Husky Happenings: A New Sorority in Storrs?

Olivia Turn­bull: Wel­come back to Husky Hap­pen­ings, your in depth pod­cast for every­thing hap­pen­ing at the UConn stores cam­pus. I’m your host, Olivia Turn­bull. This week, I sat down with vice pres­i­dent of Pan­hel­lenic Recruit­ment, Olivia Callanan to dis­cuss what the heck is going on with UConn soror­i­ties. After an unprece­dent­ed num­ber of greek life signups for poten­tial new mem­bers, UConn is look­ing to expand their pan­hel­lenic coun­cil to ten soror­i­ties. Right now we’re at nine, and we haven’t had anoth­er soror­i­ty join since 2015. So I want­ed to get a lit­tle bit more in depth with Olivia about what does this look like? What does this mean? Why do we need this? She was super insight­ful, and I hope you guys enjoyed the inter­view. Hi. Wel­come to the pod­cast, Olivia. How are you feeling?

Olivia Callanan: I’m good. How are you?

Olivia Turn­bull: I’m good, thank you. Do you want to just quick­ly intro­duce your­self to the pod?

Olivia Callanan: Yes. I am Olivia Callanan I’m a senior here at UConn, mar­ket­ing major and vp of, pan­hel­lenic recruitment.

Olivia Turn­bull: Amaz­ing. Well, it’s so great to have you. I’m super excit­ed to get start­ed. I would love to dis­cuss with you kind of what pan­hel­lenic is, what you do, as well as why peo­ple may join a soror­i­ty and what’s going on with the future. Because I hear that we might be imple­ment­ing a new soror­i­ty here at UConn. So I guess let’s start out with

what is Panhellenic?

Olivia Callanan: Well, tech­ni­cal­ly, pan­hel­lenic refers to the umbrel­la term for soror­i­ties that are asso­ci­at­ed with the NPC, which is the nation­al Pan­hel­lenic con­fer­ence. So here at UConn, our Pan­hel­lenic coun­cil is made up of sev­en girls who take a step out­side of their soror­i­ty, apply to a posi­tion to be on pan­hel­lenic, and then act as the gov­ern­ing body of our nine sororities.

Olivia Turn­bull: Amaz­ing. So what is it that you specif­i­cal­ly do with­in your role of Pan­hel­lenic as.

Olivia Callanan: Vice pres­i­dent of recruit­ment? My role main­ly focus­es on our for­mal fall recruit­ment and not so much our spring con­tin­u­ous open bid­ding. So, for me, I spent a lot of time build­ing sched­ules, plan­ning events, mak­ing sure that reg­is­tra­tion looked the way we want­ed it to for PnMsheen­deen. I also have to go through our recruit­ment rules and make sure they’re all up to date, change things that I would like to see changed, pitch them in our open pan­hel­lenic meet­ings to all of our coun­cil. They vote on them, and then we go from there. Amazing.

Olivia Turn­bull: M so what made you want to go through Pan­hel­lenic recruit­ment when you were a freshman?

Olivia Callanan: Well, com­ing to UConn, I knew it was a pret­ty big school, so I was try­ing to find a com­mu­ni­ty that I could put myself in that would make it feel a lit­tle bit small­er, because I come from a very small town in Con­necti­cut. I also have two sis­ters that I’m very close to. So I was look­ing for a sim­i­lar bond here, com­ing to cam­pus as a fresh­man. Also, grow­ing up, my mom would always tell us sto­ries about join­ing a

pan­hel­lenic soror­i­ty at Uri and how much she loved it and the oppor­tu­ni­ties that opened up for her. I guess that’s why.

Olivia Turn­bull: So I guess I’d like to dis­cuss with you, you know, what it is about UConn Pan­hel­lenic that maybe peo­ple are want­i­ng to go through recruit­ment. Like, why would you think that some­one would want to go through recruit­ment here?

Olivia Callanan: I think for a lot of the same rea­sons I did. Also, even though UConn is this school of Con­necti­cut, and we have a lot of Con­necti­cut stu­dents, we do also have a lot of kids com­ing here from out of state, from, like, mass or New Jer­sey or New York. So based on, like, who I’ve talked to, espe­cial­ly out of state stu­dents, the main rea­son they’re com­ing and join­ing Pan­hel­lenic is because they’re com­ing to a school where they don’t real­ly know that many peo­ple, and they’re also look­ing to estab­lish a sense of com­mu­ni­ty and sup­port that they can lean on in their time here.

