In an ideal world, recruitment skits, songs and decorations would be banished. PNM's would have opportunities throughout the semester to interact with sororities by being invited to special dinners, sisterhood picnics, enrichment workshops (ie: Resume Writing, Self-Defense, Living on a College Budget, etc) and community service events or fundraisers. They would get a feel for the members and what it is like to be a member of a sorority.

Recruitment would be a year-round casual practice, and members would be COB'd in without a formal song and dance routine to court them.

Realistically, that would never happen.

So ideally, I'd like a week where PNM's go to all houses on the first night and then have the option to travel from house to house through a 4 hour window for refreshments and conversation. Chapters would have awards on display, a video recalling their accomplishments and chapter highlights and conversation would be the most important part of the event... not the red carpet runway being held in place with duct tape and push pins. After some general discussion, members would be offered bids on the spot and given 24 hours to accept-- at which point they would begin a structured new member period and initiated pending sucessful completion of one semester with decent grades.

(you know, kind of like fraternity rush....)

I agree the terminology does not bother me at all. I think the change in recruitment from Rush was that Rush made it sound like you were running through a process quickly.

But I agree on the chapter VS house thing. I hate that! Which house did you join.. no I live ina house I joined a chapter. The house is physical and the chapter is people.

Hot Boxing: I believe NPC has rules on this that are or should be standard on all campuses I dont think its different at different places.

The one thing I do know is that Rho Chi's need to be more organized and so do college Panhellenics. One I worked with the Fraternity/Sorority advisor was NEVER a greek and he has no orgnaizational skills. Like party lists coming in the 3rd party or forgetting to put down a legacy, or when PNM's talk about themes and we are no frills rush! He was like I dont know how to find out if they are having a theme... Hello do a house check before rush and during! I think unviersity greek life needs more education and communication to the undergrads to promote a postive and well informed experience especially if there are many chapters on campus and PNM's can get really confused!

Or if you had alumnae women from NPC groups not represented on campus as Alumnae counselors, then there's no affilitation problem.

OR contact the local NPC alum group... like the area officers. They may be able to help out as well by at least meeting with all the PNM;s like a forum for them to share the information etc... with all the PNM's like on the rush orientation day most schools have that is manditory to attend.... this way they are not there the whole time, its hard to really push your chapter, and they are the "know it alls" on this stuff.

I really really like the idea of involving the Greek alumnae women, if it were possible, during Rush/Recruitment, especially for being around for cuts. I think some Ro Chis don't get how a PNM feels when she has been cut hard or they can't explain why a girl was cut. If we had some other way to allow the older alumnae women to be involved like that.....

This is a good idea...what would it take to get schools/ Panhellenic Alumnae to consider this?

I am so in favor of using older alums in the "cut room"! Some of y'all may remember that when I got my job as assistant Greek advisor at Mississippi State, the advisor had a Caesarean a week later and I had to conduct rush with only the help of the PH officers. Of course, I had to be in charge of the cut room and I was only 4 or 5 years older than the PNMs. It was terrible; many of them were hysterical, especially when a certain sorority cut them and I can remember thinking, "I can't do this! I'm not that much older than they are!" Plus nobody had warned me about how the PNMs would probably react when they were cut by that one group, even if they had invitations from the other 8 groups. By halfway through the day, I was crying too.

What's a cut room? :confused:

The room where the PNMs go to get their invitations and it's probably called different things on different campuses.

That's what I suspected. What a pessimistic term, though - seems to me it would focus the PNMs' attention on the fact that some (or all) sororities are cutting them, rather than on the fact that (hopefully) some sororities have invited them back.

Hopefully the PNMs didn't know that we referred to it as that! They only knew it as the room in the Union where they went to get invitations!

But realistically, it was the cut room.:(

EXACTLY! That's not an official term by any means...more like a realistic description!

My college didn't have a cut room. Because all of the women were staying on campus in a dorm, envelopes with invites back were slipped under the doors. If you received an invite back to a group, your invites were in a large envelope with your name on it. If a woman didn't recieve any invites, I think she received a regret letter, or her Ro Chi came to talk to her personally. I don't remember exactly how they handled it. What I do remember is that women who were far from home who may have been cut were the only ones allowed to leave campus...they couldn't move into their dorm room yet, and still had to stay around. Kind of tough to watch other girls get ready for Prefs!

Not sure if they still do it the same way now...

