Running Head: FRESHMEN WOMEN AND RECRUITMENT 1

How Freshmen College Women Experience Panhellenic

Sorority Recruitment

Amanda Hill and Frances Mock

Clemson University
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How Freshmen College Women Experience

Panhellenic Sorority Recruitment

ABSTRACT

This phenomenological study explores freshman women at Clemson University and their

experience with Panhellenic sorority recruitment. Focusing on themes of expectations,

adjustments, relationships, and self-esteem, this study sheds light on the way women experience

recruitment in regards to themselves and others. The in-depth interviews conducted by the

researchers allowed ample information to be gathered that was beneficial in discussing issues

such as stereotypes, friendships, judgment, body-image, and stress. Participants were urged to

speak freely of their experience and provide a better understanding of the phenomenon that so

many Clemson women participate in each fall semester.

INTRODUCTION

Panhellenic sororities are sororities that are part of a group of twenty-six national organizations

governed by the Panhellenic Association. There are a total of twelve Panhellenic sororities at

Clemson University. These sororities every fall go through a process called “formal recruitment”

which is the official process to get into a sorority. Over a thousand women went through formal

recruitment this year alone at Clemson University.

This process typically begins on August 21st, only a day or two after the first day of the

semester. There are a four “rounds” of recruitment and the entire process takes six days. The first

round is known as “open house”, during open house a woman hoping to join a sorority, or

potential new member (PNM) visits each sorority for twenty-five minutes (Clemson). The
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sorority then votes on the PNM on a scale of 1-5 and the PNM ranks the sororities from favorite

to least favorite. The next day the PNM receives a list of the sororities that she has been asked

back to and continues to the next round. After each round the PNM is “dropped” from sororities

and at the very last round she can only visit three sororities if she still has that many left. After

the last round known as “preference round” the sororities vote and choose their new members to

join their sorority.

Some research has been conducted on sororities but very few have conducted a

phenomenological study of the recruitment process through the perspective of potential new

members who are freshmen college women. One constructivist, ethnographic case study was

conducted on sorority recruitment from the experience of sorority recruitment counselors

(Witkowsky, 2010). Many of the participants had concerns that the PMNs did not have a chance

to see the sororities without the “Disney World Effect” and were distracted by the glitter,

matching outfits and skits.

Most research conducted has been on sorority and fraternity culture as a whole. A

narrative study was conducted examining the life of a twenty-year old sorority woman in the

south, the researcher notes that “she had to balance expectations to be to a good girl, but not too

good; how to drink, but not too much; how to dress so her look at- tractive but not too sexy”

(Berbary, 2013). Another study shows the lack of trust and self-disclosure among members of

the Greek community and non-members (Warber, Taylor & Makstaller, 2011). The Greek

community of colleges has been studied thoroughly but the recruitment process still remains

mostly unknown.

Expectations 
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Many times potential new members (PNM’s) of a sorority who go through recruitment go into

the process with certain expectations about what recruitment will be like. If these expectations

are violated this may have an effect on whether the experience is a positive or a negative one.

Expectancy Violations Theory (EVT) explains how people respond to unexpected behaviors and

posits that individuals pay more attention to communication events when expectations are

violated (Burgoon, 1978, 1993).  Although this theory is usually applied when studying close

interpersonal relationships it can be applied to expectancy violations during sorority recruitment.

LePoire and Burgoon (1994) found that negative violations by positively valenced interaction

partners were met with reciprocation; despite a previous positive relationship between

interactants, individuals decreased their involvement in the interaction when their partner

decreased involvement in the interaction. Based upon this theory it is possible that when a PNM

experiences negative expectancy violations during recruitment that they may choose to withdraw

from the experience. More research is still needed on Expectancy Violation Theory during

sorority recruitment to fully understand how PNM’s react when their expectations are violated. 

Recruitment as Freshmen Women

College women begin a new stage of life as they move out of their childhood homes and in to

their freshmen dormitories. Becoming an independent individual can have major impacts on a

college freshman while they are adjusting to a new environment with new people (Guerrero &

McEwan, 2010). Freshmen are required to become familiarized with their schedule, campus,

and peer group within moments of arriving on campus. Research on retention rates of college

students focuses on the ability of freshman to adjust to college life and the stress of uncertainty

(DeBerard et al, 2004). Since Clemson University students who elect to go through the

recruitment process must do so their first week of college, it is important to review the additional
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stress and time constraints placed on these women. The experience of recruitment for an

individual woman may rely on how they are adapting to their surroundings.

