Hundreds of young women squeeze into the Lavin-Bernick Center in mid-morning on Jan. 14. Most are eager to open the letter that awaits them; others are anxious. A symphony of coughs and sniffles runs through the crowd. After almost a full week of recruitment, Bid Day is here — the day soon-to-be sorority girls find out which house they would be joining. 

At exactly 3:40 pm, the women open their schedules on the LBC lawn before running to their houses to be received by active members.  

“[The girls] were all very nervous,” said senior Christina Braun, who volunteered as a recruitment counselor. Before revealing the bids, Braun said RCs tried to keep the girls distracted by revealing their own sororities. 

Around 870 women returned early from winter break with the hope of joining a sorority, according to Braun and fellow RC senior Sarah Herbster. They said the quota for each of the nine Panhellenic Council sororities’ new member classes was 76, meaning a maximum of 684 women would receive bids. 

One sorority hopeful — known as a Potential New Member during recruitment —  freshman Emma Greer, said she chose to rush to find a community of women like the one she had on her sports teams in high school. 

“I think I missed having that camaraderie of a group of girls,” Greer said. “Also, I did get that vibe that a lot of people rush [at Tulane].”

Behind the scenes

Recruitment was an emotional experience for the women, actives and PNMs alike. While active members spent long days with their sisters and learned the behind the scenes of recruitment, PNMs hurried between houses, eager to make their best impression in a short conversation. 

After each round, the PNMs ranked the houses they would like to return to. On the other side, the houses ranked each of the women using their own voting protocol. Panhel then used an algorithm to determine which houses would be on each woman’s schedule the next morning. 

“​​There is all of this math and we can blame the numbers, which is true in a lot of cases,” RC junior Sophia Hall said. “But not knowing what’s behind the numbers is frustrating for a lot of the PNMs and honestly for the RCs as well, because we don’t really know.” 

Peer pressure weighed heavy on womens’ minds this recruitment season, more than in previous years, according to Braun. She attributes the high number of women that dropped out of recruitment to negativity online. 

“I tried to be as reassuring as I could. But there’s only so much you can tell an 18-year-old college freshman who’s being bombarded on all sides by all of this messaging,” Braun said. “[Fizz] was vile this year.” 

Greer said that it was impossible to avoid the negativity of Fizz, an anonymous social media app, and social media during recruitment. 

“[Negativity on] Fizz had a greater impact than just the week [of recruitment] itself,” Greer said. “It was kind of unavoidable to not hear about the rankings and all of that ahead of time, to go in fully blind.” 

Sicknesses skyrocketed

The flu swept through some sorority houses, disrupting their ability to run recruitment, but sick PNMs were still expected to return to all their houses or risk being dropped from the recruitment process. 

“There was definitely illness going around,” Kappa Alpha Theta president Emma Hanley said. “I know a few members and PNMs had to miss out on a few days, most notably bid day, due to fever and flu which was super unfortunate.” 

According to senior Josie Yeager, vice president of membership experience for Tri Delta, Tri Delta had around 30 women out sick on preference day. Tri Delta sophomore Charlotte Sherrod was an active member during recruitment who had to leave on preference day. 

“I was fine on sisterhood,” Sherrod said. But on the morning of preference, “It just slowly went downhill from there. And then I didn’t get better. I’m still dealing with such a bad cough.” 

PNMs did not fare better from the illness taking over campus. Hall said that some women who had to drop the process because they were too sick were considering continuous open bidding. 

“I think most people were kind of sick towards the end,” Hall said. “By the last few days, everyone was coughing just not their best, which was unfortunate. A lot of RCS got sick and then a lot of actives got sick … people were powering through.” 

Alpha Delta Pi and Phi Mu will be accepting members through a continuous open bidding process. Women who did not accept a bid for another house are eligible for COB. 

Freshman Summer Schnabolk said she is considering COB because she was unable to participate in recruitment. 

“I want to meet new people and make new friends,” Schnabolk said. Different from her other extracurriculars, in a sorority “you make real connections because you’re spending time with people for a longer period of time.” 

Exhaustion and illness aside, the sororities are excited to welcome their new member classes to Greek life. 

“We had a great turn out from our chapter and heard amazing things, that [recruitment] went smoothly,” former Chi Omega president, Kate Pittenger said. “Obviously recruitment is so tiring for all people involved, so we did our best to give girls shifts off and be flexible with our members.” 

Hall said of her RC group, most women were excited with the houses they ended up with on Bid Day. 

“Oftentimes recruitment gets a really bad rap,” Hall said. “But I feel like it was a really rewarding process and a really positive process for a lot of people in our group, which was great.”

Rosemary Mulvey contributed to the reporting of this story