In a world striving for equality for men and women there are still many parts of life that are not the same.
Collegiate Greek recruitment is completely different when it comes to Panhellenic Council (female) and Interfraternity Council (male).
Recruitment refers to the process that allows fraternities and sororities to receive new members. The recruitment processes for sororities housed under NPC (National Panhellenic Conference) and fraternities housed under NIC (North American Interfraternity Conference) are different at their core.
Panhellenic Council is the branch under NPC and Interfraternity Council is the branch under NIC. These are the councils that are on the actual campuses.
NPC sorority recruitment is a mutual selection process. At Murray State, the 7-5-2 model is used meaning all PNMs (Potential New Members) will start out with all seven sororities on their list, then eventually go down to five and then pick between their final two.
Murray State’s sorority recruitment includes Alpha Delta Pi, Alpha Gamma Delta, Alpha Omicron Pi, Alpha Sigma Alpha, Delta Zeta, Kappa Delta and Sigma Sigma Sigma.
Panhellenic recruitment is very structured, from having recruitment counselors assigned to a specific group of women to making sure that no active members communicate with PNMs outside of their time slots during rush week.
Stace Seivert, coordinator of fraternity and sorority life and student organizations at Morehead State University, understands on a national level how differently structured NPC and NIC recruitment is.
“The NPC is very much a socialist system,” Seivert said. “We take the numbers that there are and we divide them up equally, we’ve got this quota system then you can COB (continuous open bid) until you hit total.”
At the national level, Seivert said Panhellenic realized a long time ago that the sororities were better together and were only as strong as the weakest link.
Potential new members for sorority recruitment are only allowed to receive one bid after recruitment week ends. Meanwhile, potential new members for fraternity recruitment are allowed to receive multiple bids.
Kim Newbern, coordinator of Greek life and student leadership programs at Murray State, called IFC recruitment the informal sorority recruitment.
“The boys have a kickoff and usually go Monday to Monday for their events,” Newbern said. “The rest of the week the PNMs are allowed to go wherever they want.”
IFC Fraternities at Murray State include Alpha Gamma Rho, Alpha Sigma Phi, Alpha Tau Omega, Lambda Chi Alpha, Pi Kappa Alpha, Sigma Pi, Sigma Phi Epsilon, Sigma Chi and Phi Kappa Tau.
IFC recruitment on Murray State’s campus and Morehead’s campus does not have recruitment counselors nor does it make the PNMs go to parties they may not want to go to.
“In contrast, the NIC at the national level has their approach to what ‘fair’ is and that is capitalistic,” Seivert said. “On our campus, you can have a fraternity that has 88 men in it and we have another IFC fraternity that right now is sitting at seven men and that’s okay.”
Newbern said she thinks Panhellenic recruitment runs the smoothest for Murray State, and she is working to provide more structure for IFC recruitment.
On the other hand, Seivert said she believes that IFC recruitment is less stressful.
“I think that IFC’s structure is more student friendly, and I think that Panhellenic, in my personal opinion, the entire process is excessive and very overwhelming,” Seivert said.
Greek life, specifically recruitment, is not essentially ruled by the universities. Though Panhellenic Council and Interfraternity Council have much power, the ultimate origin of rules and regulations stem from the national level.
“NIC has their way of doing things and Panhellenic has its way of doing things and that’s just really the history behind it,” Newbern said.