Relationships

There is a unique communication created between women during Panhellenic Sorority

Recruitment. The recruiting process at Clemson, as well as nationwide, requires sororities to

prepare months in advance, participating in workshops and different hypothetical situations

(Scheibel et al, 2002). The interpersonal communication between PNMs and sorority members

is rehearsed and limited to broad topics and simple question and answer situations that are

practiced in advance to be “fun.” Leary, in his book on impression management, states that “a

certain degree of concern for one's public impressions is essential for smooth and successful

social interaction” (1995). Women going through the recruitment process are constantly

evaluating themselves and the impression they are making on the sorority members. The limit of

communication between PNM and the current sorority members by mockery is important to

consider when investigating the overall experience of the phenomenon.

Self Esteem

Sorority recruitment can at times be very stressful for women who are potential new members.

Research seems to support that sorority recruitment has a negative effect on self-esteem for

PMNs (Chapman, Hirt & Spruill, 2008). In a psychological study conducted on the selection

process of sorority members during the recruitment process the study found that “Group

selection among the high- and low-status houses, therefore, seemed to be largely driven by

attractiveness” (Judging a book).

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In a process that bases a lot of importance on attractiveness it is easy for many women to

develop low self-esteem. A study investigating the impact of rush on self-objectification and

body image disturbance found that the results supported the objectification theory and “rush

participants evidenced higher levels of self-objectification and eating disordered behavior”

(Rolnik, Maddox & Miller, 2010). College women are particularly at risk for eating disorders

and are likely to have body-dissatisfaction (Cook-Cottone & Phelps, 2003). The prevalence of

low self-esteem in college women along with sorority recruitment leading to lower self-esteem in

most women is a troubling combination that deserves attention.

The way that college women feel when going through recruitment on Clemson’s campus

brings centers around the research question:

R1: How do freshman college women at Clemson University describe their

experiences with Panhellenic Sorority Recruitment?

METHOD

In approaching the research question: How do freshmen college women at Clemson University

describe their experiences with Panhellenic Sorority Recruitment?, we choose to take a

phenomenological approach to data collection. In phenomenology, the focus is to “explicate the

meaning, structure, and essence of the lived experiences of a person, or a group of people,

around a specific phenomenon” (Christensen, Johnson & Turner 2010). In this case, the

phenomenon that we are planning to interview our participants about is their experiences with

sorority Panhellenic recruitment.

According to Moustakas, phenomenological research should focus on the wholeness of

experience and a search for essences of experiences (1994). By conducting a series of in-depth

interviews with young women who have gone through the experience of sorority recruitment we
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capture the essence of recruitment from the views of several different participants of this

phenomenon. According to Creswell, phenomenology discusses the “essence” of the experience

for individuals by incorporating “what” they have experienced and “how” they experienced it.

(2013). At the end of data collection and analysis, we have compiled an extensive look into the

experience of Panhellenic sorority recruitment from the perspective of college women who

attended these events.

Sample

We interviewed 6 female college freshmen that have gone through formal Panhellenic sorority

recruitment at the beginning of the school year in August of 2014. These women were selected

because they were part of the latest group of women to go through recruitment as potential new

members of a sorority. We wanted to make sure that we found women who had joined several

different sororities and also interview participants who chose not to join a sorority at all after the

process. Of the 3 women that joined sororities, Gamma Phi Beta, Chi Omega, and Kappa Alpha

Theta were represented and 3 women remained unaffiliated. All of the participants were

contacted by the researchers directly either in person or over social media. All of the participants

that were chosen were acquaintances of the researchers but were not close personal friends or

family. All of the participants are Caucasian and ranging from 18-19 years old. All of the

participants are currently enrolled full time at Clemson University. We chose to interview these

girls who were part of the most recent group to have gone through recruitment specifically to

gain the perspectives of this particular group of freshman.

