That's how it was at the university where I was advising in the late seventies. What happened was that you had a bunch of dropouts throughout the week, especially when the pref invitations came because there weren't any rules about when you had to drop people you didn't want. Therefore, the big groups stayed big and the little ones folded or remained as the campus punching bags.

Loved your story, scgoldengirl. Very entertaining, and with some sound advice!

such a great story! thanks for sharing it!!

On my 1970s campus the maximum number of pref parties a woman could attend was two; however, you could list up to three groups on your bid card. Without question, my bid card listed three groups. By this method smaller groups sometimes took-in women who preffed, but were not ultimately chosen for membership by, the popular groups.

I pledged in 1984 and there was snap bidding then, but quota additions are part of the RFM system. If you weren't actually part of the recruitment advising team, you might not have even realized snap bidding was going on. As soon as hand bid matching was done, groups that didn't get quota were given the list of women who didn't match and had the option of calling them to offer them a bid. Sometimes only one group got quota because, as mentioned above, quota was set based on how many women attended first parties. If any women dropped or were cut, then at least one group could not take quota.

We were the 3rd largest chapter on campus the year that I pledged, but Ms Alpha didn't make quota with my pledge class. We were very close but the actives felt like they didn't want to hand out bids to warm bodies just to make quota. And we did have a gorgeous pledge class-I felt like the ugly duckling compared to my mostly younger pledge sisters. Chapter limitation was around 75 so we had 2 or 3 openings for open rush (that's what we called it back then). We did make quota the following year and ended up with a fantastic pledge class.

But you guys are right. The system in place did make it awfully hard to make quota. 3 of the sororities in my story folded a few years after I graduated. These were older, more established chapters, too. But somehow they lost their way and their numbers started slipping, and with that quota system, it was nearly impossible to catch up. Not sure when the new system started but it appears that it evens the playing field out quite a bit.

Thanks for the info!

Great story, great ending!

Another Big Bang addict here -- loved your story!

Great story!

You are too hard on 20 year old you. You weren't THAT immature. You kept a pretty open mind and let your impressions of the groups develop.

current status
 

I am one of the advisers for Howard. Greek Life has exploded on this campus the past 5 years, like many others.

Campus total was 139 this year (was 85 just 4 years ago). About 20% of traditional female students are members of GLOs (up from 13% just a few years ago). We have opened for extension. Raj is the only one of the closed chapters mentioned in this story that has sent in a packet.

Again, thanks for a fun read scgoldengirl! This is going to be a long, hot summer if others don't share their stories!

Thank you for sharing scgoldengirl!