Why pnm's have to sign bid cards? Is it a university thing, because at my school when I was given a bid there was nothing to sign.

I guess it must be a university thing. The pledge and his parents are both required to sign if I remember correctly. The card then has to be returned to Greek Affairs so that they have record of it, and then an updated list of all guys who have signed is sent out to the chapters so that everyone knows that guy is already a member of that house and will stop contacting him. I think part of it also has to do with the fact that guys will get bid cards from many different houses (I got 2, and that is a fairly low number). Some of the top guys in rush can and will end up with cards from most of the houses. I think one of my pledge brothers had close to 15 cards by the end of the summer.

It's a Women's Panhellenic thing, darlin'. Men can feasibly get more than one bid, women only get one bid. The Bid Card thing is a Panhellenic invention. Since you're a guy, you don't need to worry about it! :D

It may be a Panhellenic thing, but for us, you do have to sign. It's just part of accepting the bid and formally joining that house. I honestly think a lot of it has to do with the mulitiple bids so that houses cannot claim a kid who doesn't really want to be there. Also, I know that other places where there is fall rush, a rushee accepts their bid by showing up at a special party or something. Well obviously with summer rush we can't do that because the length of our rush, so in order to make the process orderly and such they have to sign it.

I think the reason for parents signing it is because most of the pledges will be living in the chapter house from Day 1. Since the rushee isn't just living in the dorms and going over to the fraternity house, I think it probably is pretty important that the parent's know what is going on, and the change of living quarters is a big change. I also think it is good to get teh parents involved in their son's decision to join a fraternity. For us, that's something that we really look at when choosing rush chairs, how they are going to interact with parents, and it also is why we have our Parent's day rush event.

Wow. If my parents had had to sign my bid card, I would not be greek.

Okay, here's some more news!

Tommorow(!!!!) we're having our pledge party. Basically a chance for all the guy who have signed, 22, to come and see everyone and meet the guys from the chapter who they haven't met yet. This is being held at a bar in Lincoln, and there will be food and sand volleyball. Major drinking celebration should continue late in to the night at another location. Saturday morning the house opens for the actives to move in, so the number of people in town tommorow should be high. I'm so ready to be heading back to Lincoln it's ridiculous.

We also have leads on 2 more rushees. One was offered a bid card yesterday after meeting with the rush chairs. He originally was going to another university to be on their debate team, but once he found out all the work he would have to do decided to stay in Nebraska. He made this decision last week apparently. He is a legacy which doesn't seem to mean a whole lot for us this summer since we're 0 for 3 with legacies. But hopefully we can make an impression and his dad will help, and maybe we'll be able to sign one more guy.

The other rushee I haven't heard anythign about except that he decided very late to go through rush.

All rightie, it's great to be back in Lincoln for good!

Had a fantabulous time at our pledge event and met the other two rushees I mentioned earlier. The Debate team guy was awesome and I hope we get him. I was less impressed by the other kid, but I think we've got a decent chance to get him as well.

I also heard rumors that there might be as many as 3 other potential signees in the next couple weeks. I don't assume that we'll get all of them, but if we did that could bring our total up to 27! I also heard that formal fall rush is now just being an extended period of summer rush, and that there will be no formal rush until second semester.

I'll keep updating this as new info comes.

Thanks for keeping us posted, Betarulz!