This sample may have some limitations as materials being discussed in the interviews

could be seen as sensitive topics such as body image and self-esteem. Some participants may
FRESHMEN WOMEN AND RECRUITMENT 8

have been driven away by the subject of recruitment and the consequences that could have been

perceived. There are also limitations of understanding the experience of recruitment as a whole

by only interviewing those of the same age, gender, and race. There is also the possibility of

researcher bias in the sample because only acquaintances of the researchers were chosen to be

interviewed.

Table 1.1

Age Hometown Class Sorority joined

Chelsea 19 Charleston, SC Freshman Chi Omega

Caitlyn 19 Charleston, SC Freshman None

Taylor 18 North Myrtle Freshman Kappa Alpha Theta

Beach, SC

Jordan 18 US Marshall Islands Freshman None

Kennedy 18 Winston Salem, NC Freshman Gamma Phi Beta

Bridget 19 Houston, TX Freshman None

Data Collection

For the project, we completed 6 in-depth interviews with freshman women at Clemson

University. Each participant in the research project was interviewed once, but the researchers

followed up with the participants to make sure that their views were portrayed accurately in the

findings. The interviews were conducted in person in order to get the most accurate results by
FRESHMEN WOMEN AND RECRUITMENT 9

reading of body language and real time interactions. These interviews were conducted at the

home of the researcher where there was control over factors such as noise pollution and

interruptions. Participants were interviewed individually over the span of one month. They were

seated comfortably with the interviewers around a table with sufficient lighting and acoustics.

Before each interview, the participants were informed of the nature of the research study

and signed a consent form that allows their responses to be used in this project. This consent

form functioned to tell participants of their harms, benefits, and rights as a research study

participant to stop at any point if they may feel uncomfortable. They also agreed to allow their

responses in the interview to be audio recorded and later transcribed. The audio files will be

deleted six months after the completion of this study. One full interview was transcribed and

included in this project. The interviews ranged from 30 minutes to 1 hour in length and

participants were urged to speak freely about their experiences with no association of their name

to their responses and no judgment passed. Participants were assured that their personal

information and any kind of identifying material would be kept confidential and not included in

Date Analysis

In order to answer the overall research interest of the experience of college freshmen women

with Panhellenic recruitment, the researchers asked the participants the following broad, open-

ended questions:

1. Why did you decide to go through formal Panhellenic recruitment?

2. What were your feelings before, during, and after Panhellenic recruitment?

3. How did you feel about yourself after the recruitment process?

4. What were your experiences with other women during recruitment?

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5. What was your experience with social media and technology during recruitment?

These questions helped form a basic structure for the interview process and facilitated

conversation to focus on important aspects of the recruitment process without guiding the

participants to any particular conclusions. The researchers also used follow up questions in our

interviews to keep a conversational tone and make sure that the participant is being listened to.

These questions played directly on what the participants said in order to get more specific

information about experiences that they did not elaborate fully on. Because of the nature of this

study, interviews were the sole form of data collection and no other documents were obtained

from the participants.

Each of the recordings was listened to thoroughly and notes were taken in order to

compare themes and consistencies between the responses of the participants. During the

interviews, the researchers kept notes of our own individual reactions and perceptions to the

themes and information given by participants. These memos helped the researchers keep bias out

of the data analysis and focus on emotions of the participants. Each of the interviews was

listened thoroughly and partially transcribed to take verbatim quotes for use in the analysis. In

order to make sure that the participant’s words and experiences are accurately transcribed in the

findings, validity checks were performed before the study was presented.

There is a possibility of researcher influence on the analysis of this ambiguous data. The

researchers, as the primary instrument of gathering and analyzing the data, could only analyze

the information given to them to the best of their understanding (Cresswell, 2013). Both

researchers were participants of formal Panhellenic recruitment at Clemson University, however

the researchers put aside their own experiences to portray, without bias, what the research
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participants were saying. The researchers discussed responses in-depth during the analysis to

make sure that no assumptions or personal influence were coded into the interviews.

