Angie Cunningham is a senior at Wake Forest majoring in Health and Exercise Science with minors in bioethics, humanities, and medicine. Aside from class, Angie teaches aquatic therapy at the local hospital, is involved with the running club, and recently finished two years as Vice President of Membership for the Panhellenic Executive Council. Her Campus sat down with Angie to talk about her process of learning the position’s ropes and then working to plan the 2020 recruitment.
Her Campus: What responsibilities did your position include?
Angie Cunningham: Basically all of recruitment. I had a team specifically for recruitment that I delegated to. I had the production coordinator who did so much work all throughout the fall. She was the one who made sure all the chapters had work orders in for how many tables, how many chairs, measuring all the rooms to make sure they have all the pipe and drape right, and this was the production coordinator. I had a social media and marketing person who did all the t-shirts. She did Instagram, Pinterest, and the booklet. I had a computer point person. This was someone who was running Campus Director getting [all the] PNMs (potential new members) registered and making sure they had the right t-shirt size input, hometown, and GPA. The GRC coordinators were also absolutely wonderful. The planned each meeting, brought in speakers, and, you know, helped with that whole process. That’s a few of the positions, but there were a lot of people who I was able to handoff jobs to. There’s so much that goes on, but I was doing a lot of putting puzzle pieces together in the end. It’s so much of a team effort; it would have been chaos with just me.
HC: What was your favorite part about having this position?
AC: One of my favorite things was actually not something that I saw myself, but something that was told to me after recruitment and really just almost made me cry. One of the last parts of recruitment is all the PNMs who have gotten bids go to Benson and you say 5,4,3,2,1 and everyone opens their card and there’s yelling and jumping. I mean that’s beautiful to watch; it’s so exciting. But people were talking to me about recruitment during bid day and something that I loved was that each chapter would clap for every other chapter when the PNMs would come down the Benson stairs. I absolutely loved that. The fact that every chapter can be supporting one another when the PNMs come down because it’s people joining the community and that’s really what this is for. I love that Wake is not secular in the chapters and the fact that everyone is friends. I’ve absolutely loved this experience for more reasons than one, but I’ve loved seeing that play out during bid day.
HC: What did you want to accomplish as a member of the Panhellenic executive committee?
AC: There are the people who come into Wake and they say, “Okay, this is what I’m doing.” And they’re confident and they’re comfortable and they already know people. Recruitment often works out really well for those types of girls. But I’ve been really excited to see through this process how we can make it easier for everyone during recruitment. I love the idea of this being a welcoming comfortable environment. It’s not about the balloon arches, it’s not about the t-shirts, it’s not about all that kind of fluffy stuff. We’re creating a sisterhood; we’re creating this genuine deep connection and I love being able to foster that in the community.
HC: Why did you want to be a member of the executive committee?
AC: If I’m being honest, I did not know what I was signing up for. I had no idea how many late nights, how many hard conversations, how many emails I was going to have to send. So, I joined a sorority my freshman year and I absolutely love my chapter, but what I was more excited about was joining the community. It didn’t matter to me whether my friends and I were in whatever sorority, it was the fact that we were joining a group of strong, empowered women. At a school like Wake Forest, we have the ability to make a change in our world as a whole and so if we start the conversation now about what we can do as empowered women then that extends way beyond your membership in one chapter. I love being a part of Panhellenic because it was my way of impacting and opening up the floor saying here’s your chance.
HC: Based on your unique perspective, what advice would you give to girls going through recruitment?
AC: There are so many things we say all the time and when you say that kind of stuff over and over again, it loses its meaning a little bit because you say “trust the process” but sometimes people don’t even know what the process is or “maximize your options” and what if that’s not what is best for me? But I think that something that I’ve learned through this process is that sororities aren’t for everybody and that’s okay. Your friends will not change and there will always be something to get involved with and something to grow that support system. The fact of the matter is, if people aren’t going to be your friend because of your decision at the end of recruitment week, then are those the type of people you want to be surrounding yourself with? You have something to contribute to this campus and that can be in a sorority and not.
HC: If you could go back, would you do it all again?
AC: 100 percent. Oh my gosh yeah. I have grown so much as a person through this job. I have grown so much closer to my executive board and to the people who I’ve been able to work with. To be able to see what these people are passionate about and what drives them, what they want to see in this community, and how they go about doing that has been amazing. But I’ve also grown with my leadership abilities. I’ve learned how to talk in front of an audience. I’m more comfortable with confrontation. I’ve gotten a lot better at coordinating a lot of things all at once. Time management has always been something I’ve been decently good at, but this is expert level. And I’ve been fortunate enough to see so much good in absolutely every single chapter. It’s all warm fuzzy feelings.