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Thanks :)

Whoever did the QAs was not up to snuff - 10 quota additions with a total that small is completely out of line. To put it in perspective - they were allowed to QA 20% of sorority total. This would be like a sorority at Bama or another big school having 40 quota additions.

The smallest chapter needs to get on the horn w/ their national Panhel rep and/or recruitment poobah ASAP. They got screwed.

I have to respectfully disagree. We do not know this chapter nor it's history. It is entirely possible that they simply could not generate the return numbers to ensure quota. That is, say the PNMs could attend 2 prefs. They would need to have 2-1/2 quota attend their party to be sure they got quota. Anything less than that and it lessens exponentially. And PH should not keep women from pledging if they have a bid simply because one group cannot acheive quota unless it so low as to have it said that it was set so that group could "pledge quota." The other groups would still have taken way more women as there is no cap on QAs under RFM.

I wasn't talking about when quota was set, rather what quota was set at. Further explanation below.
For the sake of this discussion let's put Chapter Total aside and COR'ing up to Total. I'm only talking about Quota. Let's say at State U there are 6 chapters. If quota is set at 25 all chapters achieve quota. However, all except 1 get 10 quota additions. Wouldn't it be more fair to set quota at 35 and let the 1 chapter try to snap bid up to quota? This way ABC at least has a chance to grow it's size to be comparable with the others. If they make quota they can't issue anymore bids.

In this case scenario, yes, ABC has a little more chance to grow it's size, although there are no guarantees that they any of the women who dropped them earlier in recruitment will accept a snap bid anyway. You end up with more women who go without bids. The chapter has the advantage. You also have a lot of women who leave the process feeling very angry and upset with the Greek system as a whole.

The other way, more women get bids, so they aren't going around bad mouthing the Greek system on campus, but the one chapter doesn't get bigger. It's been a long time since I was directly involved with snap bidding, but I don't recall very many women taking up that option because there was a reason that the chapter doing the snapping was dropped from her schedule earlier on. I'd be REALLY curious to see numbers on how many snap bids are actually accepted and how many of those women get initiated. That would help shape my own opinion of which way is better.

Either way, it's very tough to be the chapter that is significantly smaller than the others and all of our groups have at least one of those somewhere in the country so I do think the policy makers are cognizant of that.

Zillini: Even if you did that, the one chapter is still below total and nothing is going to change that. Lowering quota so they can say they "got quota" isn't fair to them either in the long run as it's arbitrary. And it is definitely not fair to the women who are left out of process as a result. And as AGDee said, there may not be a pool of women for the smaller chapter to snap bid. Everyone left may be women they released and I can't see that they would lower their standards to take them at this point - nor that a woman would accept a bid from them if she had been previously released by them. COR is their only real option.

I still believe that the top priority for formal recruitment is to place as many qualified women as possible. Whatever scenario does that, even if it leaves my chapter on the lower end (which it has), then that's the one I want.

With this scenario, the end results are the same as if the quota was set at 25 and all but one got 10 quota additions. If the new quota is 35, then that group still only pledges 25 because if 10 more girls had wanted to join it, they would have been their quota additions. Raising quota only works if there are sufficient numbers to fill it. QA's are added to a group's bid list when they are (usually) the pnm's first choice, but failed to match up in regular bid matching.

My question about all this is if the release figures were utilized properly to begin with - i.e. if the larger chapters released the proper amount of girls. It just kind of sounds like they didn't.

I understand that placing as many rushees as possible is part of the RFM, but in this case it kind of flies in the face of NPC's attempt to put all sororities on a level playing field.

I definitely agree.

At my school, it was actually the "popular" chapters that would make exactly quota (or have fewer QAs) and the "middle" or "lower" chapters that would get the most QAs. This is because the "popular" chapters have to trim their bid lists to the point where it minimizes having a ridiculous number of QAs.

Now, I'll also mention that there's not a huge disparity among chapter size at my school (thanks to proper implementation of the RFM). Suiciding is a HUGE problem, so we don't end up with ridiculous amounts of QAs, which is why we can guarantee a match to a PNM who maximizes her options.

The chapters that don't make quota usually come close and/or COB to reach it. I do have a feeling that 1 or 2 of the 3 chapters that didn't make quota in 2007 when I was a Rho Gamma missed it because they over-released (since chapters are allowed to release more than the suggested number). I say it's only a feeling because I don't have proof; I just know that the chapters in question are considered desirable and I can't think of any other reason why they wouldn't make quota.

The only 3 PNMs who weren't placed with a chapter suicided the largest sorority on campus

And, I contacted someone at our national headquarters who is in charge of chapter numbers, so we'll see....

Valid points. I think I've gotten too used to mega-sized Recruitment where there is a sizable pool of quality women who were released or withdrew that could be snapped.

W&L continually did this and it annoyed the crap out of me. :(:mad:

Not only W & L but most campuses did at one time. I think the school where I advised didn't change till aout 10 years ago. I'm glad RFM changed that!

I'm actually wondering (based on the most recent recruitment at W&L) if they have finally changed.

My chapter asked them over and over again to change it and they wouldn't. They always said that doing it that way placed more PNMs in their first choice....

I am not understanding release figures.

The way it was explained to me, if you're told to invite back 95 out of the 100 PNMs who came to you the night before, even if some of the scores fall below what the membership selection group thinks should be dropped from your invite list, you still have to invite them back? You can't cut the so-called "undesirables" because you have to make numbers?