RESULTS

These findings represent the experiences of the women who participated in formal Panhellenic

recruitment at Clemson University in 2014. Themes that emerged during the interviews of the 6

freshmen women include expectations, adjustments, relationships, and self-esteem. Within these

broader themes, women also discussed issues of stereotypes, planning ahead, stress, friendships,

judgment, and body image. By asking the participants about their experiences starting with why

they chose to go through recruitment and following through the stages of recruitment with them,

it was brought to the attention of the researchers that themes were emerging from this

phenomenological study in a chronological format. This discovery was beneficial for the

researchers to better understand the emotions emerging during the different stages of the

phenomenon.

Expectations

The majority of women interviewed discussed going into Panhellenic recruitment with ideas of

what the process would be like and what they would gain from the experience. Some women had

prior knowledge about the reputations of certain sororities and spent time planning for

recruitment hoping to join these sororities, while others went into the experience with no

previous knowledge about sororities or their reputations. All of the women expressed some

anxiety before recruitment either caused by uncertainty about recruitment or about not being

accepted by their preferred sororities. Stereotypes and Planning were two major themes present

in the interviews of the participants while they were describing their experiences at the beginning
FRESHMEN WOMEN AND RECRUITMENT 12

of recruitment.

Planning

The women who came into recruitment with the most expectations and planned for recruitment

expressed that they regretted doing so. Many of the participants who tried to plan for recruitment

said that they were still not prepared for the experience and felt that their preconceived ideas of

sororities were often incorrect and interfered with the experience. Despite attempted planning by

some participants, every participant at some point experienced negative expectation violations

during recruitment.

Bridget: “Had I not looked everything up I think it would have been so much better. I should

have just gone in and done it but I overthought everything. But I was so dumb I had to

know and it didn’t work out in my favor at all. Because I knew reputations and I thought

that I knew everything because of home but I didn’t.”

Chelsea: “So I basically knew or I thought I knew what I wanted and I thought I knew were

I was going to go, and I think it definitely worked out for the best but I think it’s

definitely better to go in with an open mind.”

Bridget: “I, you know, came into rush knowing all of the top tier sororities and like all of

their reputations and I was expecting to be in one but then I got cut from all of my top

choices, or all but one, but I was a little upset. It was like the third or second round I

called my mom and I was bawling for sure and I don’t really cry.”

Chelsea: “Getting dropped from something I never thought I would was surprising because I

was friends with all of those girls. It was when it got down to the wire and the unexpected
FRESHMEN WOMEN AND RECRUITMENT 13

happened that I got really upset.”

Stereotypes

Many of the participants expressed that they felt anxiety because they felt that the sororities had

certain expectations of them. They thought that they wanted particular answers to questions and

that they were expecting them to dress and to look a certain way. Many of the girls were unsure

what to expect when they were going into the first round of recruitment and some said that this

part was one of the most nerve wracking.

Taylor: “Standing in front of the curtain waiting to go in is the most nerve wracking part of

recruitment. That was my least favorite part. They were yelling at us to hurry up and we

had to run up the stairs in wedges and that was just really scary because you had no clue

what you were walking into and so much was riding on you making a good impression.”

Jordan: “I was a little anxious because I didn’t know what they would be expecting from me

and then I got a little more stressed once I got dropped during the second round. I was

confused because I thought I clicked with a lot of girls from a lot of the sororities but then

they dropped me and I guess I didn’t have the best mindset going into the second round

because I lost a lot of confidence after I didn’t get sororities back.”

Bridget: “But I was just so nervous and I just wanted to be what I was supposed to be, what

the sororities wanted. I thought I was supposed to be a certain kind of way. I thought the

sororities wanted a certain kind of person so I tried to be that.”

For the women that came to college with no prior knowledge about the reputations of the

sororities they heard the stereotypes of the sororities from the other girls that were going through

recruitment with them in their groups. These stereotypes seemed to affect the opinions that the

participants had of the sororities during recruitment.

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Kennedy: “Like I when I was standing with the girls ready to go in before rounds, I came

into Clemson not knowing anyone or any of the stereotypes and then the girls would tell

me that oh, this was a party house or something and I would go in to the round expecting

those stereotypes.”

Chelsea: “We talked about which ones we wanted even though we weren’t suppose to, that’s

definitely something my pi-chi group did a lot.”

