But not necessarily the most efficient way to retain those members throughout college and assure that they stay active and participating as alumnae.

A lot of the reason NPC chapters rebel against year round or even twice a year recruitment is the misconception that any member recruitment MUST equal skits, matching outfits, and elaborately planned parties. I agree that once a year for those activities is enough. It isn't, however, the only way to rush and recruit members. If NPC groups truly would learn to RECRUIT and foster that philosophy instead of just changing the terminology, maybe we wouldn't have droves of women dropping out of their chapters in their junior/senior year or earlier.

I respectfully disagree with you and can think of 300,000 examples why.

But some chapters have no issue with retaining members.

I knew that would get a response. ;)

The topic of this thread is Prohibiting 1st Semester Freshmen From Pledging. I personally do not agree with forcing a freshman to wait. I also feel that the "one shot at a bid" model - which is often perpetuated by a single formal/structured rush - is often true depending on the campus. Regardless if recruitment is deferred. Indiana and Ole Miss come to mind here. As such, my suggestion is that recruitment should be year round.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying that the formal rush model isn't the most efficient way to add new members overall. However, my suggestion is that instead of waiting a full year to have the next rush, the Campus Panhellenic Council could have a less formal/structured rush the other semester. Not COB/COR to bring a chapter up to quota or total, but a secondary panhellenic-wide rush (for lack of a better phrase). Women would still sign up for recruitment and a quota could be set.

I have heard excuses from some NPC members saying it would be "too much work" to rush twice a year. And it would if the CPC was to duplicate the formal/structured type of recruitment. However, the concept I envision is that the *secondary recruitment* should not be hectic or time consuming for either the chapters and the PNMs. As I understand it, the NPC has provided four different recruitment models that each campus should select from as best fits the specific campus. Why not have a more formal type of recruitment one semester and a less formal the other semester? This would allow more quality women to join sooner. And it would be especially beneficial to those campuses where most, if not all, of the chapters make - or are near - quota (i.e. Kansas State, Indiana, Nebraska, Ole Miss) each year.

Those are the 300,000 that it DID work for, but it doesn't take into account those who could have been had with another system.

Recruitment should be year round, because that would give anyone the chance to go through rush if they so desire.

When I said "retain" I meant that those alumnae were actually active in an alumnae chapter and/or as national volunteers, not just names on a membership list. I'm going to go edit my post to reflect that.

Indeed, and at my school the issue wasn't with retaining members, but students. The school was fairly demanding and $$$$$. A lot of people transfered to state universities or dropped out due to scholarships/loans not coming through.

That said, this is WHY there are multiple forms of recruitment and COB/CR.

My school, a small one, has two "panhellenic-wide" recruitments: deferred formal in the spring & informal in the fall. They are completely identical to each other except in areas where formal requires a little more. Formal has PX's be unaffiliated for the week, bid matching and a silence period, whereas informal does not. Otherwise, it's the same schedule of events, same amount of decorations, same time and commitment for recruitment chairs, quota is set, etc. It works pretty well.

My alma mater does recruitment twice a year, which is both good and bad. We have formal in the spring and informal in the fall. A PNM must have 12 credits to join, but those 12 can be AP credits, so some first semester freshmen have the opportunity to join. It's good in that it gives a PNM 3-4 solid good chances to join, plus MAYBE first semester junior year. Students transfer, an emergency can happen during FR that would cause you to drop out (sickness, death in family), or God forbid, a PNM is simply not interested in Greek Life until they meet our brothers and sisters!

The downside is that there are a lot of PNMs who suicide during FR, resulting in a lower quota, which is the reason every chapter does informal in the fall. The PNMs know that every chapter will be participating in the fall, so there is no incentive to rank all 3 chapters if they only want one. If they rank all three and get matched to #2 or #3, they're stuck for a year. If they suicide and don't match, they only wait a semester. It's a chicken-egg scenario.