Olivia Turn­bull: So what does the pan­hel­lenic recruit­ment process look like for some­one who has no idea what it is?

Olivia Callanan: Yeah. So basi­cal­ly, we set up a reg­is­tra­tion link through a pro­gram called Cam­pus direc­tor, and it gets sent out and shared, and we pro­mote it on Insta­gram, Tik­Tok, Face­book, all those types of things, most­ly for fresh­men and sopho­mores com­ing to UConn stores. But also any­one from any cam­pus is allowed to apply. We also take, obvi­ous­ly, junior seniors. So it’s open to every­one. And basi­cal­ly, you fill out this form, and then you get placed into a group with a recruit­ment coun­selor who is essen­tial­ly anoth­er female who has cho­sen to step out of her orga­ni­za­tion and into this posi­tion of recruit­ment coun­selors to help guide our poten­tial new mem­bers through the process. And then once they get on cam­pus, we have a lot of events for

them to meet their recruit­ment coun­selor, to meet oth­er P and Ms. And then once recruit­ment actu­al­ly starts here, we have a PNM ori­en­ta­tion where the Pan­hel­lenic recruit­ment VP, me, and then my team. So the VPN, the recruit­ment man­age­ment team. So that would be me, the pres­i­dent, of Pan­hel­lenic, a direc­tor of P and M’s, and a direc­tor of recruit­ment. Coun­selors, hold this for them. Give them the run­down of what they should expect, answer their ques­tions, all those good things, and then recruit­ment actu­al­ly starts. So here we do schol­ar­ship day one, schol­ar­ship day two. Then we do phil­an­thropy day, sis­ter­hood day, and then prep day, which is where you go to your last up to two soror­i­ties, and after that, you may receive a bid

00:05:00

Olivia Callanan: to be eli­gi­ble to join one of our nine chapters.

Olivia Turn­bull: Thank you for that run­down. It’s very in depth. So I’m curi­ous to hear your thoughts on Bama Rush and how that’s affect­ed not only soror­i­ty recruit­ment, obvi­ous­ly, at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Alaba­ma, but how it’s swept the nation and maybe how it’s affect­ed us here at UConn.

Olivia Callanan: Yeah, I think in the past two years, we have def­i­nite­ly seen a large uptick in the num­ber of girls that are reg­is­ter­ing to go through, and I do think it has a lot to do with Bama Rush. So when it comes to the num­bers and the amount of inter­est we’re get­ting, I def­i­nite­ly see it as a pos­i­tive. But I will say that the videos that are post­ed are not very rep­re­sen­ta­tive of how recruit­ment here is at UConn. So we do see a lot of girls com­ing in expect­ing it to be uber duber seri­ous, and, like, very much so, based on the way you look, or how much mon­ey you have, or the answers you give. Where­as here we try and do a more holis­tic, val­ues based recruit­ment. So I will say that

there are pos­i­tive and neg­a­tives to the Bama rush Tik­Tok, but I will say, num­bers wise, I think we’ve been up, like, 47% in the num­ber of girls that we have matched and reg­is­tered since Bama Rush has blown up.

Olivia Turn­bull: Cool. So could you give me some more in depth on the num­bers? What were the num­bers look­ing like maybe a cou­ple years ago ver­sus this year? And what are you pro­ject­ing for the future?

Olivia Callanan: A cou­ple of years ago, I wan­na say the num­ber of reg­is­tered PNMs was around 350, which means that those are the num­ber of girls that start on day one. And then the way recruit­ment works is that it’s a mutu­al selec­tion process. So every day, girls will see less and less hous­es based on how they’ve cho­sen to rank chap­ters and how chap­ters have cho­sen to rank them. So then, by the end of it, I want to say, after start­ing with 350, we had about 200 matched, and then in recent years, we’ve seen 600. And, like, even this year, we were very close to 700 girls reg­is­ter­ing. So that’s almost dou­ble what we’ve seen in the past. And luck­i­ly, this year, the way we struc­tured it and the way that we plan to have it, espe­cial­ly with our match­ing spe­cial­ist and our num­ber spe­cial­ist that is giv­en to us by the Nation­al Pan­hel­lenic Coun­cil, we were able to see about 500 girls matched of the 700 that were registered.

