I was only a sorority recruiter one year and was a rho gamma the rest so I was never involved in actually making a list. I have no idea what my chapter/campus used. I've only heard of the flex lists because of GC.

I am surprised that people would be uncomfortable with this, but okay with QA's. Aren't they the exact same thing, just at a later point?

I think you all make good points. If she's on our flex add list, then we were comfortable having her somewhere on our bid list. I think as long as I put her last on the pref list, I'd be comfortable. I just would want to make sure she doesn't get an advantage over anyone we wanted more.

One question... let's say we're only going to get 5 QAs based on decisions the GA is going to make. I'd rather have 5 other women we wanted more than her, but she can only get a bid from us. So, will she bump out one of the other 5 QAs we wanted more? As long as the GA guarantees us she will be a free quota addition on bid day too, I'd be comfortable.

Again, I'm pretty sure this happens already with QAs. If a woman has only XYZ left at pref, she will end up as a QA to XYZ. If some other woman has XYZ and ABC, in that order, it's entirely possible that she could get placed at ABC to give XYZ and ABC one QA each, even though the second woman is higher on XYZ's bid list.

Also, it's been my experience that ranking women on a final bid list comes down to the slimmest of margins, once you get past the top "rush crushes".

(I suppose it would be a problem if the woman who was returned to your chapter was a legacy, and you had the legacies-first policy)

I think this is a good idea, and something that could easily be written into the code. And frankly, it could be done at every stage. If a girl is going to be cut out completely, the computer goes back to the flex lists to see if she was on any/some. If a girl is on a flex list, the chapter was willing to invite her back anyway, and the number of girls being invited to any given round of rush is determined by the RFM coding so adding 5 girls automatically (without asking the chapter) would be easily done. Now, this does NOT mean a girl who legitimately got cut from every chapter gets a free ride. But the cuts are brutal and the sororities are making a lot of tough choices. Or maybe a high flex (where she would get a pass) and low flex (where she wouldn't) could work. Or stated another day, if she's on the top half of the flex list she gets a pass.

Just a thought but I think trying to help the girls who fall through the cracks would be a good thing and not punishing any chapters or cramming anything down their throats.

I go back and forth on this, because I go back and forth on unlimited QA's. I just don't see why we'd have one and not the other.

If she is totally not on anyone's invite list at pref, she won't be on their bid list = anywhere. Without getting into private membership selection, suffice it to say there are often requirements on the chapter side at this point which preclude adding her. Inviting someone to pref - for some groups - is different than inviting someone to another round. And she pretty much has to be on your bid list if she is invited to pref so you are sticking yuor neck waaaaaay out here.

Here is the problem I see with this sort of scenario (not talking about flex + lists). The GA won't know which PNMs might be in this position until after invite lists had been run on the computer, which means after invite lists have been turned in, which is after membership selection meetings are completed. The GA would call the chapter Pres, Recruitment Chair, and/or an advisor to make the decision whether to add a dropped PNM or not. If those chapter reps say yes, then Debbie Dropped returns to Pref -- without the blessing of the entire chapter.

What happens if one or more actives throw a hissy fit? "Debbie was dropped last night!!! What is she doing here? We've wanted her dropped all week and were happy when she finally was. That's why nobody fought for her."

This. Inviting to other parties doesn't potentially give the girl a bid to your group where an invitation to pref does. Not every campus does the flex positive list anyway.

I would think there's a difference that has come out to some degree in MS sessions between Debbie Disappointingly Dropped (that #205 when you can invite back 200) and Debbie Damnwearehappyshewas Dropped (#505) and that those chapter reps would not give the OK to invite the latter Debbie back.

33girl, I think this is exactly right. There has to be a difference between flex list and hell no list, and I don't think the hell no list should come into play at all. But all chapters have to have a certain amount of flexibility because they don't know how many girls are going to return. I think this could be just another computer process working within said flex list (without which I don't see how RFM can work) to maximize invitations throughout the entire process of rush, not just bid matching at the end.

Unless maybe the invitation lists throughout the process don't work as I think they do/should. ABC chapter is allowed to have 500 girls return to round 2. They have 700 girls on their list and the first 500 girls that match get to go. And the remaining 500 girls (I'm using a 1200 girl rush scenario with numbers pulled completely out of my arse) are out of luck. Is anything like this scenario how it works in real life? This is where inviting 505 girls wouldn't make much of a difference, and the chapters would even need to know, since those last 5 girls would be from within that pool of 700 who they already approved.

This is not without its problems (duh, but I'm just thinking out loud, as it were), like what about the girl who gets invited to 1 or 2 parties instead of the 9 which would be a full set. Do they get stuck with their 1 or 2, when the girl who got zero gets the special attention? But I still think all of this can be worked out with some decent software coding and a discussion among the powers that be to determine the rules. If they wanted to. Now that RFM is pretty much universal, I think it's fair to think about improving it.

Right, right, "women who are somewhere on the flex list" is pretty much what I'm thinking. I would think that, if a woman was dropped everywhere, you'd first check the flex list for the weakest recruiting chapter, and go up from there. That way, you are benefiting a PNM and the WRC, and it's really not at the expense of other PNM's or other chapters.

One of the reasons I think this is important is that I was pretty surprised to learn that there are campuses where everyone is over both total and quota after FR. It's great that (assuming total is set correctly) all the chapters are doing well, but that means a woman who doesn't receive a bid through FR has no recourse.

Again, I totally understand that there are women who sign up who do not meet the membership requirements of any chapter, and I know that very few are dropped entirely once they've made it past the grade cuts, but there are a handful.

I thought that one of the suggestions of RFM is that soon after FR, total be reset at average chapter size. If this suggestion were followed, some chapters would be below total and a PNM may have options. Of course, not every campus does this.

Oh, that's a good point. I forgot about that. How long does that take, though?

Whenever PH decides to get around to it.