Speaking as one who has been there, amen to that!

When we go to bid matching after pref night, we already have a list of who we would offer snap bids to if they aren't matched. Last year, everyone who was eligible to be picked up through snap bids were within a half hour of bid matching. Then, all bids (COB and Snap bids included) that are to go out on Bid Night are due, signed and sealed, in the Greek Advisor's office by noon on that day (Bids are distributed about 5 that night). There is plenty of time to notify those ladies and make certain they are available. It actually works really well, but that's also at a campus that is small. I can see how this would definitely NOT work at a larger campus.

the way we do it is preference is the day before bid day. On bid day all the PNM's come down to University Center in the morning and one by one they go their bids. Should they not recieve any bids our panhellenic advisor explains to them why and answers their questions. It's becaus eif they're invited to preference it still doesn't mean we'll offer them a bid.

I know it's weird to quote myself, but I wanted to make clear that I didn't imagine the non-greeks doing the actual notifying of not getting bids, but that they could follow up with girls who didn't end up matching. sort of like the paired up Rho Gammas and bidless girls, but maybe one better because it would be a totally new option on campus.

Yeah, that was kinda my thinking when I first posted it. I don't know who you'd pick, exactly...unless you had one non-Greek Rho Chi in each group from the beginning.

A question about "bidlessness" in general:

Not long ago some college Panhellenics had "guaranteed placement" policies and procedures, as I understand it. On those campuses, if a PNM was invited to preference and maximized her options, she would get a bid.

Are these "guaranteed placement" policies disappearing? Increasing? Or staying about the same, just depending on the campus?

My sense of how this works (worked) -- in theory -- is that it eliminated being bidless after going through pref. It wouldn't prevent a PNM from being cut from all chapters before pref, thoough.

(These practices -- again, as I understand it -- didn't guarantee getting a first choice. However, a woman who made it to preference would get a bid to one of the chapters that invited her to pref, as long as she listed every chapter she preffed on her card. No guarantees if a PNM intentional-single-preferenced. On the other hand, if a PNM got invited to only one chapter for pref, and listed that chapter, she would get a bid from them.)

..Isn't that a bit unfair to the sororities? If they discuss it and decide they don't want her, she could potentially be taking another NM's spot in that sorority.

There are some systems that have guarantees a woman will be OFFERED a bid if she plays by the rules & maximizes her options. It doesn't guarantee that it will be to a sorority she wants anything to do with.

I think this is different than "guaranteed bidding" where pretty much if someone signs up for rush, even if the groups keep dropping her she'll end up being placed somewhere.

http://www.greekchat.com/gcforums/sh...ad.php?t=57088

http://www.greekchat.com/gcforums/sh...ad.php?t=48395

http://www.greekchat.com/gcforums/sh...d.php?p=276266

I guess that the rationale behind it is somewhat honorable and trying to downplay the snob factor sometimes associated w/ sororities and rush, but the plain truth is that not everyone is suited for sorority life. Not to mention the particular makeup on that certain campus.

That reminds me of the women that talked about systems that allowed the PNM to go to more parties than she was actually invited to if she didn't have a full schedule, by either alphabeticly assigning her to one, or begging groups to allow her back. Totally unfair to the PNM and the sorority. The PNM gets her hopes up because she's still got a full schedule, when in reality there are only a few groups (if any) actually considering her...and the sorority has girls that think "Why did XYZ invite THAT girl back??".

Guarenteed Placement
 

I can't imagine any system with "guaranteed placement" wherever a PNM wanted to go :eek:, but I've seen ones where if you play by all the rules and you don't drop groups or SIP and you make it to pref party, you will recieve a bid to a group that you prefed.
It's pretty much a numbers game at that point-- if quota is made up of the number of women who were invited to pref parties divided by the number of sororities than there would technically be a spot for everyone.
Chapters would go below quota if a girl SIP's somewhere else and isn't high enough on their bid list (in this system, EVERY girl at pref party would have to be listed somewhere on the bid list, essentially it would be your top girls until you hit quota and then an ranked second list of everyone else you would love to take if you had unlimited spots) or if a girl drops out without signing a bid card.

Stil, even this system doesn't keep girls from dropping in between rounds if they don't get the house they want or if they get dropped by every house in the process..

Now that I think of it though, what happens if a girl only attends pref at one house but she is at the bottom of their list and enough girls list that house first above her to be placed on that chapters list-- does she go bidless?? She would have maximized her options but gotten dropped from every other house and still go bidless?? Is this the type of thing avoided by the "guarenteed placement"?

I don't think garanteed placement means wherever a PNM wants to go, however I also remember during rush, it was drilled into our heads that anyone we invited to pref had better be someone we wanted on our lawn on bid day. The way my school worked, after pref all the houses ranked the girls on a first, second and third bid list- no one was really "cut" after pref. So theoretically, even someone on our third bidlist could end up getting a bid from us. So I don't see it as too much of a stretch for garanteed placement if you maximize your options all through rush (I don't agree with someone only going to one pref even if they were invited to 3 just so that they would get a garanteed bid from that one house).

To clarify – I was thinking of systems like the ones 33girl, Audrey3566, and ForeverRoses have described. As 33girl points out, there’s no guarantee that the PNM will want to accept the bid she is offered. (However, I think there’s a difference – slight, but a difference -- between no bid at all after pref and a bid to a chapter a PNM doesn’t like.)

33girl: “There are some systems that have guarantees a woman will be OFFERED a bid if she plays by the rules & maximizes her options. It doesn't guarantee that it will be to a sorority she wants anything to do with.”

Audrey3566: “I can't imagine any system with "guaranteed placement" wherever a PNM wanted to go , but I've seen ones where if you play by all the rules and you don't drop groups or SIP and you make it to pref party, you will receive a bid to a group that you preffed.”

ForeverRoses: “I don't think guaranteed placement means wherever a PNM wants to go, however I also remember during rush, it was drilled into our heads that anyone we invited to pref had better be someone we wanted on our lawn on bid day. The way my school worked, after pref all the houses ranked the girls on a first, second and third bid list- no one was really "cut" after pref. So theoretically, even someone on our third bidlist could end up getting a bid from us. So I don't see it as too much of a stretch for guaranteed placement if you maximize your options all through rush (I don't agree with someone only going to one pref even if they were invited to 3 just so that they would get a guaranteed bid from that one house).”

As long as she was invited to only one Preference and attended it, she will have completed recruitment "in good faith" and maximized her options. So she will be eligible for quota additions. Campuses who utilize the new release figure method can almost always place "good faith" PNMs as quota additions if they did not match through traditional bid matching. Campuses who don't use RFM yet (not that many left) pretty much do whatever they want.

Guaranteed placement is a bad idea, IMO. If a girl is only invited to one pref party, what's to say that she didn't snub another chapter earlier on? Let's say there are five chapters, and she behaves like a beast at four of them because she only wants to be an XYZ. Hardly fair to let her pick like that and guaranteed her the bid to XYZ.