According to the National Panhellenic Council (NPC), the number of young women who decided to rush has increased across the nation within the last year; however, this was not the case at Miami University, where numbers during 2010 sorority rush saw a decline.
April Robles, former director of Greek Affairs, believes the reason for the drop was the decline in the 2013 class.
“I think you have to kind of look at the perspective of the campus population,” Robles said. “Last years class was a little bit smaller than normal but I think if you look in comparison percentage-wise of what our community has done, they yielded in terms of Greek membership, so given that this class is a little bit smaller last year, of course we would have smaller numbers.”
In the NPC Annual Report for 2009, National Panhellenic Council chairman, Julie Cain Burkhard said with a new online presence of new websites, Facebook events, and a parent advice blog, more than 20,000 women were attracted to rush the 26-member conference known as NPC.
Most impressively, from the years 2005-2007 as compared to the years 2007-2009 in new membership for the NPC, has increased from 79,735 new members that had been initiated to 90,704 new members.
Nicky Menely of NPC said they do not break their numbers down based upon the region of the country and that the growth NPC has experienced in recent years can be attributed to several factors.
“There are more and more women entering college than ever before and these women are finding the sorority experience to be a valuable one,” Menely said. “The NPC has taken strides to improve the recruitment process to allow more opportunities for more women.”
Robles said the reason for increase at other schools may be attributed to the increase in class size at said schools.
“Maybe at the other schools that have seen increases, they may have seen also increases in just the student population,” Robles wondered.
However, Robles said assured even with Miami’s reported numbers on new members rushing this year as a decrease and expressed her high hopes and positive outlook for the future of Miami’s Greek life, mainly with the upcoming rush in 2011.
“I think it will be great, I think that people are always looking to join good organizations to be apart of something special and I think that Greek life is one of those things at Miami,” Robles enthused.
Robles said Cliff Alexander has been working with the NPC on just different tactics to work with the Miami community.
In the attempt to increase the numbers for the year 2011, she revealed that the Cliff team has begun to develop different workshops specifically geared towards chapters with the education firm Phired Up Productions.
“Phired Up is sort of a recruitment ‘guru’ across the nation, it is a company that is coming in and working specifically with chapters and chapter recruitment chairs to help them improve their individual chapter recruitment,” Robles said.