Finally, the day has arrived. Though rather an atypical day for the University of Maryland Greek community due to the coronavirus pandemic, virtual bid day was an event that many potential new members had been looking forward to ever since they first signed up for sorority recruitment.
On Feb. 8, potential new members opened their email bids from one of the 16 Panhellenic chapters on this campus and logged onto Zoom to be greeted by their new sisters.
Typically, students would travel to each chapter house to meet the current members, learn about their values, sisterhood and philanthropy and rank their experiences on an app.
To mitigate the spread of COVID-19, rush events were held on Zoom. Potential new members met with sisters in breakout rooms who then presented information about the sororities through videos and speeches.
To Brooke Levin, a freshman enrolled in letters and sciences who just joined the university’s Alpha Epsilon Phi chapter, the virtual rush process was much different than she expected, since chapters had to adapt their traditional practices to an online platform.
“The rush process was definitely stressful … I think my evaluation [of each chapter] was much harder because I couldn’t see the whole sorority. I only met a few girls,” Levin said. “I think in-person [rush] would have been better, so they can fully see who you are and not judge you through a screen.”
Despite her virtual recruitment process, Levin said she is excited to join Alpha Epsilon Phi and the entire Maryland Greek community as a whole.
“[The end result] was a tad different than my expectations but hopefully, it all worked out,” Levin said.
Similarly, Cayla De Siver, a sophomore public policy major who just accepted her bid from Sigma Delta Tau, was both nervous and excited for virtual recruitment.
“I had to get ready and sit at my desk for hours at a time,” De Siver said. “All in all, everybody was really nice … It was easy to have conversations with people, easier than I expected.”
De Siver said virtual recruitment did not take away from chapters’ abilities to express their unique personalities in a variety of creative ways.
“[The current members] were all wearing matching outfits and had a lot of energy and were really excited to greet us into their sorority … with the promise that in the coming weeks, everybody would get really close,” De Siver said.
For sophomore hearing and speech sciences major Gianna Zappulla, a new member of Sigma Kappa, virtual bid day was full of excitement, and her nerves throughout the recruitment process were finally put at ease.
“I went from nervous to really excited in two seconds,” Zappulla said.
Additionally, Zappulla said her chapter is still finding ways to bond while following COVID health guidelines.
“They also paired us up with ‘heart sisters,’ which is someone you already spoke to during recruitment that is supposed to basically hang out with you and lets you get to know more and more girls in the chapter,” Zappulla said. “You get new ones every week, and these are the girls that can potentially become your big when the time comes.”
Even though potential new members could not physically “run home” on bid day, the smiling faces they were greeted with on their computer screens still made the unique recruitment process rewarding in the end.