[greekgal2k17]

I am a member of the newer sorority on my campus We've been around for 5 years now--but we still haven't created a strong image for our chapter. We're not known for, well, anything. There's 8 different chapters at my school, and each has a fairly defined reputation. There's one for party girls, one for sporty girls, etc... and then there's us, who I've heard other students call the "recruitment leftovers"... among meaner things (I'll leave out comments about appearances, but a friend of mine told me the other week that I'm "the only hot girl" in that sorority he knows). We had to immediately go into COB after formal recruitment this last semester because we didn't get enough girls (about 15 under our goal).

The thing is, like all chapters, we cut girls during recruitment--girls who may have had more to add to our chapter than those we pass out bids to--because we lack a cohesive image statement or anything. Every girl during recruitment looks for something different, which sounds promising, but we end up with a wide range of girls with not a lot in common! Because of this, our sisterhood isn't as strong as it could be, as girls resent others who aren't what she would've been looking for. In my opinion, a lot of my sisters aren't judging hard enough during recruitment and are giving high ranks to too many people--out recruitment chair even noted the same thing. Obviously there will be variation in personality & style, but it doesn't seem like it should be to the extent we have it.

Stemming from this, our marketing for ourselves and events is also a mess. Freshmen I talked to before recruitment didn't even know we existed. We don't have a lot of cute t-shirts, and from a social standpoint, we mix consistently with the same two fraternities almost exclusively. Our fall philanthropy was poorly attended.

The girls in my chapter are all very involved actually. I'm VP of one of the political parties on campus. There are 10 of us involved in student government, and another handful in the student life organization. (This is one of the reasons I do, for all it's worth, love my chapter!). We do a decent job attending other Greek life events.

After recruitment this year, there's talk of another sorority coming onto our campus. If we can't create a reputation and get girls to join us this far down the line, it could be hard to compete with what will seem like a clean slate for some of next years girls.

I'm not in a leadership position, but many of my other friends in the sorority agree with me on these things. We have an entire marketing scheme, complete with color palates, recruitment themes & outfits, and ideas for actually cute shirts we could order. How do we go about sharing these ideas without starting drama & tension between girls who like things the way they are? And then how do we really start this transformation?