new sorority came to campus, and women were unsure of what it would be like to join the new group, when the older groups seemed cooler. Several of my freshmen hallmates decided to join that group and build it from the ground up – and it is now a strong, successful chapter. But it took some women getting in on the ground floor, so to speak, to help make it so.

So in the event that your daughter does not get asked back to a sorority she wanted but IS asked back to another sorority, urge her to give that chapter a try. 

An upperclassman Deac mom wrote to me several years ago to tell us her daughter had just been named to an important position within her sorority, and mom wanted to share this bit of very sage advice:

“After [my daughter’s] rocky rush experience, she found the absolute right sorority for her.  I know you will get calls and emails about recruitment from anxious parents come January – I was one of them. But, I wanted to pass along this information in hopes that it might bring some reassurance to another freshman mom and daughter to participate fully in the process and the outcome will be as it should – even if it feels otherwise in January.”

Parting thoughts:

If your daughter is going to go through recruitment, encourage her to see the process through. Trust the process and the outcome, and don’t get caught up in preconceived notions of where she should be.

Encourage your daughter to consider all chapters, not just the ones she is already familiar with. Your daughter may know a couple of members from a chapter through her classes or other student organizations. But slight familiarity with a single chapter does not mean that chapter is the best place for her. Remind her to keep an open mind as she gets to know everyone.

Go into the process understanding that not every PNM gets her first choice. In addition to managing your own young woman’s expectations, help plant the seed to be mindful of other women who might not be having the recruitment they hoped for, and if so to offer those friends their support. Should your daughter have a hard time during the recruitment period, encourage her to seek support from one of the many resources available to her (her Greek Recruitment Counselor or GRC, her RA, the Counseling Center, 336-758-CARE, etc.). 

Good luck to all young women who will be embarking on this process.