This is my understanding, too. I can fully understand making the pnms accept the maximum number of parties - for those of you who doubt the effectiveness of this, one of the happiest New Members on GreekChat had originally cut the sorority to which she has now pledged!

But forcing someone to sign a bid card is absolutely wrong. The pnm should always have the option of accepting no bids, bids only from the groups she lists, or suiciding.

This is how it works at my school, which is why I'm still confused....

The year before I went through recruitment, a girl joined my sorority (she's in the bid day picture and everything), but then decided she didn't want to be in our chapter, so she withdrew from new member program. After the summer, we come back and she accepts a bid from XYZ sorority. At our school, if you sign your bid card, that's a binding contract (and we are supposed to put down the two parties we go to for pref, but I don't think they bully us into it). If you miss a party (but have a valid excuse as to why you missed it: class, driving 3 hours to another university to take an exam;), etc) then the sororities are not supposed to punish you for missing the party...unfortunately, that did happen to me :( but in the long run it was better that they did because I found my home in a chapter I didn't even really have on my radar when I began recruitment!

Here's a thread I referred to earlier although I still think there may be another one I started on the same subject later. I am still anti-forced pref parties. in case PH thinks they hugely benefit the smaller groups, I remember the story of one group that had 2 full pref parties on Pref Night (the school required that PNMs go to all prefs they were invited to or be dismissed from recruitment) but no one ran to them on Bid Day. Talk about depressing, to say the least.

What happens in that case is that the PNM just suicides and then it's a roll of the dice. If they made the list for the other group, they are in. If they didn't, well, there you go. I guess they felt it was better to be in no group at all....

No one? Literally no one? Surely this is a bit of hyperbole. Even on the most rigidly tiered campi I've advised and observed, some girls do show up for bid day. As for the ones who don't, they need to get over themselves because they never seem to believe they would not have received a bid at all if that one undesirable chapter hadn't been in their preference equation.

Would you prefer that the undesirable chapter not have any preference parties at all so those poor darlings won't have to endure another moment of being forced to attend their parties?

Literally no one. And no one showed up the next year or the next either. I knew one of the sisters and she told me, plus I heard stories about it for years.

I think it hurt them worse than the rushees who had to go to the parties because they put out all that effort for nothing and then had to stand out there waiting for a new member class who never came. If the PNMs hadn't been made to attend all prefs, the chapter might have had some advance warning because in the south, there are many girls who are too nice to show their displeasure by crying or gritting their teeth at the parties. They just go back to the computer and SIP.

That's awful!

I went to a small school which only had 3 sororities (Missouri S&T), but they used to take a middle ground on this. You had to attend all parties up until pref, but you could decline any pref invitation you received. You could attend pref at all 3 if you were invited to all 3 or you could attend pref at just one, even if you were invited to all three. We were given a schedule to tell us what time to be at each house. IRC, we met a Rho Chi near the house and went in as a group.

I don't see how it would be any better if nobody showed up for their pref party.

Really, it does not kill a young woman to go somewhere, eat some mini cupcakes and drink spritzer water, and make small talk for an hour before/after going to the pref party at the chapter they really want. I don't think that women should be forced to list a chapter she doesn't want on her bid card, but going to pref, especially when you are dressed up and all that anyway, is simply the polite thing to do.

I think that they were hurt worse by the full pref parties because some of the girls had indeed put them on the bid card and the chapter had a list of pledges that they were supposed to get and then no one showed up. The PNMs must have looked at their bids and left.

I disagree. Nobody wanting to join your chapter is heartbreaking, whether it means that you have empty prefs or that you don't make quota. When women don't have to go to prefs, though, women who do like your chapter look around and see that the room is empty, and second-guess themselves.

I don't know. The first year it happened, I saw all the photos that the campus bid day photographer took before the new members ran to their sororities. Like the rest of the groups, they were sitting there perkily in lawn chairs, holding up T's for the expected new class and posing with alums and each other. (How do you play off something awful like that?) The same thing happened the second year.

The third year right before the new members ran out, the Greek advisor made an announcement over the PA system that AB wouldn't be down in the field for Bid Day. Not sure why because it really highlighted what happened.

I'm a recently initiated member of this chapter, and from what I gather, this has been changed. Don't take my word as 100%, because although our Rho Chi's were wonderful ladies, I felt extremely uninformed during the recruitment process. But from hearing the older ladies talk, it seems that last year was the final year you were allowed to turn down invitations from the chapters for pref, and this year they required you to go to every party on your list. I feel like we were told that we had to attend all parties during the whole process or we would be ineligible for a bid. Luckily for me, I only preffed at my favorite chapter so this wasn't a problem for me, but I did notice many girls during my pref party who clearly didn't want to be there but were still trying to be polite about it.


Carnation, your story sounds awful and I feel for those poor girls. It would be so heartbreaking to experience something like that! I would have no idea what to do in a situation like that, I hope those ladies played it off as gracefully as possible and still enjoyed their time as collegians.

Did they not have people in the pipeline to give open bids to? Sophomore or junior friends of the chapter? Any chapter that is struggling that doesn't do their homework before rush and have those people in mind is shooting themselves in the foot. I think we had one semester where we didn't match anyone in formal, but we managed to bid up to a comparable sized pledge class that same night because we did those things. No one outside Panhel had any clue.

Congrats on initiation! So are they doing 3 pref parties now or 2?

(BTW, EA KD was my first choice, too.)

At my school you can go to up to 3 prefs. You don't have to, but if you're invited to more then three and only go to two and the other groups find out about it, it is considered very rude and arrogant and does not look well on the PNM.

If you suicide you cannot go into COB.