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Five months before recruitment began, when Rosebud was a senior in high school, we participated in an online Zoom info session offered by her college’s campus Panhellenic council. It was very low key – the CPC officers introduced themselves, defined 4 recruitment terms, and then played in alphabetical order last year's promotional videos from each chapter. They offered time in between each video for Q&A but no one asked any questions.
Rosebud liked that several chapters included bloopers at the end of their videos, and she liked footage of big/little reveal. She said she liked that one chapter emphasized their good GPA, and that another had several members explain which additional organizations they were involved in on campus. We noticed that most of the chapters included footage at the football stadium and in a sunflower field in their videos. Lots of Jeeps. Lots of cowboy boots.
Rosebud commented that "these are last year's girls" because they were last year's videos, and guessed that some of them might have graduated and wouldn’t even be there in the fall when she arrived at the campus. She was disappointed that she didn't get to have any actual conversations, but I pointed out this isn't recruitment yet, so it's not the same. There was an accompanying in-person info session the following week on campus, and I wondered if they only played the videos then, too, or if there were conversations. I will say her attention lagged after about the 8th chapter, so I can see how this set up is detrimental to orgs at the end of the list alphabetically. I wonder if they ever switch it up and start with Z? Most of the videos were similar. They definitely started to run together in Rosebud’s mind. She said she liked “one of the Alpha groups” but couldn’t remember which one, and kept asking me about the mascots and colors, trying to remember which was which.
The smallest group on campus had a video that was noticeably different. Instead of footage of young women from her campus doing fun things together, that group showed a video that was prepared by their national leadership. It emphasized the life-long sisterhood, and in addition to collegiate-aged women, it included alumnae women (even much older women), all in a studio setting talking about their relationships to one another and the strength of their love for each other. There was no indication that anyone in the video was from this specific campus, no current, trendy music in the background, no scenes from fun campus events. It was certainly values-based and sisterhood-focused, but because it was so different from the other videos it was off-putting. Maybe because they are the smallest group on campus they have fewer resources, and their recruitment budget didn’t include funds for a custom video? If so, I think using a stock video from their headquarters is a good alternative, but this one was just TOO different.
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