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January 17, 2012

Every January, members of the seven Panhellenic sororities at the University of Miami return from winter break a week earlier than most other students.  The women take part in the Panhellenic Council’s annual Spring recruitment week, during which ‘Potential New Members’ (PNMs) who have pre-registered to participate in the week’s activities are invited to meet the sororities and get a feel for which ones they could see themselves joining.

At the conclusion of the week, Recruitment Guides–sisters known colloquially as “Rho Gammas” because they have temporarily disaffiliated themselves from their sororities during the recruitment period for the sake of impartiality–take into account both the ranked preferences of individual PNMs and the considerations of the sororities themselves to determine how to assign ‘bids,’ or formal invitations to join.  The PNMs find out which sororities they received bids from just before Bid Day, and the sororities are unaware of which PNMs accepted their bids until the revealing ceremony on the Rock.

According to Caitlin Giles, incoming President of the Panhellenic Executive Board, its current Vice President of Coordinators, and proud sister of Alpha Delta Pi, 491 women registered for recruitment this spring, and 410 completed the full recruitment week by accepting bids on Bid Day.  Giles estimates that including recruits, sisters, Rho Gammas, leadership, and friends, the event was attended by well over 1,000 students.

1. Bid Day – Sororities, each represented by a different t-shirt, gather at the Rock to find out which sororities the recruits ended up choosing at the end of the recruitment process. In this image, those wearing navy tanks in the foreground were members of Zeta Tau Alpha, the pink t-shirts were members of Kappa Kappa Gamma, and the teal shirts belonged to Delta Gamma.

2. Lining Up – Recruits line up behind the rock as they wait to reveal which sororities they accepted bids from at the conclusion of the recruitment process.

3. Reveal – A group of recruits reveal to eagerly waiting Greeks which sororities they have accepted invitations to join by removing their jackets to expose their shirts underneath, with seven different t-shirt variations representing the seven Panhellenic sororities at UM.

4. Rush the Rock – As recruits reveal which sororities they will be joining this semester, sorority members, unaware of who in the end received and accepted bids to join their organizations, traditionally “rush the Rock” to greet their pledges.  In this image, sisters of Delta Gamma run up the steps to embrace and congratulate new members.

5. KKΓ – Sisters of Kappa Kappa Gamma show off their letters as they cheer on new recruits at the Rock on Panhellenic Bid Day of the Spring 2012 semester.