UPDATE: Panhellenic sorority recruitment at Southeast leaves out nearly half of women who registered

Out of the 399 women who registered for sorority recruitment this year at Southeast Missouri State University, 251 were offered bids to join a sorority and only 226 women accepted those bids.

For a number of different reasons -- including GPA requirements and interactions during recruitment -- certain girls were not asked to join sororities. Other women decided to drop out of recruitment for their own personal reasons.

"I did drop, but I dropped because I didn't get the bid I wanted," said Nicole Masters, a freshman at Southeast.

There were three sororities that Masters would have wanted to get a bid from, however, she only got a bid from one sorority, and it was the one sorority that she did not want to join. The sorority that she really wanted to join was Alpha Chi Omega.

"I didn't really like them [Alpha Chi Omega] at first, but I really liked their philanthropy night. I also knew one of the girls in the sorority who was really nice. And every night that I went to their parties, I felt like I connected with all the girls I talked to and I could be friends with them," Masters said.

Some girls who had joined recruitment felt that they had been wronged. Freshman Kaitlyn Staggs and her friend Tayler Malone, also a freshman, both dropped out of recruitment.

"The night she [Malone] dropped, I only got asked back to one of them that I wanted, and so I still went to that one, and then Saturday night I got here and they said I didn't get asked back by any of them and they were supposed to call you if that happened so you didn't just show up here, so I was kind of upset about that so I dropped," Staggs said.

The recruitment process for joining sororities is confusing and complicated for many.

"There's like a total of, I think, four days. It's Go Greek Night, Philanthropy Night, Sisterhood Night and then Bid Day -- Pref [Preference] Night and then Bid Day, so I guess five," said Malana Bradford, the philanthropy chair for Delta Delta Delta. "That first night, every girl will go to every chapter, and then the second night they do the same. After the second night they [the girls going through recruitment] choose their top four that they want to go to and then us on the other side are also doing a choosing process, and then the third night, Sisterhood Night, they will be going to, depending on if they get asked back to the top four, they'll go to their top four and then they rank the bottom two. So say they like number five better than six if they don't get one of their top fours but number five did ask them back, then number five will bump up. After that night, they pick their top two and then rank the bottom two again. Same process, and then Pref Night they'll go to two parties if they get asked back to both of them, and then Bid Day. Well after Pref Night, they'll choose their top one. And Bid Day they'll either get that one or the second one."

Masters said the nature of the process made it difficult to form what she felt were genuine connections.

"I didn't really like it because I think most of the girls are just trying to get you to like them and they're acting like they like you," Masters said. "I'm not saying all the girls are fake, but I think some of them definitely were being fake, so it's hard to tell who's being fake and who's being genuine."

This year's recruitment did have a few changes from the last couple of years.

First, the quota system was changed. The quota is the amount of girls any sorority is allowed to recruit per semester. According to Bradford, since many of the sororities want women who will be in for a full four years, many upperclassmen women were not given bids. This year there is a system in place with a dual quota. One quota is for the freshmen, the other is for the upperclassmen. This way, a sorority can take as many upperclassman recruits as you want without affecting the number of freshmen you are allowed to recruit.

The second change is that the National Panhellenic Council states that there is no minimum GPA required to join a sorority. Sororities are allowed to set their own minimum GPA requirements, but there is not a universal requirement for all of the sororities anymore.

The majority of sororities at Southeast expect at least a 2.5 GPA and this expectation contributed to a large amount of registered women being dropped, which makes the process more technical than just whether each sorority likes the women or not.