Medill freshman Rachael Harlan and her roommate planned to live on North Campus next year, but hours after receiving their housing priority numbers they learned that they would be living together — just not in the locale they initially had preferred.
The Pi Beta Phi members had been pulled into their sorority house.
According to a poll of Panhellenic Association officials and members, four of Northwestern’s 12 sororities conducted random lotteries two weeks ago to determine which members would fill the spaces left vacant in their sorority houses next year.
Alpha Delta Pi, Alpha Phi, Delta Delta Delta and Pi Beta Phi all reported a need to require members to live in the sorority house next year. These last-minute changes caused some freshmen pledges to quickly revise their housing plans.
Harlan said she was surprised at the arbitrary nature of her assignment to the house.
“We were pulled in by people picking a name out of a hat,” she said. “It was completely out of our control, which isn’t something you’d expect from a sorority.”
Although she said she wanted to live in her sorority eventually, Harlan said she would have preferred to live elsewhere her sophomore year.
“(My roommate and I) really wanted to live up north,” said Harlan, who currently lives in Shepard Residential College. “To get the whole college experience here is to live up north, to live down south, to live off-campus.”
Though Harlan said she initially had reservations about being pulled into her house, she now is looking forward to living in her sorority next year.
“It’s going to be a lot of fun,” Harlan said. “But it was just an inconvenience at the time.”
The roommate Education freshman Nikki Goldwater’s planned to live with next year discovered last Monday that she also had been pulled into the Alpha Phi house, which Goldwater said inconvenienced both women.
“We were going to live together next year,” Goldwater said. “We had the room that we wanted picked and everything. Now I’m kind of stuck.”
Goldwater — who now hopes to be assigned a single room — said her roommate was given the choice to live in the house or depledge her sorority. She said other women presented with this option chose not to live in the house, which Goldwater said probably caused her roommate’s late notification.
“There were people (in the sorority) who ended up depledging,” she said, “so I think people ended up getting in even later than Monday.”
Rachel Erwin, the president of A Phi, said a small pledge class forced her sorority to pull in six girls.
“We’ve never had to pull anyone in before,” she said. “Last year we had to have a lottery for the opposite reason.”
Laura Spencer, Panhel vice president for public relations, pointed to the inconsistent nature of pulling in members.
“I don’t think there’s any general trend,” she said. “The situation does vary. Sometimes you’re asking people to live in and sometimes you don’t have space. It’s a supply and demand thing.”
Spencer said she thought girls women who were asked to live in were presented with a viable housing option.
“I think it’s a very competitive alternative to dorms and off-campus apartments in terms of pricing, and I think it’s a really good experience,” she said.
