Scholarship and personal dignity will be factored in this August when Panhellenic selects the order for the annual sorority bid day’s “running of the commons.”

A proposal to add the categories to the selection criteria was approved at Wednesday’s Panhellenic meeting by a vote of seven to five. 

“We wanted the order to more reflect our community and our values,” said the Panhellenic president, Chandler Thomas. Thomas suggested the new idea at the beginning of the 2015 spring semester.

Thomas said Panhellenic will oversee this by checking grade reports, conduct reports and attendance at Panhellenic events.

“We are not ranking chapters or making chapters compete with each other, instead this gives potential new sorority women a holistic view of each sorority, not just a one day snapshot,” said the Vice President of Recruitment Programming Justine Grace. “The new system is a better reflection of what each chapter personally values.”

The five sororities that voted “no” to the proposal were Delta Delta Delta, Delta Gamma, Pi Beta Phi, Alpha Omicron Pi and Sigma Kappa.

“We just thought this idea was sprung on us,” said the Delta Delta Delta Panhellenic Delegate Mary Ann Johnston. “We wish the new rule was for recruitment in 2016 because we want it to apply for both semesters, not just one.”

Thomas said Panhellenic had made changes to the previous proposal in order to have the new system reflect the values from as many sororities as possible. The system for the 2015 bid day will be based off of the 2015 spring semester only.

In the past, the sororities were ranked according to their attendance at Panhellenic events. The sorority that attended the most events throughout the previous year are the first to have their new members run from the Brown-Lupton University Union ballroom to the Campus Commons on bid day. 

Grace said the sorority that leaves first is able to spend the most amount of time with their new members during bid day activities.

“We tell them to walk, but they can’t because they are really excited,” Grace said, referring to the nickname of the “running of the commons.”

Delta Delta Delta was the first sorority in last year’s order for the “running of the commons.”

The old system was purely based on 15 percent of each chapter attending Panhellenic events, Grace said.

“Panhellenic events qualify when Panhellenic has either sponsored, co-sponsored events or when the event is simply something that Panhellenic has an interest in,” Grace said.

Grace said the old system was unpredictable because if an organization had initiation or another event on the same day as the Panhellenic event then the sorority was penalized for not attending.

“This idea was something we had worked on in the past with the past Panhellenic council and advisors,” Thomas said. 

Thomas said as the community changes, Panhellenic needs to keep up to satisfy the growing needs of the Greek community.

“Hopefully, as it is implemented, they will see where we were going with the proposal,” Thomas said. “I am confident about the new proposal having a positive impact on the community.”