Sorority recruitment utilizes iValU tool to assess values

Spring sorority recruitment began Tuesday evening in Irvine Auditorium with the recruitment chairs encouraging Potential New Members to “look beyond the cute heels and nice clothes,” and instead look at the deeper values of the sorority houses.

This message fell in line with this year’s introduction of a new online assessment program — called iValU — that is mandatory for all PNMs.

Nursing senior and Panhellenic Council Vice President of Recruitment Emily Perfetto explained that iValU is an “online quiz that asks PNMs to rank the values in their life like independence, family and environment.” Using the PNMs’ responses as inputs, the assessment then produces a “Values Profile,” which analyzes the presence of these values in the students’ lives.

PNMs were required to complete the iValU assessment over winter break, before Tuesday’s convocation.

“Our main goal with implementing the program is to elevate the level of conversation going on in sorority houses,” she said. “Ultimately, we want our girls to be happy with where they end up. It is easier to make this important decision if they base it off something deeper, like their values.”

Having completed the assessment herself, Perfetto said it proved to be a different experience that allowed her to reflect on her own life.

“It was interesting for me to uncover values I did not know I held important,” she said.

While College junior and incoming president of Panhel Jill Wang wrote in email that both PNMs and Rho Gammas — who serve as guides for PNMs during recruitment — have “already given overwhelmingly positive feedback on the tool,” some PNMs said they viewed it as ineffective.

A Wharton and Engineering freshman — who requested to remain anonymous because she has not yet been offered a bid by a sorority — said “the assessment made us rank our own values, and then the result was literally just a list of our values, which was quite redundant. I don’t think that people begin conversations by talking about their values. Realistically, that is not what happens.”

While Nursing freshman and PNM Lauren Eisenhauer found it difficult to distinguish which values were the most important to her, she felt that it was “a great idea to think about our values” overall.

Some PNMs, however, were more skeptical about iValU being able to impact recruitment this semester.

College sophomore and PNM Rosanna Sobota noted that, while she thought it was important to be made aware of her values, she thought the assessment had “very little analysis. It mostly regurgitated what we told it.”

Wang emphasized that despite the introduction of iValU this year, the formal recruitment process for sororities remains the same.

Stacey Kraus, associate director for programming of the Office of Student Affairs/ Fraternity and Sorority Life, agreed.

“The fraternal groups were all founded on different values,” Kraus wrote in am email. “Being empowered to ask about those values can help potential members make the best choices for them.”

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