Speaking from a highly competitive Recruitment standpoint, there is good and bad in the Release Figures System. We all know the (potential) good for the small/less successful chapters. More PNMs get invited back and since many of them may have been cut early from large/more successful chapters, they are hopefully more open minded and realistic about their chances. Along with that, the large/successful chapters aren't inviting back X# of PNMs just because they can, stringing them along with no intention of offering a bid.

But there is a down side. Just like with Panhellenic's assumption that every chapter should be happy to invite/pledge every PNM, they also have the assumption that every PNM is willing to join any chapter. Let's face it, on highly competitive campuses there are a lot of PNMs who firmly state "I want to be an ABC or nothing". There are some who take the position "I'm willing to be anything except an XYZ". No matter how many times they get invited back to a certain chapter they will never consider accepting a bid.

There's also a significant drawback for the large/successful chapters that I haven't heard talked about much. Having to cut such a large percentage in the early rounds means these chapters have to make drastic decisions without much information. You've got the 15 minute 1st round party where maybe 2-3 actives talked to a PNM, Recruitment application and recs to base decisions on. That's not a lot of info to make huge percentage cuts. There is less chance for those unknown "discovery" PNMs (especially out of state) to be invited back, someone who the chapter didn't know squat about before Recruitment and ended up falling in love with her. A chapter that is blessed with being highly successful has to practically set their bid list already on day 1 of recruitment.

Yeah, and it's hard to have that bid list when a big university has, say, 8 chapters at the top that are more or less alike and they're all competing for the same 200 or so girls. They usually don't know exactly which 2-3 chapters their preferred PNMs will love at the end.

This really varies with campus. At some campuses, COR is not a viable option for the sororities. They need to get the girls they want to get during formal recruitment. That's why I think it's more important to get the girls and then do tons of member development - at least if COR isn't really an option for you.

True. Every campus is different and that culture needs to be taken into consideration. On a highly competitve campus where traditionally all new members are obtained through formal recruitment, needing to COR can be viewed as a sign of weakness and/or internal problems. People wonder why is a chapter COR'ing and will often assume the worst.

The exception at Bama was a few years ago when Panhellenic significantly raised Chapter Total, pushing almost half the chapters below the new total and forcing them all into COR. If everyone else or at least several others are doing it too, then it's not a problem. But if there's only one or maybe two, then a chapter's reputation can take a hit.

Zillini, you are absolutely correct. But having the recs does help a lot...I don't understand why our national/international officers are not emphasizing this MORE.:rolleyes:
I never understand why a chapter member would say "you don't need recs" when our Constitutions and requirements for membership explicitly state that they are necessary for pledging. Often a chapter member doesn't know that there is a committee actively sending out requests to alums for recs all summer.
I also never understand why an alum refuses to fill out a rec...we clearly need to do a better job educating our new members.
That said...overall, the new release methods DO help the smaller groups. But there's a limit. Tent talk will trump release methods any day.
So we need to educate our members better on why talking down a group hurts us all...:mad:

Yes..for struggling or lower-tier chapters, release figures are a huge pressure that are unnecessary. Even when that chapter DOES invite back the maximum number of girls to the next round, they can still be pressured to take Crazy Candy, which is completely unfair. I would love to see them force this on the top chapter at a campus - for those PNMs, their chance of getting a bid there can be about the same as at a lower tier chapter - zero.

But are they necessary to advance in rush and/or receive a bid?? (I know I'm asking TMI, just pointing up your wording). I mean, I know there are DG chapters at IUP and Penn State and I have a VERY hard time believing that the majority of those rushees have recs before rush starts. They just aren't used a lot in these parts and if your girls were restricted to only rushees who had recs, the chapters would be screwing themselves.

Because the PNM sucks and she doesn't want to put her name on something recommending her?

Because she doesn't know the PNM from Adam and she doesn't want to recommend someone who she knows nothing about?

If an alumna knows a PNM is not a good candidate for membership, it would seem like filling out a rec is even more important.

And in the second instance, you could at least pass along the information that you did have, particularly if it's a campus that doesn't have potential new members fill out a ton of information. I don't think anyone is advocating just filling out recs at random for strangers. But if you could easy get information of benefit to the chapter and the girl, is it really asking that much? I'm also kind of cynical because I don't think chapters pay that much attention to who recommends candidates anyway unless they are current active members or recent alumnae. But filling our a RIF with honest information about how you know the candidate or where you got your info. isn't really putting yourself out there that much, but it might help the chapter a lot.

I am confused, it seems like AA was addressing a question that wasn't asked..."Why would a chapter member say 'you don't need recs'?" My guess is that a chapter member at a competitive school would say that if she WANTS the girl asking the question to be cut.

Oh, and alums might also not want to fill out recs because they just plain don't want to bother. Not everyone gives a crap about that sort of thing.

I would never fill out a rec or write a letter of recommendation or even introduction for a woman I didn't know personally.

I think the rec forms and what is required on them varies from GLO to GLO. Some forms ask for info as well as whether or not the alum would recommend them for membership. Other forms are filled out only if the member recommends the pnm for membership.

I probably wouldn't think about it if I weren't in a region where it's a big deal. But knowing how valuable they can be for the girls and knowing how it could help a chapter, it seems worthwhile. (But I probably went the first eight or ten years out of school not writing any and really only started doing a bunch in the last few years. Oddly, I think GC made me more likely to think about writing them.)

I would never misrepresent how well I knew a PNM, but I've written them for people with varying levels of closeness to me, and to be honest, how well does the average teacher (or friend's parent) know a kid that she thinks she knows personally?

I didn't realize this. What do alumnae whose groups are in the second category do if someone really sketchy is rushing? It would take a lot for me to make contact with a chapter to say something negative, but if it ever happened, there's an option on the form to not recommend.

In Pi Phi there's several levels of recommendation. There's the just plain NO RIF, which is really unusual to get.

Then there's the standard "recommend" and "highly recommend." There's also an info only rec... Depending on the alum, sometimes they'll recommend on info only (having the philosophy that the chapter should discern if the PNM is qualified and they don't want to prevent someone from joining), but normally an info-only rec doesn't really do much because it can't be used as the rec and the chapter will have to pursue other options if it wants to bid the PNM.

But even the info-onlys probably provide more information to the chapter in advance than not getting one would or verifies other information that the chapter might consider in MS.

So while they aren't completely useful, they probably aren't a total waste of time, right?

If they are a total waste of time, someone ought to the the word out to the alumnae since they are wasting their own time too.

LOL - they weren't that useful to my chapter because we had deferred recruitment anyway, so it was really all about that. We only need RIFs to save us the work of getting them an alternate way. We already knew all the girls!

But yes, you're probably correct that they're extremely useful to chapters in other situations.

Would it look too ungrateful if you all put that info out there?

If you could figure out a tactful way to say, because we have deferred recruitment, we really only need authentic recommendations, rather than information about the PNMS.

Do most people who send the recs know when you all do recruitment? I know that sounds kind of dumb, but it really wouldn't surprise me if a lot of people who do batches of recs on recent graduates think in terms of sending them out in August (but at least those would be from people who actually know the PNMs).