Oh wow, I forgot about that one. One of my daughters dropped out of recruitment and so did several other PNMs we know. Most were too far from home to go home so they had to sit there in their rooms on campuses they didn't know without anything to do but watch the "successful" PNMs get ready for all their parties. They didn't even want to go to meals they'd already paid for because they had to sit and listen to all the happy girls go on about the hard choices they had to make.

Something *definitely* should be done on each campus for the women who drop out but must stay in the dorm anyway.

At Otterbein, if you didn't match, you recieve a phone call that night. No phone call before 5, you've recieved a bid. So Monday all girls have a meeting with their Rho Chi's to recieve their bids. That was the best day of my Rho Chi period. So many jumping and screaming girls in the campus center...but I was just remembering how great it felt to get my bid. But I think I lost 10 lbs wearing my letter tshirt and letter hoodie underneath another hoodie and zipped up under a parka so I could reveal myself. Everyone who was coming into the CC for dinner thought I was NUTS...or really fat.

The problem with this system is that it creates a REALLY long silent period. From the last recrutiment party to the closing ceremony, there's NO interaction between PNMs and actives. It was really hard for me to draw the line because as a PX I was allowed to go to our final round and wear my pin/be part of the action, but not allowed to vote...and there were several girls in my group who I KEPT SEEING the next day, and I could only wave and smile, even though I was going NUTS saying HOLY CRAP I CANT WAIT TILL YOU"RE A DELTA! or PUT US FIRST PUT US FIRST PUT US FIRST in my mind.

:D Hehehe, you make me smile.

Jocelyn, great idea.

What would I change... I would either enforce that EVERYONE follows the rules, or get rid of them!
We are not 'allowed' to say anything along the lines of "I really want you here" "You would be a great attribute to this chapter"
Pretty much, we are not allowed to tell the PNM's that we (by we I mean as individuals speaking for ourselves) even like them.
We followed this rule to a T, and ended up losing at least one girl (that we would have had otherwise and dropped during pledging in hopes she can join our chapter this year) because another chapter told her "We want you here" They also wrote letters to each individual PNM, and told them they would get to keep them if they joined the sorority. They got in no trouble, but the year before, we had an infraction filed against us (but it was dropped) because one of our girls told another girl that she was a really good friend and could see her fitting in really well. Just doesn't seem right.

Well, I wouldn't call it sulking. Every case I've seen involved nonstop, brokenhearted crying and the former rushee questioning her worth.

The only problem with that at my college was that this particular dorm was the only one open. I don't think the other dorms were open yet--they opened the dorms the Saturday which was also Bid Day. One thing I do remember--the PNMS who were still going through couldn't leave campus unless they lived in that area. So..you have about 225 girls going through Rush and the only ones who can leave campus are those who were cut. I remember girls getting cut who were sweet enough to go grab McDonald's food, etc for PNMs tired of cafeteria food. They were happy enough to get away from the dorm for a little bit. Usually though, it was even worse on Bid Day. Those girls didn't have any place to go, they see their roomies get bids, and hear all the girls squealing, then running down the stairs out to the quad where the different groups have their letters set up, the balloons, singing and waiting for their girls. What was even worse was that for the girls who had to move into their dorms--the new PNMS had their sorority sisters to help out. Not usually much help for the others.


This is so true. I remember how I felt..and it was awful, especially since, at the time, I didn't know how the rec thing worked. It took me until the second day to call my mom and tell her.

i'll just say i'm glad i work at a campus where recruitment is not so competitive. references/recs and being a legacy are not really an issue here. if there is a legacy, it's most likely b/c her sister is in the sorority. we have lots of first generation students, so not much opportunity for legacies.

i wish it were possible to give each PNM their first choice (given she is on the chapter's bid list) and for each chapter to get their first bid list, although i know those two things collide! maybe each PNM could get more than one bid and then pick which one she wants.

I think with the new release figure method (RFM) we will get closer to getting all PNM's their first choice. We used it last year and I think of the almost 185 +/- who received bids, only 9 got their second choice. I thought this was great.

As for the chapter side, the RFM is supposed to do the same thing. It won't be such a big deal to get your first list b/c your entire bid list will be shorter overall. My understanding is that it will be the norm for more chapters to go further down on their bid lists than before.

Hopefully all of this with the new RFM will make for less crying on each side of the recruitment fence. I know you couldn't have paid me to be a Rho Chi and have to break that many hearts.

