And remembering that full party schedules are not as common as they were back in my day, if the struggling chapter cuts the hag, it WILL be noticed.

She may try to spin the spot in her schedule to her friends, but they will know she's not at the struggling house because SHE GOT CUT.

And I am devastated to hear there are chapters that are expected to make zero cuts. If I were an advisor for a struggling chapter I'd say screw that and let them cut at least a few girls each round. I mean, what is 5 girls per round going to do in the bigger picture, except give the girls a little feeling of empowerment? Then when they tell a girl at pref that she's there because they want her there they can be saying it with honesty.

Deliberately disregarding the RFM recommendations sounds like a good way to have NHQ supervising your next recruitment.

I would love to see a panhellenic/school wide type rule that if you're deliberately rude, inappropriate, disinterested etc... with one of the chapters, you're done with recruitment.

I don't think it's too much to ask for an 18 yr old young woman to be able to be polite and courteous to all houses during recruitment. If they can't do it for this, I question their overall attitude and how they'd fit in group dynamics.

I clearly remember several posts here awhile back in which an advisor forced a Southern chapter at a big school to ask back everyone (not sure if it was before or after RFM). Then when the chapter was sending in their bid lists, she slipped in a few extra names. It was hugely disastrous.

Let us not forget the Weird Rush Stories thread either! There are some people who don't need to be Greek.

That's when you say to your advisor or whoever "You know we are a very open minded group of women who doesn't cut people for shallow reasons. But no less than 7 sisters tried to engage this girl in conversation and she refused to say anything more than she was only here because she was forced to be. Do you honestly want us to break our backs trying to get her to come around and lose women we really want in the process?"

The whole "don't say negative things during MS" is good in theory, but not in practice, unless you have code words.

Truth. Regardless, the decision to follow RFM carry figures or not shouldn't be left to collegiate members to decide. If the situation is this dire, there should be regional/ national/ international support, especially if these are ongoing issues. Having a local advisor blatantly go against carry figures is a good way to get penalized by the organization (i.e. part of Sigma Kappa's standards of excellence scoring includes whether or not carry figures and RFM recommendations were followed).

In this case, it doesn't sound like the situation is all that dire. If these PNMs are sticking with recruitment even if they only have a chapter they aren't thrilled about, the clearly are at least considering going to find a home in this chapter instead of not being greek at all. These PNMs may be going through a mourning period of realizing they don't fit in with chapters where they thought they would end up. Perhaps even if upset at recruitment events, they can still be turned into positive contributing members of the organization. If this isn't the case, let their behavior be knows. Even if I was a member of a strong recruiting chapter, I wouldn't want to extend bids to women who could behave so heinously to other women in the Greek community. It sounds like recruitment rules need to be revisited (re: phones, etc.).

Best of luck to the OP and her chapter!

What if we did let PNM's cut chapters? At many campuses, a PNM is dropped from recruitment if she doesn't attend a party. But if she goes and acts like an asshole, that's fine. Maybe we should get rid of the attendance rule, and if someone is SO inconvenienced by having to visit a chapter they aren't interested in, just let them skip it.

I see what you're trying to do...but we have heard SO many stories of girls changing their minds about chapters once they attend the party. It's hard to distinguish between "has their feelings hurt but could be swayed" and "giant a-hole" at that moment...

Sigh.... do you understand why RFM was implemented? If all PNMs were allowed to drop chapters that they don't like or even know yet, then we would have chapters with few returning to parties and many, many more PNMs without a bid at the end of the process..

I think the situation we are talking about here refers to a few extreme situations. And if the behavior was that extreme, I think there are already policies in place to deal with it.

Yes, I understand why RFM was implemented. I'm not going to stay up nights worrying about PNM's who go bidless because they were total assholes. I'd rather a PNM not be at my party than be there telling the others what a crappy chapter it is.

This thread really makes me sad for the women in the chapters who are so wonderful, and are treated so horribly by PNMs who do NOT deserve to be invited anywhere, not even to shovel up dog poop.

I'm thinking about what DBB is saying, and honestly I see some merit in it (letting PNMs "cut" chapters). Because the way things work, those PNMs would NOT have any invites at all very early on in the process. They'd be released from the chapters they want, and they'd be releasing the chapters they actually stand a chance in - so...think about it. Shrink the PNM pool, bring the pledge class sizes down; at least that is where my brain is going with this.

DBB, I like it.

But isn't that how things were before RFM where the weak/less desirable chapters had no one showing up to their parties and struggled with numbers and ultimately had to close? Isn't that why RFM was created in the first place?

Sidenote: by looking at the NPC recruitment and chapter listing thread, I have noticed that at a lot of campuses, there's still 1 chapter that's taking significantly less than quota. I thought RFM was supposed to fix that?

RFM doesn't "fix" everything.

Read over what I wrote, and see if you can follow my logic. I'm thinking that those PNMs will be kicked completely out of the system early on.

I don't know that it would work that way. I know girls who went through recruitment with me who were downright MEAN to some chapters-I even thought "wherever I land, I hope she's not my sister" just based on how they said they behaved during the party-and they got their first choice of bids from very competitive chapters. I think this is a case where you can't necessarily trust the system, and it's just better to remove girls who are reported for being rude entirely.

^^^ point well made and taken.