Homecoming Greek pairings announced during recruitment for first time

Greek Week pairings were chosen at random this semester in a new effort to connect Greek organizations that normally do not socialize with one another, according to members of Greek life.

“The system connects fraternities and sororities that might not have known each other before and gives them a chance to do events together,” outgoing Alpha Epsilon Phi President Rachel Zeiger said.

The new system randomly chooses each pair based on Chapter Assessment Program ranking and the number of members in each organization, Zeiger said.

Senior and Sigma Pi member Zac Tolliver said he has noticed a preference among the Greek Life community to the new system over the old one. In the old system, Tolliver said any fraternity could “court” any sorority, which meant they had to win them over and then officially ask them to be paired with them. 

Tolliver said multiple fraternities could be courting a single sorority.

“It was interesting and it was kind of fun, but it definitely did suck when you did all this work to court a sorority and then they choose someone else,” Tolliver said.

With the new system, Tolliver said it makes everything even. He said he thinks the old system influenced students participating in rushing more than the new system because the courting process could skew decisions. Now, since the process is randomized, the pairings affect recruitment less, he said.

The pairings have a chance of backfiring, Zeiger said, especially if members of the fraternity and sorority do not like each other. However, the pairings are not required to do anything together during Greek Week or Homecoming unless the members of the chapters organize something.

Unlike previous years, the pairings were announced during spring sorority recruitment this year. 

The fraternity and sorority in each pairing must hold four “silver” events, including a speed-dating event, a community service event and other events of their choice, Zeiger said. These events can be held at any point in the semester, she said, which is why Greek Council announced the pairings early.

Freshman Delaney Horan said the pairings did not affect her decision between sororities.

Horan said she wanted to familiarize herself with more people and become involved with on campus activities, so she decided to participate in the university’s Greek life spring recruitment. At the end of what she said was a long, two-weekend process, she was invited to join Gamma Phi Beta.  

“Coming [to the university] has been so big so I kind of wanted to make it smaller and get more involved,” Horan said. 

Since Greek life was still new to her, Horan said she did not know the Greek Council announced the pairings of sororities and fraternities during recruitment. She is still unaware of which fraternity Gamma Phi Beta was paired with, she said.

Her decision to rush and keep going with recruitment was not influenced by the announcement of the pairings because she did not know what the fraternities were like, she said.

Zeiger said because students rushing did not know how the pairing system worked, the pairings did not have a noticeable effect on recruitment. Alpha Epsilon Phi exceeded their quota of 63 bids by giving out 70, Zeiger said. 

Junior Alyssa Murray, who is in Alpha Xi Delta, said she favors the new system because the organizations get to meet other people rather than hanging out with the same crowd all the time.  

A lot of other schools assign pairs based on merit, which Murray said makes sense, but the university is not the only one to do pairings by random. Murray said the most important aspect to the process is to keep an open mind.

There will always be girls who let the pairing affect their decision in recruitment, Murray said. Rather than focus on the pairing, Murray said Greek life should be about the lifelong friendships created rather than which organizations the events are held with.

“The important thing is that you’re with your sisters or your brothers in your own group,” Murray said.