Allie McGee is one of many Elon University sophomores who waited to do Panhellenic recruitment with hopes of participating in person in 2022. Now, despite waiting the additional year, most of her ‘rush’ experience will still be online. 

Panhellenic recruitment, or ‘rush’ as it is commonly referred to as, is Jan. 26 to Jan. 30 and will be held virtually for at least three of the five days due to coronavirus concerns on campus. 

“I was like ‘oh there's always next year,’” McGee said. “I had hoped that I would be able to have that in-person rush and now it's kind of been broken to me again, that I'm going to miss another milestone, so that's kind of upsetting.” 

The first day of rush is an orientation session followed by rounds in the afternoon and three days of additional rounds for potential new members, also known as ‘PNMs,’ to visit each chapter. Bid day, the final day, is when potential new members find out if they received a bid for membership from a sorority. 

Kappa Delta president and junior Caro Layson said the last minute change made organizing difficult. 

“It’s definitely stressful because we’ve been doing practices the whole year, even in the fall, planning for in-person recruitment,” Layson said. “To find out just a week before that it was online was a pretty big shock.”

Sorority practice for recruitment involves rehearsing each round, figuring out how many PNMs should be in each room and sometimes moving furniture out of the house temporarily, according to Layson. 

Although this sudden change impacted how the Panhellenic community prepared for recruitment, it assisted some sorority members who are returning to campus less than a day before recruitment begins.

Grace Morgan, junior and a member of Delta Delta Delta, studied abroad this month in Germany. Before recruitment went virtual, she worried about making it back to campus on time.

“​​I was excited for in person, but I was just dreading it because of the J-term trip,” Morgan said. “That's just a lot of stress coming from Germany, to Elon, to recruitment, but I thought it'd be much more interesting doing it in person and getting to know people way better than a Zoom.”

The Panhellenic recruitment planning board and Student Involvement declined Elon News Network’s multiple requests for comment. 

A number of plans for bid day are still being considered. Preference round will offer both in-person and virtual rounds. As of now, Interfraternity Council recruitment in early February is still set to be in person.