Sorority Small Talk: MENTAL HEALTH
FEELINGS
Sorority formal recruitment is stressful. Women are asked to make a lot of difficult decisions quickly.
Sororities work hard to make sure that every woman walking through their doors are having the best experience possible, which makes everything more stressful for the potential new members.
FUTURE
The future of sorority formal recruitment rests in the hands of sorority women. Mental health awareness and programming is on the rise. If sororities and the formal recruitment process doesn't change, then they will be left behind as archaic.
According to NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, one in five adults in the United States experince a mental illness each year.
Sorority formal recruitment is a mutual selection process in which potential new members and initiated sisters both make selections concerning their future membership.
FACTS
Here's what we know:
MENTAL HEALTH & SORORITY RECRUITMENT
Panhellenic formal recruitment focuses on a values based recruitment.We talk about values and the importance of keeping one’s values in mind during recruitment—why, then, is mental health not a value that sorority leadership, Greek advisors, Panhellenic staff and recruitment counselors prioritize? Why can’t we change the way we address and run formal recruitment so that being released from the process or not being asked back to an organization isn’t completely devastating? Why is formal recruitment static? We’ve prioritized physical and mental health as a hard and fast rule—hazing is not tolerated by the Panhellenic community. Can we take that same passion that our members have about anti-hazing and apply it to making recruitment a better process?
Let's get the conversation started and talk about why organizations prioritize the mental health of not only our members as well as our future sisters. Let’s put this moment in the books—our shared histories—the moment where sorority and mental health worked together to create a better Greek community.