Enthusiastic cheers and chants rang out across the Syracuse University campus Sunday as sororities revealed their bids to hundreds of female students participating in spring recruitment.

‘Everyone was so energetic and loud and happy,’ said Brittany Rall, a freshman entrepreneurship and emerging enterprises and marketing management major who received a bid from Alpha Gamma Delta.

Bid Day marked the culmination of a two-week process in which women interested in joining greek life mingle with the sisters of various campus sororities to determine the best fit for each person.

At about noon on Sunday, recruitment groups of approximately 30 women each gathered noisily in classrooms of academic buildings across campus. Rho Gammas, members of various sororities who are responsible for guiding women through the recruitment process, passed out white envelopes that contained bids inviting women to join specific sororities.

The women anxiously waited to open their envelopes. Once every recruit received one, all the women in the classroom opened their envelopes at the same time to reveal which sorority they were invited to pledge.

Many were happy with their bids, including Stephanie D’Ulisse, a freshman public relations major, and Eliza Kinnealey, a freshman international relations major. Both women received bids from their top sorority choice, Alpha Xi Delta.

Conversations with the AXiD sisters during the recruitment process left a good impression on D’Ulisse and Kinnealey, who belonged to the same recruitment group

‘You just left with a smile,’ D’Ulisse said. ‘You could connect with the girls.’

After receiving their bids, women flooded out of academic buildings and surged toward the Schine Student Center. Current sorority members — identifiable in brightly lettered T-shirts, neon baseball hats, tutus and other costume pieces — waited along University Avenue to greet the women with cheers and shouts.

Their enthusiasm was contagious to the more somberly dressed recruits as they filed into Goldstein Auditorium to join their potential sisters. Loud cheering and pop music filled Schine during the approximately half-hour program.

‘It was amazing,’ said Brianna Couture, a sophomore broadcast and digital journalism major who received a bid from AGD. ‘I’m so pumped.’

Rall, the freshman who also received a bid from AGD, expressed her excitement for the afternoon’s events and her enthusiasm to join the sorority.

She said: ‘You want that sisterhood, as cliché as that sounds.’

nagorny@syr.edu 

Published on February 5, 2012 at 12:00 pm