I dislike the whole "give numerous bid to the same girl" idea. I think KSUviolet's idea that there are plenty of spots to go around, girls just have to be realistic is flipped in this situation. The chapters are sending bids to girls that are not going to give them the time of day while the women that would be good fits for their chapters are languishing waiting for those few women to decline those bids for the ones they do want. It ties up lots of the bids and freaks people out. How hard would it be to do a match with this small number of people?

There is an easier solution. Chapters that have reached their total should have a Bid Day party. Get some cupcakes and balloons and welcome the new girls. Tell NPC you're done - and then everyone will know whos off the table.

That would help so girls aren't waiting for their number 1 to call and holding number 2,3 and 4 in their pocket just in case.

Panhellenic could also update their webpage, or send a mass email to the spring PNMS congratulating ABC sorority on their spring new member class. PNMS could be told at the get go-the informational meeting-that if they see that message ABC is done and won't be extending anymore bids. They don't need to list the girls who got bids, just post the generic message.

The chapters could do that on their websites, facebook pages, twitter, etc. I'm sure the girls who are waiting for bids are watching all of those sites.

And how hard would it to do a bid match? My first thought is it wouldn't be a thing at all since they already own the software, but then on further thought it would require them to have rho gammas etc. However, the chapters who are not participating in informal could volunteer for all of those positions. So it would take quite a bit of pre-prep, but I think the result would save a lot of heartache on both sides of this process.

I'm hoping we hear from the gals here soon who are going through the process. It's another day so I suppose quite a few girls have accepted bids, declined bids and a new set of girls have gotten called.

This is something I mentioned when we were talking about IU - that it might lessen the PNM feelings of getting screwed if the chapters would straight up say "we are able to offer 42 bids this semester" or the like. This is a similar situation.

I think they can't do bid matching since a good fraction of the sororities are not participating in this rush. Green Book thoughts on this, anyone?

We had 2 rushes a year with bid matching - but everyone participated and usually everyone was under total for the smaller rush in the fall. This is a zillion light years from UF though.

As I said before, I think their hearts are definitely in the right place as far as trying to destigmatize spring rush. Many schools don't give a crap about that. It's just gonna be a cluster for a lil bit until they figure out the best way to do it, and the best way to inform the PNMs.

I'm not so sure there were enough bids to go around in the first place. There were certain houses that you could just tell weren't giving out many. You would get in, get a house tour, then end up back at the front door. Maybe I'm just trying to save my ego, but I'm assuming they already knew who they wanted.

Then there were houses that seemed really interested and like they were actually looking for girls, who when we started talking about bids and stuff said "Oh, we want a decent sized pledge class so we're giving out 10 bids!" (I heard 15, too)

So that makes me think that the houses that really needed numbers were probably giving 20-25? I know that's kind of a shot in the dark, but there were around 300 girls registered! So even if all eleven houses gave out 20 (which is not the case I'm sure) that's only 220 bids...

I don't know of any Green Book rule that prohibits it, but I don't even know if it makes sense...you'd have women listing up to eleven chapters? And chapters have to rank 300 PNM's when they have five open spots? On the other hand, not matching doesn't make any sense either.

Here's a thought: have a preference round where the chapters can invite the number of gals they want, to attend up to 3 parties (or whatever. I suppose 2 would work), and the girls rank all the chapters in descending order. Then they can attend up to 3. The houses that are looking for 5 girls would be crazy to invite 200 girls to their preference party so that should let a lot of girls down fairly gently and allow them to focus on more realistic options.

Hopefully based on their RFM history they would have a reasonable expectation of how many girls they should invite, even if they aren't following RFM to the letter. And if houses are not being cool about the number of girls they're inviting, then Panhel would have to step in the following year. But I really think now that schools see the beauty of RFM they wouldn't do anything too out of whack.

And then do a bid match with an individual quota like what Nebraska and Indiana do.

Thoughts?

This is what we did 2 years ago and I think it would have worked out well here. Unfortunately for us because we only raised total by 5 or so (plus losing a chapter, which added spaces) it was still a mess because every woman still thought that they were getting a bid from their dream chapter, when dream chapter was only doing the partially structured rush as a formality and they already had the women they wanted picked out. I think it would have worked well for UF here though.

This is a happy fairy land of a post. I'm sorry to say, a lot of chapters still only do RFM because they are forced to. There are chapters out there who wouldn't blink an eye at inviting 200 girls for 5 spots, because then they can say "we had 200 girls come to our party and they knew we only had 5 spots. This is how bad girls want us."

Either all out (strictly COB on your own, no Panhel involvement) or all in (like what violetpretty has talked about Maryland doing). I think at a school this big, with a rush this big, it's hard to do otherwise. Panhel thinks you're inviting too many girls and tries to "step in"? The chapter pulls out of spring recruitment. Unless it is something as essential as fall rush, that's what's going to keep happening, until the only groups rushing are the ones who need the numbers (which is what Panhel tried to prevent in the first place).

Remember when UGa did a semi-formal spring rush about 3 years ago? I wonder how they managed this situation. To my knowledge, they never did one like that again.