With a maximum of 900 spots available for Fall Formal Recruitment and the number of women interested rising, the University of Oregon Panhellenic Council will be adding an 11th sorority to UO Fraternity and Sorority Life.

“Every year after Fall Formal Recruitment, we evaluate our chapters and look at statistics and decide whether our campus is a good campus for extension, which is expanding to open new sororities,” Morgan Plew, president of Panhellenic Council, said.

This year, the PHC exploratory committee voted that the UO campus is eligible for extension growth for fall 2014.

“We’re just getting to the point where there are too many members in each individual house,” Samantha Kalb, PHC vice president of recruitment, said.

The search for an 11th chapter will take place this spring term.

“What we’re doing specifically at Oregon, we have about six or seven organizations that have been on our campus in the past and instead of doing a posting for all organizations to join our campus, we’re contacting them and telling them they have first priority,” Plew said. “They have alumni here and history and we love that.”

Any interested sorority chapters will meet with Justin Shukas, director of FSL, and go through an application process. Following that, PHC will look at which chapters they think would be the best fit for the campus and narrow it down to two or three. The remaining chapters will present to PHC and a final decision will be made from there.

From recruitment to leadership opportunities, the addition of a new sorority will likely have a large impact on UO’s Greek community.

There is a current limit of 600 bids that can be given out during fall recruitment, about 60 per house. With approximately 900 women who sign up to go through the recruitment process, this can lead to a number of women on bid day without houses to join.

“Usually girls trickle out throughout the week. After the first like four days, you might not get invited back to a house,” Kalb said. “It’s a rarity that girls don’t get bids, but with more and more girls going through recruitment it becomes more common.”

Additionally, a new sorority will benefit upperclassmen looking for a chance at sorority leadership. 

“We have a lot more upperclassmen going through recruitment then we’ve had in the past whether they’re transfer students or they just decided to go through recruitment later in college, but having a new colonized chapter is great for juniors going through recruitment,” Plew said. “They’ll be the leaders and they only have two years so they’ll really get to use their time to make an impact and build the chapter.”

So what will this look like in the fall? The recruitment process for a new chapter looks a little different than chapters that are already formed. 

“There’s three days at the beginning of recruitment called ‘Open House’ days where each girl gets to go to all 10 houses,” Kalb said. “The new chapter would just give a presentation to all the girls on those three days.”

The new chapter will  be announced toward the end of summer before Fall Formal Recruitment.