Olivia Turn­bull: That’s incred­i­ble. So what do you think, is going to hap­pen mov­ing for­ward? I’ve heard rum­blings that maybe we need a new soror­i­ty. And if that is the case, why do you think we would need one?

Olivia Callanan: Yeah. So you’re cor­rect. There are rum­blings. right now, we are in the process of fig­ur­ing out what that will look like and how that will work for our cam­pus. The amount of space we have, the venues we’re able to have, and all those types of

things. And we actu­al­ly have an exten­sion com­mit­tee right now that’s com­prised of one girl from every chap­ter, an advi­sor, myself, the Pan­hel­lenic pres­i­dent, and then two of our advi­sors, Ash­ley and Jose. And right now, we’re gath­er­ing data and num­bers based on the past five years to see how that new soror­i­ty would fit into cam­pus here. But the biggest prob­lem we’ve run into that made us want to even look into this expan­sion process is space. because phys­i­cal­ly, based on the num­bers we’re get­ting and the num­ber of girls we’re match­ing every year, it’s get­ting hard­er and hard­er for our chap­ters to be able to house these many peo­ple or hold these events with these many girls. So adding anoth­er chap­ter would alle­vi­ate the stress of the num­bers increas­ing for our oth­er nine chapters.

Olivia Turn­bull: Yeah, I mean, I’m in a soror­i­ty, and I did recruit­ment from the oth­er side this year, and it was absolute may­hem inside the hous­es. The hous­es only fit about 30 girls to live in there, and hav­ing almost 60 to 70 girls in our chap­ter, recruit­ing and dur­ing a round was absolute chaos. There was peo­ple every­where. So I def­i­nite­ly think it’s some­thing that we should think about. I think the last time it hap­pened, Wash­ing­ton, 2015, maybe 2014, I think, was the last time I’ve heard that a chap­ter came back. So it’s inter­est­ing. It’s been quite a few years since this hap­pened, and I felt like. I don’t know if you’d agree, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. I feel like dur­ing COVID and maybe a lit­tle bit before that, a lot of haz­ing or out­dat­ed ideas about greek life were com­ing out, and it felt like it was on its way out. It felt like greek life was on its way to being abolished.

Olivia Callanan: I would total­ly agree. I mean, there are so many stig­mas that sur­round our com­mu­ni­ty in gen­er­al, going back even 50 years. Like, peo­ple do have a very neg­a­tive per­cep­tion of what it is and what we do, espe­cial­ly at UConn, unfor­tu­nate­ly. So I will say again, to go back to the Bama Tik­Tok thing, I think that did play a large role in,

like, hav­ing these num­bers increase and shed­ding a dif­fer­ent light on soror­i­ties and even fra­ter­ni­ties, espe­cial­ly at UConn or even across the Unit­ed States. But that is one of the main things that, espe­cial­ly our pan­hel­lenic coun­cil here is try­ing to do, is abol­ish those stig­mas, because they’re not true. And it sucks that, like, you have girls going through that, think at the end of all of this, they’re gonna get hazed. But those are not the prin­ci­ples that we live by here, espe­cial­ly in our nine chap­ters and the Pan hel­lenic coun­cil in gen­er­al. So that’s one of our main goals at the moment.

Olivia Turn­bull: It’s def­i­nite­ly inter­est­ing to see how UConn seems to dif­fer between oth­er chap­ters or oth­er schools. Cause I feel like a huge thing is here is we don’t haze at all,

00:10:00

Olivia Turn­bull: where­as at oth­er schools, maybe they do, but I’m inter­est­ed to see how the future of greek life goes for us if we con­tin­ue see­ing this rise and rise and rise, and maybe if, you know, in a, year or two, we’ll need more soror­i­ties. But I’m won­der­ing if you think that we’re going to con­tin­ue see­ing this rise. Is that what you guys have been pro­ject­ing, or do you think that it’s going to kind of plateau off in a year or two?

