On Saturday, the Panhellenic Council released a list of 85 girls who were selected to be Gamma Chis for Fall 2012 Recruitment.

The girls chosen from each of the 17 Panhellenic sororities are selected after a series of interviews.

Gamma Chis are recruitment counselors for incoming freshmen and sophomores who go through rush. Their job is to guide them through the recruitment process as painlessly as possible.

As the fall rush approaches, the recruitment leaders, or Gamma Chis, have been selected to represent the sororities. Courtesy Rebecca Thomas

Mackenzie Hull, a sophomore early childhood education major from Conyers, will be bestowed the honor for the first time this summer.

“I wanted to be a Gamma Chi because I thought it was a really cool thing to do,” she said. “I feel like it’s a good position to be in to kind of guide the new girls and let them know that it’s all going to be OK in the end, even if it doesn’t seem to be OK while they’re going through it.”

Juliann Head, a junior finance major from Carrollton, found out Saturday she would be a Gamma Chi for the second time in a row this summer.

“I think that rush can be very taxing,” she said. “It’s a long day, and on top of it you’re going to college for the first time and it can be an incredibly exhausting experience and I think it’s very important for the girls to have someone to be able to talk to for anything.”

Recruitment is exhausting for Gamma Chis too — they can have late nights and early mornings alongside the Potential New Members — but Head said it’s worth it.

“It’s a different kind of stress, like a motherly stress,” she said. “You want them to have the best experience possible, you want them to go back to the houses that they like, that’s why you’re stressed. Yes, I was tired, but I loved every second of it.”

Gamma Chis are asked to disaffiliate with their chapters for the summer so the PNMs will not feel pressured in any way during the recruitment process by knowing their Gamma Chi’s sorority.

Lauren Lindsley, a junior early childhood education major from Lawrenceville, said she hopes to distract herself this summer by studying abroad and being a camp counselor.

“I kind of feel a little sad about it because rush and recruitment workshops have definitely been times when I have grown closer to a lot of the people in my sorority,” she said.

But Lindsley looks forward to having the chance to get to know girls in other sororities as well.

“You’re really just under one blanket of the Greek community rather than separated by what sorority you’re in,” she said. “And I think that’s really cool that it’s one thing that brings together all the sororities amidst all of recruitment where the sororities are totally separate.”

Senior Gamma Chis like Lindsley and Head will likely miss out on emotional experiences during recruitment like the prefs ceremony, which is just as much for senior members as it is for PNMs.

Head said she wouldn’t want to miss the ceremony, but she wouldn’t mind doing it if she knew she was helping someone who needed it.

“Being a Gamma Chi is totally different,” she said. “It’s putting other people’s fears before yours. I know that I really can help some of these girls and that’s a really good feeling.”