No - national does not have the name of every girl cut from rush.

Although I'm still sticking with encouraging the non-collegiate option.

Please, let's not generalize. I'm sure if you had joined you would find nothing wrong w/ the "bunch of crap" selection process.

Are you sure you want to go there on GC, where 75% of the posters gained membership in their GLO through that "crappy" selection process???

I absolutely disagree. I think her story is compelling. Things and people happen in our life that make being in a GLO not right at the time, but it doesn't mean we can't GROW and be a great member.

My newest "little sis" was initiated on her birthday. I won't say which one, but she was older than 30 :).

I am willing to talk with anyone interested in AI. (And those of you who were in a conversation with me before, please pm me....I had to drop off the face of the earth because of a family issue...which happily has improved so much...I am *back*)

Thanks for clarifiying that, Buttonz. I guess I did use the wrong terminology. I suppose that if the person 86ing me were a few years older I could have been extended a bid after she graduated, but no such luck!

Unfortunately, the woman who made the "honorary member" comment to me is not a close friend with whom I keep in regular contact. It would be highly unusual, to say the least, for her to get an e-mail from me inquiring about membership into XYZ and I'd be uncomfortable doing that. What I may do is ask my two close girlfriends who are also XYZ sisters for some advice on the subject -- I know they wouldn't hesitate to discuss it with me.

OK, I’ve got a few questions…

If you were friends with so many members of this sorority, so many to the point that a sister of it thought you were a member, what do you think caused you to get cut or as you say, “blackballed”? (These are 2 different things, one relatively innocuous, one not so much.) I know you can’t know for sure, but did you maybe have really bad grades that semester or something?

Did this group become defunct while you were still in school or shortly after? Were they struggling with numbers while you were an undergraduate?

That's a pretty huge generalization. First of all, each group has their own membership criteria. Second of all, the "selection process" is very different for the different types of recruitment (formal, informal, COB, etc.). (I say different because you have more time to get to know people during some of the less structured forms of recruitment - of course, the standards/criteria should be consistent among each type.)

Another thought that I had was about recommendation letters. I'm not familiar with the Greek system at Duke (technically its in the south, but I wouldn't necessarily think of it as a "Southern school") - are rec letters important when going through recruitment there? If so, did dukemama obtain them?

Recs weren't all that important on my campus, but I know that at some schools not having recs can pretty much guarantee getting cut hard.

As I said above, my freshman year roommate was the one who denied my membership in XYZ. She was pretty influential among her group of friends in the sorority and I know from my 2 close friends who are XYZ sisters that she initially rejected me for membership and got at least one or two other sisters to back her up (although I'm not sure I even knew any of them).

XYZ was still in existence for at least several years after I graduated. I'm not sure when they went inactive at Duke but I suspect it was sometime within the past 5-10 years. One of my XYZ friends told me the reason she thinks her sorority is now defunct at Duke but I won't mention it here. It has nothing to do with #s, however.

Ok, if I were you, I would stop giving details about "XYZ" - chances are, you've already given enough info that someone NPC savvy could tell you exactly what group you are talking about.

Duly noted!

3 votes out of a chapter of what, 100?

I don't know what other groups do, but my sorority most definitely does not vote like that.

I don't know the exact number of those who outrightly denied me membership. I know I had strong support from my 2 close friends. If I had to guess, I'd say the majority of the sisters had no opinion of me one way or the other. That's probably what tipped the scale in favor of their rejecting me once the "nay" votes were cast.

Since member selection is private and not really (supposed) to be discussed privately, its hard to say.

There was one particular NPC group that I really liked when I went through recruitment. I ended up getting cut there after 2nd round. At a Halloween party that year (not affiliated w/any Greek organization - I went with people from my dorm), I bumped into the girl who rushed me there. She and I had really clicked during rush. She was a little tipsy at the party, so she told me that she had wanted me as a little sister and was extremely upset when I was cut from recruitment. Being that she was a little tipsy, she also told me that it only takes one "no" vote in her group to cut a person, and one person had voted against me. I just shrugged it off and said that's okay, because I'm happy with where I ended up. (Which is very true :) )

One of my pledge sisters was also cut by this same group during rush. Her best friend from HS was in that chapter, and her friend also told her about the "one vote cut" thing. (We never actually figured out that the same info had been relayed to each of us until years later - its not something we discussed during our pledge term or anything like that.)