Enough is enough. I’ve been hearing so much about Kenyon’s sorority life. The good, the bad, the ugly — I wanted to see it for myself. So earlier this semester, I came up with a plan: I was going to go undercover at sorority recruitment. They saw right through me, but nonetheless, Kenyon’s sororities graciously welcomed the Collegian to participate in Recruitment Week’s most exciting event, Meet the Sororities. This report is from the first half of Recruitment Week, after I joined the 104 potential new members (PNMs) as they cycled through each sorority’s designated floor in Oden Hall. For two hours, we warmed up seminar rooms with in-depth shmoozing and pleasant chit chat, and I understood the appeal of sisterhood. I saw introductions lead to conversations lead to connections. 

After meeting the sororities, I learned about additional recruitment events through interviews and Instagram. For the remainder of the week, the real PNMs continued attending the events hosted by the sororities that interested them. What I can report to you is this: Recruitment Week, the planning and the executing, is a lot for both the organizers and the participants. 

Greek Life Intern Taylor Stein ’26 explained the work that she, along with the Kenyon College Sorority Council and the Office of Student Engagement (OSE) put in to make sure the week goes smoothly. To create opportunities for forging meaningful connections, spaces need to be booked, events need to be planned and the masses need to know what is going on. “Sorority Council and Frat[ernity] Council have been the only constants in Greek life this year, given that [former Director of Student Engagement] Caleb [Young] left, and now [Senior Director of Campus Life and Interim Associate Dean of Student Affairs] James [Jackson] is leaving, and we have [Assistant Director of Student Engagement] Maeve [Kelly] to help us. Like, it’s just been a lot of changes,” Stein described. “I was abroad, so I’ve never gone through [recruitment] on the other end. I didn’t realize [people are] stressed — like they are stressed out. I didn’t realize how much weight people put into getting in. It’s gonna be okay.’”

“I’m not anxious,” explained Erika Prasthofer ’29, who wasn’t initially planning to partake but decided in favor of it due to the less-intense atmosphere offered by Kenyon’s Greek Life compared to bigger schools. “I don’t think it’s like [the University of] Alabama where they’re judging everything you’re wearing and your makeup and all that stuff, but I’d say it’s a little bit overwhelming, because you just have to keep talking, and sometimes it feels kind of forced.” 

This year, in her role as Sorority Council’s Director of Recruitment, Lizzy Spira ’26 sought to create more formal parameters for all of Kenyon’s sororities. “When I started this year, I had a meeting with Caleb, and I essentially found out that there weren’t a lot of written-out guidelines for how recruitment at Kenyon works,” Spira said. “In the past three or four years, Greek life at Kenyon [has been] growing. Recruitment really need[ed] to be standardized and equitable in a lot more ways.”

Spira, along with the rest of Sorority Council and OSE, solicited feedback from the sororities and individuals who had gone through recruitment in order to draft and re-draft set rules intended to improve the process for all. “A lot of the feedback that we got from sophomores who went through recruitment and other organizations with their recruitment chairs was [that] people want communication,” Spira said.

In response, Recruitment Week now features a preference day — a day off from sorority-hosted events where PNMs gather in Gund Commons to declare the two sororities they want to express continued interest in. This was intended to aid the confusion that can occur when sororities are forced to mind-read who may be interested in accepting a bid. “We wanted to make sure that PNMs, as well as organizations, have agency in who is picking who. Because the biggest thing about recruitment is finding the best mutual fit,” Spira said.

Other concerns that were addressed included each sorority having the same opportunities with regards to the time and place of their events, as well as overall accessibility and health for participants. “It’s always so cold for recruitment and a lot of people often get sick, so we gave out Emergen-C when you registered,” Spira said. “All the places that recruitment events are occurring are all accessible spaces, which hasn’t been in the past because there’s been no one to be like ‘We need to make sure that all the spaces are accessible.’”

Everyone I spoke to agreed that recruitment, while rewarding overall, can be stressful and confusing. Individual sororities were doing their part to try and curb some anxieties. On Instagram, Theta Delta Phi (Theta) posted inspiration boards for the themes of each of their events. “As a first-year going into it, you have a lot of questions, and I think we’ve seen a lot of people asking, ‘What do I wear to this? What do I do?’” Theta Delta Phi president Ava Genco-Kamin ’27 said. “We also had a note at all the bottom of them like, ‘This is not required. Wear what makes you feel comfortable.’ Our whole goal is to make people feel comfortable but also feel engaged and included.” 

Throughout the sorority ecosystem, Kenyon women are thoughtfully working to improve what they offer to the school. In preparation for recruitment this year, Theta held a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) panel with their advisor Dean of Student Development Robin Hart Ruthenbeck to discuss the effects of implicit biases. “We have more freedom to kind of, like, adjust as necessary. [DEI has] been a big thing with us,” Genco-Kamin said. “We’ve instated new positions and new committees in order to adapt our process.” 

Delta Delta Delta (Tri Delta) is Kenyon’s only national sorority that has a current presence on campus, as Alpha Sigma Tau (AST) is undergoing changes and sent three national representatives to Kenyon recruitment to try and rebuild. Despite stricter guidelines for innovations due to their chapter being affiliated with a national organization, Truly Martin ’26, vice president of community relations for Tri Delta, explained how she and her sisters are also making meaningful change within Kenyon sorority life. They are currently in the process of gaining 16 beds in divisional housing. “I think it’s a blessing that so many people in our chapter already live together by choice, but … I always say, like, I’m not leaving Kenyon until Tri Delta gets divisional housing,” Martin explained. “That has been a huge priority for us this semester, and so I think that will definitely be a draw for potential new members during recruitment.”

I was extremely lucky to get a peek behind the curtain into Kenyon’s sorority life. While I was initially delighted with what I observed from Recruitment Week, of course, the other shoe must fall. The sororities cannot invite every girl to join their organization, and the actualities of building sisterhood can take a toll. But at least in the first half of Recruitment Week, I got to see the merits of these groups of women that so often get overlooked. At a place like Kenyon, where NARP versus athlete or humanities versus STEM divisions are high, sororities offer a place for people to come together in some equalizing “middle space,” as Stein referred to it. 

A key difference that I found at recruitment, though, is that the sorority recruitment process is dedicated to radical socialization. How many others of us can claim that? During sorority recruitment, Kenyon women are intentionally speaking to strangers, with whom they may have nothing in common, for the expressed purpose of building meaningful connections that can be the foundation of a strong community. 

“First semester, I felt like, ‘Oh, I’ve kind of seen everyone here by now.’ But going to these events has kind of made me realize that Kenyon is not that small,” Prasthofer said. “I think it has been good. A lot of the people I talked with, I’m glad I talked to them. It’s nice, now when I walk around Kenyon, I know more faces.”