This was done at one of my chapters's universities... fraternities had "rush week" basically. Each chapter can host X amount of parties for 1 hour each and there were rules about what can be served and done (IE no alcohol, girls etc...) and each rushee had a card that was stamped enter and exit time and had to stay at the house for at least 30 minutes and meet each chapter between day 1 and 2 (could not go to the same house). then the guys can start on day 3 and 4 going only where they wanted and after day 4 picked their fraternity and the frternity compliled their bid list based on who came (each rushee had a small info card with their name to give to the house)...... it was so awesome~!

I'm sorry, I certainly didn't mean to demean their feelings, I'm sure it feels awful. I couldn't think of any other word at the time.

While I do like the idea of moving rush later into the year for weather issues (south carolina gets hot too!), I think rush is way too stressful to put it any later. I don't know how they would do rush once school started, or how I would balance doing hwk, going to class, and the stress of rush. I also don't like the fact that we can't even say "See you tommorrow!" as a goodbye. They say it promises a bid. In some ways, I see it, in some ways I think we should give the girls a bit more credit. However, I guess I'd rather have too strict rules that everyone fudges a little bit rather than none and have rampant lying and persuasion. Also, we have a greek "village", basically a street with alot of the houses on it, and it really was... intimidating and... unnerving to have all the fraternities out "playing frisbee" or "sitting in the rocking chairs enjoying the day" and watching us walk by. We were nervous enough without having to feel like we're being watched by our potential new social group. I rarely saw those rocking chairs ever sat in again that year, by the way.

There are 13 chapters on my campus, and on the first day of recruitment (I feel like I'm breaking a rule by using that word since apparently so many people hate it!) our parties are only 20 minutes long. (And it goes just like you described it... 10-15 minutes of conversation with 2-3 sisters out of 100-150+...) Since we have a good amount of chapters, we can't really afford to lengthen parties anyway, but in my opinion I don't think it's really necessary...

I know many people would love it if cuts could be made after having several real (not "where'd you go to high school?!") conversations with PNMs that are not rushed by time constraints, but in many recruitment situations it is just not realistic. Regardless of whether you have four sororities on campus or fourteen, there are almost always more PNMs than bids to be extended and cuts must be made somehow. Even if every girl that goes through recruitment is absolutely wonderful and a perfect match, you simply can't take them all.

I feel like it's dismissive to say "sororities are making decisions about PNMs based on maybe 10-15 minutes of conversation, maybe a resume, maybe a rec, and maybe the opinions of a sister or two who already know the PNM." What else should cuts be based on in the first round? If a resume shows that a PNMs GPA does not meet the chapter's requirement, she'll be cut. If a rec or a sister raises concerns about a PNM, she'll likely be cut.

Not trying to be super harsh here... but you have the following rounds to get to know PNMs better and determine if they'd be a good fit for your chapter. (And as our rounds progress, parties get longer, so we have more time as well.) Taking more time to get to know the PNMs in round one is just going to make it harder on both sides when cuts ultimately have to be made. Undoubtedly getting to know PNMs is very important but resumes and recs are an important part of recruitment, too... if they weren't, they wouldn't be required...



Edited to say there aren't ALWAYS more PNMs than bids. :)

I don't think grades or concerns about PNMs are on the same level. After all, if your grades aren't up to par as a sister, you're on probation or out. If there is bad behavior as a sister, you're on probation or out. What I think aephialum is saying is - what if a rushee is matched with the one sister out of 100 she doesn't click with and she would have been great for the chapter? I'm sorry, but that really sucks. Not only that, if you don't care for the sister and she recommends a rushee, are you really going to be that high on the rushee? I just think the objective of rush should be for as many rushees to meet as many sisters as humanly possible. If it makes the parties a little longer, oh well.

And no, there aren't always more PNMs than bids...a lot of us would LOVE it if our schools just had enough PNMs to fill all the sororities to total.

Exactly. Where first-round parties are very short, chapters often don't have a lot to go on when making first-round decisions - especially where rush is not deferred. Sometimes just cutting the PNMs who don't have the grades isn't enough to meet release figures.

Not only that, but PNMs don't have a lot to go on if they have to decline one or more invitations. Here's an example from my school. When I was there, rush was held first thing in the fall. Round 1 consisted of "tours", where PNMs were taken around to each sorority's rush room, followed by a total of 8 hours of "open house" where each PNM could go back to any sorority she chose and stay as long as she liked. Tours lasted ten minutes per sorority. That's all. Each sorority had ten minutes, which translated to one short conversation and a skit, to impress the PNMs into returning during open houses. Sororities generally cut any PNM who did not return during open houses - so PNMs could effectively "cut" sororities right after tours. Many did - I've seen many PNMs choose to go back to only one sorority during open houses, effectively "suiciding" right from the start - and some of them ended up bidless because they didn't give a second chance to a sorority that could have been a good fit.

