An article on Wednesday did not clarify how sorority members may interact with freshmen girls on facebook.com. They may interact if the members and potential new members know each other personally.
The Daily regrets the error.
Freshmen considering going through sorority recruitment this winter should be wary of making friends – at least on facebook.com.
The Panhellenic Association and the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life last week ran a meeting regarding appropriate uses of facebook.com for sororities.
One new guideline suggested at the meeting told all sorority members to be careful whom they “friend” on the Web site – especially if they were freshmen who could be thinking about joining their sorority.
“The facebook has presented lots of challenges nationally,” said Kyle Pendleton, director of the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life. “The main issue is how students are representing their fraternity and sorority in a public (realm).”
NU’s problems with facebook.com are mild compared to other schools, but Greek members still need to be cautious about influencing certain people to join their house, said Paige Mackey, vice-president of membership for Panhel.
This is the first time Panhel has addressed facebook.com as a issue during recruitment.
At the meeting, Panhel set guidelines about friending freshmen on facebook before and during winter recruitment, creating groups that say a particular sorority is the best and putting up pictures of sorority members drinking.
“This is new territory for us,” Mackey said.
Friending freshman, writing on their profiles and virtually “poking” them on facebook.com are all recruitment violations, according to Mackey.
She said sorority members can still look at the profiles of potential new members.
Problems arose during last year’s winter recruitment when active members of chapters friended potential new members during winter recruitment, Mackey said.
This can cause hurt feelings if that potential new member is not invited back to the house the following day or does not received a bid, she said.
Neither Medill freshman Jenn Korducki or Communication freshman Caitlin Shaw knew they could access individual sorority groups on facebook.com and neither has been friended by a sorority member, so the new rules won’t affect them, they said.
The two said they are learning more about sororities by talking to their friends and classmates – not on facebook.com.
The creation of group names describing one chapter as the “hottest” are also deemed violations because it would spark competitiveness between chapters.
“You can say ‘we’re hot’ or ‘we’re great’, but you can’t say ‘we’re the best’,” Mackey said.
The territory becomes hazy when other organizations make groups for the chapter as in the case with Sigma Chi’s Derby Days 2005 facebook.com groups, which described certain sorority members as “the hottest girls on campus.”
Since active members did not create those groups, they are not responsible and cannot get in trouble, Mackey said.
Pictures of sorority women in illegal acts such as drinking while underage is another gray area.
Measures to regulate such images are usually diverted to the individual chapter houses.
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