Coming from a school with a strong Greek system, strong chapters (everyone's pretty close to total right now, and everyone's made quota for 2 years straight) and deferred recruitment, I'm all for it. There are stringent rules in place to discourage dirty rushing, and Fall Term can be just plain WEIRD with all the rush dates and having to make sure upperclassmen aren't giving alcohol to freshmen (can't even pass them the keg tap), and while it can encourage tent talk, it also gives the smaller chapters a chance to get to know the women, to be visible on campus, etc. It won't work for all systems, but for us it worked well. I think about half the girls wouldn't rush if it were the first week of classes, so that would change everything.

ETA: As to housing, sophomores are required to live on campus, so that's the year everyone lives in the house. Also, deferred rush gives "grade risk" more meaning, and you don't have to worry about "competitiveness" of high school GPAs.

I disagree with the crappy members statement. I almost didn't go through because there was a large "you don't need that" mentality, and I hope I've not been a crappy member. Many women who do go through do so because one or two people talked them into it (myself included; if I hadn't met one particular person I might not have gone through). How much would change if recruitment happened first term? I honestly don't know. But I would be surprised if it had lower turnouts. As for reaching out to upperclassmen, we did. In my initiation class, 4 of 11 were sophomores (we were one of the super huge years... the following year was just 4). And COR during the other two terms usually resulted in 2-4 upperclassmen per year. Rushing as an upperclassmen had no ill effect on one's chances through formal or informal.

ETA: I wish I had kept a journal my freshman year. I'd love to look back on my actual thoughts at the time rather than several years later. I have one from sophomore on... but that's just not the same! I'm insanely jealous of people who can look back on their rush experiences and other events and see their in-the-moment thoughts. They should put "keep a journal" in the freshmen orientation booklets!

But you DID go through. That's my point. I honestly believe that people who let themselves be talked out of things want to be talked out of them (and vice versa)...yes even at age 18.

I didn't mean that upperclassmen had a disadvantage, I meant that worrying how many "out of 350 freshmen" went through rush or signed a bid card isn't getting you anywhere. Just keep reaching out to all students.

Why can't NPC think outside the box? Let campuses do what works for them including:

- Do away with any kind of "silence" rules. Allow rushees to meet and get to know the women they may join.
- Let rush take place over several weeks - one party per week - instead of over several days. Why encourage superficiality?
- Eliminate mandatory cuts. Cut who and as many/few as you want.
- Allow women to receive multiple bids. Eliminate bid matching. Women who get more than one bid will simply have to make a choice.

Yes, I know many think "the way we've always done it" works. If it does for a campus, so be it. But requiring all campuses to follow the same set of rules seems ludicrous. Better yet, IMO, would be to adopt the IFC rush model.

Your suggestions would kill the sorority system.I guess if the idea of one or two exclusive chapters per campus, and fewer women having the opportunity of membership is what you are going for, it would be an improvement. Otherwise, nope.

If by "mandatory cuts" you mean the new NPC return system, let me point out that it IS thinking outside the box, for the benefit of chapters and pnm. Campus after campus has reported more girls pledge, and more chapters achieve quota and total. Win/win. It is NOT the "way it has always been" by any means. It is an educated response to legitimate concerns.

As for campus variations, NPC offers more than one recruitment model - so they are already responding to the needs of individual campuses. Formal recruitment is NOT for every campus - thus the options.

The IFC model is a recipe for disaster - you need only look at the vast number of chapters who are constantly closing on various campuses to see it doesn't achieve what the NPC system tries to acomplish.

For the vast majority of women the current system WORKS. Improvements? Yes - we should always try to improve. But we don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

It also eliminates chapters inviting back women they have absolutely NO intention of giving a bid to, who they are inviting simply for the purpose of pumping up the chapter's ego and having bragging rights. "We had 300 PNMs at our pref parties and ABC sorority only had 100!" If you want to hear anti-Greek sentiment, all you have to do is talk to some of the ladies who were led down this road.

Ummm...they do this already. Schools with small systems do more COB type recruitment styles, but try doing this with 900 PNMs going to more than 10 chapters. It would be chaos, and it would never work. Each PHC gets to choose the recruitment method that works best for their campus. Don't knock it unless you really know how the system works. Try giving out multiple bids to more than a hundred women and see if anyone can figure out how many bids each chapter should give out. We all know that you had a different recruitment experience. It's great that it worked for your campus. That doesn't mean it would work for the majority of campuses.

Ah, but remember, my suggestion allows for plenty of interaction between members and PNMs first semester, especially in a Panhellenic environment. First semester is an opportunity for struggling/lower tier/weaker/smaller/whatever to go out and meet PNMs in their classes, activities, dorms, etc. Person to person interaction is what gets women to join. So, while some PNMs may fall in love with top groups, there will be PNMs that will love smaller chapters for the women in them.