Caitlyn: “You would hear people talk about it and people would be saying bad things about

this sorority but if that’s like the only sorority that liked you then it kind of ruins you

wanting to go in because people are saying bad things about it and stuff. No one really

said anything bad about the ones I wanted but people said a lot of bad things about one

especially in particular. But I just feel like that’s kind of unfair because they were saying

that before they even went in and their opinion is just kind of biased because of that.”

Adjustment

The first week of college for a freshman is filled with adjustments, adjusting to living on your

own in a new place, adjusting to a new school and adjusting to the heavier workload in college

level courses. All of the participants expressed that adjusting to college while going through

recruitment their first week of college was very stressful. The emotional toll that recruitment

took on some of the participants made it very difficult for them to manage their time between

recruitment and school. Stress was a major theme present in the interviews and for some

participants the stress of adjusting to college and recruitment was so great that they either

dropped recruitment or considered dropping several times.

Stress
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Most of the participants repeatedly described recruitment as stressful; even those who felt that

the experience was a mostly positive one felt that the experience was extremely stressful. Most

of the stress they felt was contributed to being in a new place, trying to juggle schoolwork and

recruitment and also the anxiety that recruitment gave them. Several participants expressed that

they thought the process would be better if it did not take place during the first week of school.

Taylor: “Going through recruitment the first week was terrible. I wish it was the week

before or a different time. We were in there super late and it was like, the first week of

classes so I was still trying to adjust to like, getting our first assignments done but I was

stuck in rounds all night”

Chelsea: “You literally have to wake up so early, it’s like a really long process. You have to

get up and get ready to go to school, then rush home, change and then head to recruitment

to do rounds.”

Bridget: “You go in and you’re not thinking about anything else. You’re not like oh god I

have an 8am in the morning that I need to be getting ready for and all that stuff. The

first week of school you’re just like oh I have this homework assignment that I really

need to do and I need to read for my first class and it’s hard to do when you have to

be at rounds for so long or you’re just really worried about how it’s going to work

out.”

For many of the participants recruitment caused an already stressful experience to become even

more stressful and made the process of adjusting to college an even more difficult task.

Bridget: “You’re angry and confused because like, you’re a freshman and you don’t know

what’s going on yet. You’re already going through something that is so scary just leaving
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home and being on your own on campus, but then you add on the scary process of

recruitment and it’s just ten times worse.

For one of the participants she felt that recruitment became too stressful and she decided to

withdraw from the experience completely. She said that the reason she decided to drop was due

to the stress that she felt while she was trying to adjust to juggling school, work, and recruitment.

Jordan: “I felt overwhelmed having recruitment during the first week of classes. Having it

the week before definitely would have been better. That’s a reason that I dropped

recruitment because a lot of it was during the week day and I was really stressed and I

was supposed to be starting my job and getting ready for classes and like, that was

probably one of the most stressful weeks I’ve ever had and I think recruitment made it

really difficult. “

Relationships

For many of the participants one of the main reasons they wanted to join a sorority was to

develop friendships and to meet new people. Some of the participants felt that they accomplished

their goal of making new friends during recruitment while others felt that even though they

talked to a lot of other girls they were unable to make any lasting relationships. Many of the girls

believed that by joining a sorority they would have a sense of belonging and a set group of

friends.

Caitlyn: “I wanted to go through recruitment to make friends. I was kind of nervous about

coming to college and figured if I was in a sorority that I would have a set group of

friends.”
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Bridget: “I think I needed something to have, to fall back on, to associate with. Otherwise I

would have felt really lost, I would have felt really lonely. Like I did have those great

girls from my hall other than that, besides the people in my classes but that’s about it.”

Chelsea: “The fact that there will be basically 200 people who will always be on your side,

no matter what will be there for moral support. I have two older sisters who are seven

years older so I wanted someone closer to my age that I could always count on.”

Friendship

Some of the women said that they formed close bonds with the girls in their pi-chi group and feel

that they would not have made friends with these girls if they had not gone through recruitment.

Chelsea: “I really liked getting to know all the people and I’m still friends with people from

my Pi Chi group.”

