ON MONDAY, hundreds of second and first-year women around Grounds received bids from one of the 16 Greek houses of the Inter-Sorority Council. The timing, coinciding with the beginning of the second week of school, is considerably earlier than years previous, when Bid Day fell into late January and recruitment spanned the first couple weeks of school. Why the earlier date? This year marked the Inter-Sorority Council's first change in the recruitment schedule, shortening the schedule from two weeks to simply one. While the thought and motivation behind the move was right, the shortening of the recruitment schedule only led to hardships and additional stress for both sisters and potential new members alike.
Recruitment was shortened in an effort to prevent overlapping with classes. Easier said than done. The orginal thinking was that with the shortened period, rounds would only overlap with two days of class as opposed to seven or nine. Easier said than done. This year's recruitment did only coincide with two days of class: January 14 and 15. Friday, Jan. 16, served as a break for all houses. The same can be said, however, about years past when the only rounds that were held the same days as class were two Friday evening rounds. Though recruitment did span over a week and a half of classes, two Friday evenings is hardly the same as seven or nine days "coinciding" with classes.
If anything, this year's revised schedules were more detrimental to the women's academic schedule. Round Robbins, the first round of recruitment where girls visit all 16 houses, which lasted from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. the two days prior to the start to school, made it hard for sisters and rushees alike to get basic things done before the beginning of classes. Basic things like depositing checks, withdrawing rent money, buying books or even picking up held mail from Christmas break became virtually impossible simply because by the time the rounds were over, everything was closed. To even further complicate matters, sisters of houses had to stay even later for complicated tasks such as decorating for Themes -- a longer round in which houses perform skits depicting the assets of their sorority -- or voting on potential new members.
In years past, sisters had several days in which to prepare and extensively decorate their houses between Round Robbins and Themes. This year, there was a mere 24 hours to get the job done. Kudos to the ISC for limiting the size of the decorating area in order to cut down on time. Even with the considerably smaller space, however, women still faced decorating fairly large areas after an exhausting eight hours of rounds and with the beginning of class the next morning. This led to long hours at women's respective houses, little time for sleep and preparation and a feeling of exhaustion starting off the first day of the new semester.
Granted, any recruitment schedule imaginable is stressful and tiring. But at least in the past, the first couple days of school could be spent recouping, reading and generally getting life in order. This year, though, girls started off the first day of school already wiped out only to face rounds beginning in the early evening that would last almost to midnight two nights in a row. Not to mention, the added time of membership selection and house upkeep for Themes. The cramped schedule created an increasingly stressful situation in which everyone involved had to hurry themselves from class to house, house to class, sometimes several times within a round, and where everything -- from class assignments to apartment upkeep to paying bills -- gave way to the hectic pace of recruitment. And with such a large portion of the University's female population involved in recruitment, stressed and behind is no way to begin the school year. Now, sisters and new members must tackle the daunting task of playing catch-up as all other campus organizations hit full swing and classes really begin to pick up speed.
So what's to be done then? Obviously, it's not ideal that recruitment in a two-week schedule would overlap with classes so much. A one-week schedule would be ideal -- if like at other colleges and universities it could be done before school starts. This would mean that the ladies involved could completely devote their lives, for the time being, to the process at hand without fear of consequences in school. And while it would require either a shortened Christmas schedule or a return to fall recruitment, it is far superior to the stress incurred by this year's schedule. Even the two week schedule is comparatively better with the down time allotted in between rounds. At least in that plan, recruitment may technically cover more school days -- it allots downtime for keeping up with school work, getting ready for class and any other little thing that must be done. And while these plans still have their own small shortcomings, they are still more preferable than the cramped schedule of this past recruitment period.
Rush always ends well for ISC houses with the exciting incoming of brand new sisters. All 16 of the Houses and their sisters adapted to the changes and pulled off the new schedule. However, a revision of the revamped schedule would benefit all involved -- allowing Bid Day to be an awesome celebration of newfound sisterhood and not just a reason to finally get some sleep.
(Maggie Bowden is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. She can be reached at mbowden@cavalierdaily.com.)
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