Olivia Callanan: I think as of right now, the way we’ve seen it trend­ing up not only here, but also in oth­er schools in Con­necti­cut, like Sacred Heart or Fair­field U. That have a very sim­i­lar stu­dent body to UConn, they are also see­ing the same uptick. So I don’t see a plateau­ing in the next cou­ple of years. I mean, even­tu­al­ly, it prob­a­bly will plateau. That’s how life works, and, you know, like, inevitable. But I do think for at least the next three, four, poten­tial­ly five years, that they will con­tin­ue to see an uptick, which is one of the main rea­sons we’ve start­ed look­ing into this new soror­i­ty, because we know that

even if they might not need it next year, they’re gonna need it in years to fol­low, and we’d rather be more pre­pared than not prepared.

Olivia Turn­bull: So what does this real­ly mean? Like, how do they. I know you said the expan­sion com­mit­tee is made up of all those dif­fer­ent indi­vid­u­als, but how do they decide which soror­i­ty comes? Because I feel like a lot of peo­ple who aren’t in greek life and even myself who is, does­n’t real­ly under­stand, like, what bring­ing a new soror­i­ty or a new chap­ter on means. How do they decide which one is the right fit ver­sus. You know, I know we’ve had some chap­ters be kicked off in the past. How do they decide if they’re going to rechar­ter or bring some­one back? Like, what does that look like?

Olivia Callanan: Yeah. So, basi­cal­ly, based on our bylaws, it does have a lot to do with a, vot­ing sys­tem. So what­ev­er the expan­sion com­mit­tee fig­ures out, we are manda­to­ry, required to present it to our pan­hel­lenic com­mu­ni­ty and have them vote on it to even decide if we would like to go fur­ther. And if they do decide that, that’s when the appli­ca­tion opens up and any soror­i­ty is will­ing and eli­gi­ble, they can apply. And then from there, it’ll be anoth­er vote to decide who does even­tu­al­ly come here. If you asked me, I would say it would prob­a­bly be a soror­i­ty that we see at, anoth­er school, like Sacred Heart or Fair­ford U. Again, just because we do already have those types of chap­ters in Con­necti­cut. So to bring anoth­er one to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut, which is one of the largest schools in our state, then they would have chap­ters that they could reach out to, to, like, learn how they did some­thing and then apply it here, because obvi­ous­ly they will be very new. I do want to say, from the chap­ters that we have had kicked off of cam­pus, the only one that is not eli­gi­ble to apply ever and be rechar­tered is kap­pa. Kap­pa gamo. So that would be the one. It def­i­nite­ly will not be, but we just have no way of real­ly know­ing who it will be, if we even get that far to add a new one.

Olivia Turn­bull: Amaz­ing. Well, that was super in depth, and I thank you so, much for your time. This was so great. I real­ly learned a lot, and I’m hop­ing this is super, infor­ma­tive to any­one else out there that’s won­der­ing these things.

Olivia Turn­bull: Yeah. Thanks so much for hav­ing me.

Olivia Turn­bull: Of course. It was great to see you. I hope you guys enjoyed that inter­view with Olivia as much as I did. She’s so well informed, and it was amaz­ing to get to sit down with some­one who had the answer to every ques­tion I had. I am in a soror­i­ty. I do want to pref­ace that. So this was a lit­tle bit more catered towards me than maybe the aver­age indi­vid­ual. But I still think it’s impor­tant to under­stand what’s going on at your school in every facet. So that’s why I felt this was a real­ly impor­tant episode to have. I think we’re going to real­ly see a, dif­fer­ence in greek life in the next cou­ple years, and I’m super excit­ed to see if we con­tin­ue get­ting more and more soror­i­ties beyond just this year. Well, that’s it for this week on Husky hap­pen­ings, and I hope to see you next week. Bye.

00:13:29

https://www.wvtm13.com/article/bama-rush-tiktok-influences-on-college-campus/44850698#:~:text=up%20on%20TikTok.-,It’s%20a%20hashtag%20that’s%20getting%20national%20attention.,many%20women%20to%20Greek%20life.

https://dailycampus.com/2024/01/24/conversations-with-karla-the-conflicting-sides-of-rush-tok/

Aeris, Pan­hel­lenic soror­i­ties host simul­ta­ne­ous recruit­ment, Pan­hel­lenic see increased pop­u­lar­i­ty and bids