I do not feel that keeping the Numbers of GLOS/BGLOS should be regulated, it may be a good idea to limit the numbers of members! I know I will catch heat over this but of those of you in those size of chapters, do you know all of your members?:confused:

While I do not know all of my Brothers over 30 + years, I know a heck of a lot and plan on meeting as many of them as I can:)

Of course they all know me but may have never met me and I blame myself for that!

It is not a bad thing to have the Greeks grow as we are taking to many hits already for negative things.

Just a little update from me....

We had our last day of rush tonight. We ended up giving out about as many bids as last year. It all seemed to work out alright even though it seemed like there were so few people rushing this year. I think the weaker chapters probably ended up getting hurt the most, but other than that I believe things are fine. Looks like everyone was overreacting a bit at first, but still, I'm not sure how everyone got their decent numbers with the apparent low number of rushees this year.

Why Have Rules That Hurt?
 

Tom Earp (above) has a point. Why do you allow rules to be in place if all they do is stifle competition and hurt the fraternities and sororities? At any public university, anyone can form a fraternity or sorority, and any national fraternity or sorority can come on whenever they want. IFC and Panhellenic can pass all the rules they want, but it's the law. I do not understand WHY the system leaders limit themsleves to just the people "who come through rush". Why do they have to come through rush? Why don';t aggressive fraternity & sorority members go seek new members out and solicit them to pledge? I do not understand WHY sororities, especially, put such resrtictions on smaller houses. Under the strict rules of formal rush, they can never get better. On a traditional campus where there are large, established sororities alongside weak sororities suffereing low membership, the small ones NEVER, EVER grow to competitive size, and the large ones NEVER, EVER fail to get their numbers. Don't want them to fail, but strict rush rules INSURE that no one else will ever succeed. Thank goodness most fraternities don't have rush rules. Take the shackles off! Allow the women to rush whenever they want - summer, fall, winter & spring. And don't make a rushee have to go through the whole process just to get a bid. If the 200-women houses want to limit their rush to formal rush, then fine. No problem. Rush rules are the biggest detriment to the growth and development of Greek organizations.

Re: Why Have Rules That Hurt?
 

bb,

Women in chapters under total ARE allowed to give bids whenever they want. It's called Continuous Open Bidding. We had many women pledge who never came through formal rush or even went to a rush party at all.

If there are smaller chapters who don't do this, then they are shooting themselves in the foot. The only thing that can hurt this is if the SCHOOL has regulations against it, because NPC doesn't. You can give a woman a bid, she signs it, and it is good for up to one calendar year.

Thank You For The Information
 

How widespread is the practice of continual bidding? I was not aware that sororities had that flexibility.

COB is a widespread practice for sororities that did not meet quota or total. For example, my campus total was 85 and formal rush was in the spring semester -January and February. In the fall semester if a sorority had fewer that 85 members, they were free to hold informal rush. In the spring formal rush, we determined quota to be the number of women who completed rush and submitted bid pref cards divided by the number of sororities. That number was usually 32. Any organization that bid matched fewer than quota was eligible to have COB. Theoretically, any woman who went through rush should have been able to get a bid. Unfortunately, that wasn't always the case because many of the Rushees went into rush already knowing which sorority they wanted. Formal rush on my campus worked this way: Day 1: all 7 sororities, day 2: rushees chose four sororities, day 3: sororities invited the rushees they wanted. Rushees would then pref three. Most of the rushees went to the same four sororities and dropped the same three. That almost guaranteed that many would not get a bid. Only three sororities at my school would reach quota and a large number of rushees would wind up without bids because they wanted ABC, AD, or AEF or nothing at all. Many of these women wound up being uninvited to final round as a result. Unfortunately, my sorority was not on the top 4 list so most of the women going through rush were going to drop us. We always had COB and did quite well there. We had to think of more creative ways to recruit. Several of the women who pledged us were friends of sisters. They comprised about half of our pledge class. Keep in mind that every campus is unique in terms of numbers and some policies so this is only one example.

I am confussed. They chose four for round two. Are they invited to four, or do they pick four out of the seven??

At my university, the smallest sorority has over 50 members (correct me if I'm wrong, but that was the last I heard) and the biggest one has, oh, about 150 to 160, maybe more. It seems that chapters are measured by their size around here--big means a good chapter and one that everyone wants to join, and small means a chapter has something wrong with it. I don't think that's really the case at all, but it seems like even our national organization wants big chapters. After the reorganization, it seemed to me that we were really being pushed to get more girls and get our numbers up, and as a result we so focused on getting more members during the semester I joined that we hardly had any time to learn the things every other new member is taught about Delta Zeta. I might seem really flaky to others in my organization, but we just weren't taught a lot of things. It appears as though the previous chapter here was shut down because of low numbers (I really don't know for sure), and national seemed very intent that we have a "strong"--meaning big--chapter. We now have over 100, but honestly, I liked things much better when we were smaller. I've heard stories, too, about other sororities on this campus where the members don't know all the other members and where they wouldn't even recognized all their sisters if they saw them, and I'm afraid that we're going to turn into one of those chapters simply because we have to keep our numbers way up to look good.

The rushees choose 4 of the 7 sororities in round 2. Then the sororities invite for round 3.