Kennedy: “I met girls on my hall that live on the opposite end so I don’t know if I would

have met them if I hadn’t gone through rush with them. They’re really nice and fun and

we still hang out so I’m glad I met them.”

Bridget: “I think that going through recruitment was vital. I think that going through

recruitment and joining a sorority helps you automatically associate yourself and

get to know people, which is especially important as an out of state student.”

For some of the participants however even though they spoke to a lot of people they did not feel

like they really made a connection or got to know those people. These participants were

surprised when they did not form more relationships through recruitment. Many of the

relationships that were lasting either were formed in their pi-chi groups or when they joined a
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sorority. Few participants developed relationships with the sorority members that they talked to

during the actual recruitment process.

Jordan: “I didn’t meet nearly as many people as I thought I would. I mean you talk to a ton

of people but it’s not like I’m ever going to see them again or talk to them outside of

the recruitment atmosphere unless I joined their sorority.”

Bridget: “I was so nervous and it just kind of slipped my mind but I remember I would

talk to similar people in rounds that I would continuously go back to. And I’d just be like

oh yeah we’ve met before but it would be half way through the conversation and nothing

memorable.”

Self-Esteem

The way that women feel about themselves while going through recruitment is vital to

understanding the overall experience. All women reported negative feelings about themselves in

multiple forms including doubts about their body and their personalities. Much of the stress and

anxiety that the participants reported feeling previously in their interviews was due to perceived

judgment by girls during rounds and dissatisfaction with themselves.

Caitlyn: “Part of me still wants to be in a sorority, but I probably wouldn’t go through

recruitment again. Even if I did better next time I’d still feel kind of worse about it

because I know they didn’t like me and I’m trying again to make people like me and I

don’t really want to try that hard for my friends.”

Shea: “I didn’t feel very good about myself. It’s kind of a hard process. And just

sometimes when I’d be going through it I felt like I wasn’t good enough for certain

people and the sorority.”

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Many women also expressed concerns about how they felt after they were dropped from

sororities. The participants spoke of getting upset about not feeling like they were good

enough to get into sororities after they weren’t invited back to the next round.

Kennedy: When you get cut from a house it can be really upsetting because you’re just

like what did I do wrong and you don’t get an explanation for it or anything.

Jordan: “I walked away from the first round really seeing myself in certain sororities

after meeting girls that I really got along with and then when they dropped me I was

really surprised. I tried not to get too upset about it or take it too much to heart but

it wasn’t the greatest feeling.”

Judgment

While the women talked about being stressed and anxious about certain aspects of

recruitment, their biggest complaint was that they felt judged during the experience. This

perceived judgment passed by sorority members during recruitment made the women we

interviewed doubt themselves and become insecure.

Kennedy: “Everyone was judging you all the time and with them judging you, you felt

worse.”

Bridget: “Oh, the whole process is a complete judgment. That’s the whole thing. The whole

thing is judging you and whether or not you would fit in with their little clique or not.

And yeah like, it’s ridiculous. I think there were some sororities that judged more than

others but that’s pretty much the process. I could tell they were judging me, they’d look
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me up and down in certain sororities and I knew, I knew that they were looking at my

body and stuff and judging me.”

Jordan: “I mean it’s literally girls judging you after 15 minutes of knowing you and

sometimes they don’t even talk to you that long. I mean how could that not make

you emotional? I’m pretty secure with myself but after that I just kind of thought

about some things.”

A few women also expressed that they felt that the girls in rounds were judging them based

on whether or not they gave the right kind of answer.

Caitlyn: “You could tell that they were looking for a specific answer and wanted to

know if you fit their criteria.”

Body Image

Along with the stereotypes that the women felt about sororities in general, some of the

participants felt that they needed to look a certain way to be in a sorority. These women

felt that there were certain expectations to be met and that their bodies did not meet them.

Bridget: “After that initial meltdown I was just like ah, yeah, it’s probably because I’m

not skinny and I’m not pretty enough. That was my first thought after getting cut. I

was just like, yeah I’m not skinny they don’t want fat girls in their sorority. But yeah,

I was just like why don’t they want me?”

