Maybe I'm wrong but I'm currently smelling Eau de Troll here....

You may as well cross Gamma Phi off then since you don't care what our valuable members think. Remember anything you say on here can come back and bite you later. There are international officers from MANY organizations on here and an AI is not hard to figure out who they are from the applications. Most orgs don't do that many a year.

LOL, thanks for the comment. I didn't read the responses after mine close enough and missed what she said. Guess I'll have to pay more attention to this one....;)

I wonder that myself, but I think sometimes it's a situation where a woman is dropped from XYZ (the biggest, prettiest and most popular house on campus) during undergraduate recruitment and starts getting excited when she hears about the existence of AI.... it's like her dreams can finally be realized and she can proudly sport the sweatshirt and bag of the sorority that never accepted her... and now she can be one of the "popular girls" from college :rolleyes:

OR it's a situation where a woman was so totally awkward and socially inept during college that she got dropped from every single sorority after the open house rounds. After spending a few years wondering "What if...?", she stumbles across the existence of AI and is like "OH MY GOD!!! ANOTHER CHANCE!!!!" and starts aggressively pursuing every organization under the sun.

I think both of these circumstances account for the vast majority of these "out of the blue" PNAMs. I think you can agree that both of these situations are horrible reasons to pursue AI.

I personally think the *only* good reason to pursue AI is because a member(s) of one specific organization with whom you're close asks you to pursue AI. I can see someone doing that for their biological sister, or their mom, or their very best friend. I can also see a faculty advisor being recommended for AI by the undergraduate chapter with which she works. There are a few other scattered reasons that are also good, but most of these are complete anomalies (blueangel's 20 year pledge period is a good example of an exception).

I really, really wish that more women would look into community sororities and organizations. They seem like fantastic groups, and (correct me if I'm wrong) but they seem more geared towards adult women -- and I think many of these PNAMs would find everything they're looking for in a community sorority (friendship, sisterhood, ritual, philanthropy, etc). I think it would be silly for them to "lose business" and interest to the Alumnae Initiation programs of various organizations.