It would be nice to not have to have to spend the money (another argument for no-frills) recruiting new members when the money could be spent enjoying the new members, like with a sisterhood retreat.

Also, with every chapter recruiting during informal, it can hurt the smaller chapters. At most schools, only the chapters under total recruit during informal, allowing the smaller chapters a chance to "catch up" without having to compete with the most popular chapters. To add insult to injury, PNMs only go to the chapters they wish to visit, so if a PNM only visits the three most popular chapters (because she has her heart set on them), the smaller chapters do not get a chance to recruit her. However, an upside is that all chapters participating in informal removes the stigma of smaller chapters "having" to recruit during informal.

Despite the disadvantages, it works out because most chapters are at or pretty darn close to total after informal, and 11 of 14 chapters made quota last year (the three that missed it were within 5 and some CRed). We get the numbers that our Campus Panhellenic sets for us, yet we just do it in two halves.

I don't think joining a GLO is the same as joining any other student organization on campus, not just for the "life-long" commitment, but for the current commitment. Miss a meeting of the Badminton Club, and it's not usually a big deal. Missing a fraternity/sorority meeting could mean anything from not knowing when a recruitment event is that week to loss of voting rights. Similarly, if after a year you decide that being a member of Car Repair Club isn't for you anymore, it's not hard to relinquish membership of that group. Resigning from a GLO is a much larger decision, that affects more than just the one person.

GLO's aren't like every other student organization. It's my thought that if we are going to hold ourselves to higher standards that other organizations in other areas such as community service, academics, etc. that we shouldn't be just like every other organization in how we recruit our members.

And just because something, such as the formal rush model, is efficient doesn't make it better than a model that takes more time but may be more beneficial (or any other positive adjective you'd want to put there).

Just my $2.

I like the way the University of Georgia does it. An all-out formal in the fall, and then a "structured informal" in the early spring. By "structured informal," there is a definite schedule, and PNMs who sign up are invited to every house that's participating. The parties are very informal - it could be a "Grey's Anatomy" viewing, ice cream, out for skating, whatever. But there is a beginning and an end.
Sororities are also free to informally pledge at any other time, too, as long as they have space. But the structured informal spring recruitment is announced, promoted, and defined so that anybody who didn't participate in fall and wants to join can try.
Retention - that is something we ALL need to work on. But a senior class that's 50% of its size as freshmen...that's pretty normal and would compare to the same size group of non-greeks.

Do you mean, a college class in general?

The thing with that is, one of the statistics we like to trumpet is that Greeks stay in school and graduate at a higher rate than that of non-Greeks. We can't say "we are better" one minute and then say "we're the same" when we're trying to justify one of the things we have issues with.

So...what evidence do you have that waiting a semester makes women more likely to stay active throughout their college years and become more active than women who pledged at the beginning of their college experience? I think a lot of this is your biased opinions. Recruitment that works on one campus may not work on another, but formal recruitment is the BEST way to juggle a large PNM pool to assure that each woman has a chance to experience what each group has to offer. I pledged AOII before starting my first class in college. My pledge class lost a few members along the way (a couple transferred after the first semester, but they have just as much right to their AOII membership as I do!) and the remainder stayed active throughout our time as AOIIs. No chapter on my campus had a problem with keeping seniors active. I'm glad I got to pledge when I did, otherwise I would have felt cheated out of a semester of membership during those fun college days! If a campus does, that's more of a campus culture problem and less of a "non-deferred" recruitment problem. Correlation is NOT causation. Remember that when you try to demand widespread change to a system that may not be broken.

I'm glad I waited
 

One of the biggest benefits of waiting until after first semester to rush was the opportunity to make friends OUTSIDE the Greek system.

I loved my sorority but often found it smothering, and it was nice to go hang out with the good, close friends I made freshman year who were independents or in other sororities. I kind of looked at ASA more as a secure home base rather than my entire life.