Taylor: “In the first rounds I felt like I wasn’t good enough for certain sororities. Not

even so much as not being good enough for them, but just me not being willing to

change myself and try to make myself look like a Barbie doll to fit in. I wasn’t willing

to put up that much effort, it just wasn’t worth it.”

FRESHMEN WOMEN AND RECRUITMENT 21

Jordan: And so I was freaking out, I just felt shitty, and yeah, going in to recruitment I

guess I realized I didn’t look like every girl, the typical sorority girls. I wasn’t head to

toe fancy and stick thin, but I guess it had always worked out for me before.”

As shown here with a quote from Jordan, many of the women thought that the sororities

were looking for thin women that fit certain ideals like the Barbie doll that Taylor

mentioned.

DISCUSSION

The research results found that there were four overall themes in the six interviews, expectations,

adjustment, relationships and self-esteem. These common themes were then separated into

several sub themes, planning, stereotypes, stress, friendship, judgment and body image. Overall

these themes and findings from our data support the literature that we reviewed. The Expectancy

Violation Theory (EVT) was supported in our results, many of the participants who had their

expectations violated paid closer attention to their conversations with sorority members during

recruitment and monitored their speech and behaviors more closely to match what they believed

was expected of them (Burgoon, 1978, 1993). Our results support research that claimed some

college freshmen have difficulty adjusting to college life and we found that sorority recruitment

increased their difficulty adjusting to college (DeBerard et al, 2004). Many of the participants

said that they believed that sorority recruitment should not be the first week of school because of

the difficult time that they had adjusting to college and sorority recruitment. This data may be

helpful to the Panhellenic sorority council at Clemson University to make the experience of

adjusting easier for freshmen women who decide to go through recruitment in the future.
FRESHMEN WOMEN AND RECRUITMENT 22

Many of the participants discussed their desire for friendships as their leading motivation

for going through sorority recruitment, which expanded the research that we found on sorority

recruitment and relationships. Most of the research we found on relationships in sorority

recruitment had to do with the self-monitoring of conversations and rehearsal of conversation,

which was present in our results but was only discussed by one participant (Scheibel et al, 2002).

The relationships formed by the women who went through recruitment together and remained

friends even though they joined different sororities was new data that was not discussed in

previous research. However one participant claimed that she was surprised that she did not make

more friends during recruitment, however this participant did not complete sorority recruitment

and those who felt that they made more friendships were the girls who ended up joining a

sorority.

Our results concluded that stress was one of the most common shared theme that all of

the participants talked about in their interviews. The stress of adjusting to college while going

through recruitment and the stress of uncertainty were common themes in all of the interviews.

Many of the women said that they were nervous going into recruitment because they were unsure

about what was expected of them and uncertain about recruitment as a whole. Uncertainty

Reduction Theory (URT) can be used to explain the anxiety that comes with uncertainty when

communicating interpersonally with others and the need to gain more information to reduce this

uncertainty (Berger & Calabrese, 1975). Our data has shown that stress caused by uncertainty

amongst the participants going into sorority recruitment was highest right before the first round

but was replaced by another form of stress after their uncertainty was reduced. Their difficulty

adjusting to college while going through recruitment created the other form of stress present

amongst all of the participants. The level of stress for some of the participants resulted in them
FRESHMEN WOMEN AND RECRUITMENT 23

dropping out of recruitment. This data may be helpful in developing methods to try to decrease

stress for potential new members perhaps to try to increase the retention rates during Panhellenic

recruitment.

Further Research

The researchers believe that more research is necessary to truly understand the

phenomenon of recruitment as freshmen women. They believe it would be beneficial to

have a broader audience interviewed rather than the six participants chosen for this

particular study. Since the sample of this study was entirely white, more research should be

conducted involving minorities during Panhellenic recruitment. The researchers also think

that it would be helpful to have more research conducted on how freshmen adjust to

college situations in general so that the process of adjusting during recruitment can be

studied more in-depth. Since the researchers were limited to interviewing only Clemson

students during the time frame of this study, understanding the recruitment experience of

freshmen at other universities would be beneficial to gathering a wider set of data.

FRESHMEN WOMEN AND RECRUITMENT 24

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FRESHMEN WOMEN AND RECRUITMENT 25

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