One thing I'd change about rush at my school is a kind of not-so-important thing, but it's a big deal to PNMs. We don't have sorority houses, so each chapter has a different room to conduct rush out of. This is not a bad idea in and of itself, but the problem is, all these rooms are spread all over campus. Incidentally, our campus is perched on the side of a mountain, so no matter which way you're going, you're walking uphill. The poor PNMs have to walk back and forth across campus in 100 degree heat, up and down killer hills in killer heels! Usually, it rains at least once during the week, too.

So if I could change anything, I would give each sorority a room in the same building, so PNMs would only have to walk between rooms rather than hike a good 2 or 3 miles back and forth between parties. I think I actually heard a sister we picked up during recruitment last year say she seriously considered cutting XYZ because she had to walk soooooo far to get to the place where they were! It's a big pain in the booty, and it needs to go!

if i could change my campuses rush
 

I'd make rush BEFORE school starts. Why should I worry about scheduling my classes around rush or possibly missing a class? It wouldn't be that hard because almost everybody lives nearby anyways. I'm still excited, but it would ease some of the pent up anxiety and give me one less thing to worry about. It'd just make it a li'l more pleasant.

I have been with both the during and before school recruitments. While before school recruitment does not interfer with the education of the students you can be pushing many students out of the process because they are unable to get to campus early. And what about those who get cut.. what are they to do now? sit around campus with no friends and nothing to do?!

Yes its a challenge but you are going to pledge and be a member while classes are going on so you can make the balance and time management then too.. so why not with recruitment.

Man.....I had to deal with this last night on instant messenger. I'm a member of AITP (Association of Information Technology Professionals) and our current Treasurer is an AWESOME girl. She's also on SGA and she and I have been friends for a while, but she really, never seemed interested. Last year I invited her to CORs and stuff and she just played it off...

Last night, we were talking on IM about SGA and she said she was going to be the new webmaster of the SGA website, but that she was having a hard time getting access to it, with the password for the account and everything. I told her "Oh thats easy, I just recently created our sorority's website...just contact this person to get it set up..."

AND THEN....she asked for our website URL...so I gave it to her, and she started asking A MILLION questions...like suddenly the lightbulb had come on, and how did it work, what was the process, what WAS formal recruitment, etc etc etc...and I explained everything that I could without overstepping any boundaries. We dont have an "official" panhellenic set up at my school, but we try to follow the basic rules as much as possible. I told her that formal recruitment was a chance for her to meet both sororities, and see which group she most identified with, etc etc. And she asked "well how do I know I'll be invited?" and I freaked out..."Oh god, how do I answer"...so i just told her it was a mutual selection process. That if she had a good vibe about ABC sorority, and ABC sorority had a good vibe about her, there isnt much to worry about. I know that's not necessarily true at ALOT of schools, but that's the way it is at mine.

The conversation kinda shocked me in a way, made me realize that i dont REALLY know how to answer those questions, I HATE that we're told to "change the subject - step around it, talk about something else..." if the girl's asking me a question, she wants an answer, and that's what i wanted when I went through recruitment. I felt so bad, cause she had the same "tough" questions i had when I joined "How do i know I'll be invited and am not wasting my time doing this whole recruitment thing?" <sigh>

But, hopefully the answers I gave her were calming enough for her to show up. She said she was thinking about it, so I'm hoping she'll be at formal recruitment. <crosses fingers>

I think this is a great idea - we alums could serve as "Super RhoChis" to help during rush (hey, we called it that back in the 80s) AND to help on Bid Night with those who don't get bids.

High heels

That's what I would change about rush. I'm dating myself, but I rushed the first time Candies were popular, and we visited 16 different suites in 8 different buildings (now it's up to 20, and they're even more spread out). We all ended up barefoot and blistered, carrying our shoes from suite to suite, climbing flight after flight of outdoor stairs (our dorms are also perched on the side of a steep hill). I've seen some of the shoes out for Fall this year, and they bring back some horrifying memories

http://buy.overstock.com/images/products/T413929.jpg

The only good thing is that September in central Pennsylvania is not crisp and cool yet, but it's not August in Alabama, either