Sororities on the campus of West Texas A&M University approached Greek Recruitment week in a new way this semester. They participated in a social media black out.
“Every year they have some challenges, some tensions,” Matt Maples, Associate Director of Student Activities, said. “If we have a disagreement or a recruitment violation from a chapter its often going to have something to do with social media.”
Chi Omega had the women of their chapter deactivate social media in previous years, and had given good feedback on their experiences with the blackout and put the idea to vote.  All four sororities, Alpha Sigma Alpha, Delta Zeta, Zeta Tau Alpha and Chi Omega, voted the social media blackout into the by-laws which requires all active members to deactivate social media accounts including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and Pinterest.
“You have to deactivate all of your accounts and then delete all of the apps from your phone,” Cecilia Borunda, junior AD/PR and electronic media major and Chi Omega member, said. “They checked your phone to see if it’s deleted. We had to delete everything. It wasn’t a big change for Chi Omega. We’ve always had to do it.”
Once recruitment has started, active members of sororities are not allowed to communicate with women going through recruitment outside of recruitment parties. This is a national rule for the women to follow but the social media rule put in place for this recruitment year is a local rule.
“Us not having social media was a really good thing because, for me personally not having social media, I was more focused on recruitment and more focused on hanging out with my sisters,” Maddie Little, sophomore Marketing major and Delta Zeta member, said. “It’s sad but social media is a big factor in a lot of different aspects of your life and it was great to not have that for a week. I didn’t almost redownload it.”
Women that had to do things related to social media for work or school purposes were put on a list and instructed to make profile and header photos neutral photos or Go Greek photos. They wouldn’t be allowed to post things for or about the sorority, and their accounts were monitored by rho gammas.
The social media blackout was voted in as a by-law and by-laws go into review every year.
“It’ll stay in place until they vote to change it,” Maples said. “They can vote to eliminate it for next year if they want. They can vote to modify it, but its really whatever the four chapters want to do.”