With moving into the dorms, buying textbooks and starting classes, the beginning of the semester is undoubtedly a busy time. Mix in sorority recruitment, and some would say it’s easy to get caught up in a whirlwind.

Rather than having sorority recruitment take place the first week of school, recruitment was moved in order to take place before classes and athletic competitions began.

“We’ve had some pretty major conflicts with athletics over the last two recruitments, and I don’t mean conflicts as in disagreements or anything like that,” Jennifer Letner, fraternity and sorority life coordinator, said. “I’m talking about merely schedule conflicts.”

The athletic department worked to black out those recruitment days and times, when no practices could take place. The hope was that the change would make it easier for the women to stay in recruitment and make a decision.

“They didn’t have to worry about all the new things that were going on,” Panhellenic Council President Molly Bostwick said. “They could really focus on recruitment on those first couple of days.”

As of Friday, Alpha Chi Omega sorority gained 20 new members, Delta Delta Delta had 25, and Zeta Tau Alpha also had 25.

On the fraternity side, Delta Tau Delta received 22 new members, Kappa Sigma had six, Sigma Phi Epsilon had 12 and Zeta Chi gained nine new members.

“It’s very common for fraternities for there to be a lot of open bidding, which means that throughout the course of the semester, as we get to know more guys, we’ll invite them to come over to the houses and to join eventually,” Interfraternity Council President Ben Sobek said. “So that number will probably go up more than it will go down this year.”

The fraternity recruitment schedule remained the same, taking place Tuesday through Friday. Unlike the women, the men had the opportunity to take advantage of the summer to recruit men who opted in to receiving information about fraternity life.

“We send them lists of names … and we encourage them to make contact all through the summer and hold some summer recruitment events,” Letner said.

While Sobek said the efforts from the houses were greater, the men’s numbers were similar to what they have been in the past. With 49 men placed in a chapter, Letner said that has been the standard for the past few years for formal recruitment week.

“A lot of houses had really low numbers from their recruitment last year, because last year was kind of a bad year,” Sobek said. “Everyone was trying just a little bit harder to get men and get good men this year, so that really helped out.”

Sorority recruitment numbers this year saw the highest quota and placement numbers in the past three years. In 2011, the quota was at 19 and last year it was 13. This year’s quota was at 21.

“The numbers were definitely up from the past couple years, which is really good because we had a lot of alumni involvement this year,” Bostwick said. “A lot of the chapters really tried harder this year to really bring up the numbers, and definitely we got results.”

Letner said she is pleased with recruitment and will continue to support the fraternities and sororities throughout the semester.

“Overall, I’m very happy with recruitment. I think efforts from my office over the next few months will be kind of supporting the women in retention efforts and how to really work with their new members,” she said. “The men, I would like to continue to support them in their recruitment efforts, so I believe we’re going to work on maybe some recruitment planning and setting some goals for open bids this year.”