On this, I completely agree with you. Probably because my campus hasn't had dirty rushing problems, at least not really bad.
I prefer deferred recruitment instead of dragging out the process.

2 weeks (if rush is during school) isn't bad. "Several" weeks (like a month or so) would be torture for all. Not to mention effing up Homecoming in a major way.

I showed this thread to a high school friend of mine who was active in his fraternity and who was economics major.

He agreed with the basic premise, but cautioned that one has to consider the downside of capitalist system. He recalled at his fraternity one year that a lot of men showed up for recruitment/rush events, but when it came to accept bids very few men did that year.

When he and his fratnerity brothers asked around, they discovered that a lot men came to their parties for the beer and the food, but had no intention of pledging ABC fraternity.

As he noted capitalism has its rewards, but also its risks

I'm from a local sorority, so maybe we are playing an entirely different game here, but this is very much so how we do recruitment/pledging. After rush, which is two weeks, every two weeks we are allowed to discuss any problems(small or large) and if someone is a serious concern we will hold a vote to discontinue their pledging process, the only other official vote in the process is the vote into I-Week. This semester we had about 75 girls come to rush over the 2 weeks(our rush events are held entirely separate from NPC's rush, but we heavily encourage researching and looking into other orgs) we ultimately handed out roughly 30-35 bids, 25 were accepted,19 girls completed the process and are now my new sisters.

I know that some people have argued that you don't really get to know pnms until after they cross over, but if you see potential problems in a girl/guy over the first 8 weeks you know them why not drop them instead of letting them spoil the bunch? The threat of them causing problems in the future seems to be a bigger concern than not having someone to bridge the quota gap. Shouldn't it be more about the quality of member you are letting in, rather that the quantity? This is something I've never really been able to wrap my head around concerning the NPC orgs on my campus, especially when I see on bid day 40+ bids handed out and then the following semester half of those girls are no where to be found because they left the org. It seems like a vicious circle of loosing members and gaining members, especially if they decided to do formal recruitment in the fall and recruitment in the spring. As much as I love recruitment and getting to know new girls, I kinda feel like a sorority/fraternity that is always concerned about how many members they have to bring in wouldn't really get to enjoy all the other benefits of being in a greek organization.

Maybe im completely off base, I never post on here, but all the talk on recruitment really interests me and I'd like to understand the NPC perspective a little more.

Yes, you will weed out more people by kicking them out before they get initiated, hazing them to get the "weak" to drop out unless they "really want it", but there is no guarantee that the women that finally get initiated will actually want to come around and spend time with women who treated them poorly before initiation. The NPC process (which differs amongst the member groups) works quite well, thank you! Our chapters do not, as you suggest, have a problem with half our new initiates not participating or actually dropping out every semester. We choose women during recruitment that are accomplished and have something to add to our chapters. They don't have to "prove" themselves to be initiated. They simply learn about our history and customs to decide if making lifetime commitments to our sisterhoods are choices they should really make.

Your process works for your organization, and I hope that hazing is not a part of that process. Personal dignity is not a characteristic that any woman should have to give up to become a part of a sisterhood.

Do you know for sure that the girls are dropping out of the NPCs in that great of numbers or are you just using hyperbole?

Quite frankly, if you have a TWO WEEK rush and you're still having girls drop or having to vote them out during pledgeship, something's rotten in Denmark. You all should have a better gague after all that time of whether someone is right for your group.

There's only one org out of the three that has that extreme of a problem, but membership retainment is a problem across the board.

We take what we are looking for in a sister very seriously, how can you tell in 4 days, or 8 that a girl is actually misleading you about some aspects of herself, there's no telling how someone is going to get along with all the other pledges until the process actually begins, hearing leadership skills on paper is nice, but i like to see what the girls bring to the table in their actions during their process, I feel like having the option to vote out girls gives us a sense of security against girls that we later find out weren't being true to us in the beginning and are going to be a problem or detrimental before they cross over. I also think it's beneficial in the case of girls that are more shy when they come to rush, it gives them the chance to show us who they really are and what they are going to bring to the sorority. You can't predict the future, and you can never tell how a girl will be in 3 days or 3 weeks, but after a while once you have been able to at least have the opportunity to establish a relationship with someone you can truly make a decision on whether they are right for your sorority or not. It shouldn't all be based on what they did in high-school, and how nice a person they are at rush, it should be about the person they are now, and the person you can see them becoming in the future, things you really don't get to see until you have spent real time with girls in more intimate settings.

I guess everyone does what works for them. In the 3 years I've been active we haven't had a new member disaffiliate or go inactive in their first year active except under extreme circumstances(death in family, financial circumstances change, etc.)