The Panhellenic Sorority Recruitment process concluded with 235 students choosing to join one of Hopkins’s four sororities: Alpha Phi, Kappa Kappa Gamma, Phi Mu and Pi Beta Phi. Originally, 276 girls registered for recruitment.
Each sorority received at least 58 new members, giving rise to some of the largest member classes in recent years.
“Having a stronger and larger fraternity and sorority community at Hopkins will benefit the University in a variety of ways,” Rachel Drennen, Coordinator of Greek Life & Orientation in the office of the Dean of Student Life, wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “Our chapters encourage their members to become more involved on campus; they promote members’ leadership skill development through fraternity and sorority leadership roles — both formal and informal — and this will only help members be better leaders in their other campus activities.”
And yet, Drennen said, the influence of sororities and fraternities extends beyond Homewood.
“The fraternities and sororities also provide opportunities for members to give back to the campus and Baltimore communities through service and philanthropy,” Drennen wrote. “In fact, one of the central tenets of the Greek experience is the cultivation in members of responsibility for the well-being of others.”
Following recruitment, sororities and fraternities face the challenge of shaping an incoming class that will impart principles gained from Panhellenic societies upon the Hopkins community.
“These organizations have much to contribute to the University, if they focus on acting in ways that are congruent with the values upon which they were founded.”
