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I have a question, I know that sometimes chapters at schools like UGA who DO have spring openings have opted not to fill them via informal/COB and just wait for formal.
Are chapters able to "opt out" of this spring recruitment, or does everyone HAVE to participate? |
What I've heard is that it's mandatory for everyone. Perhaps a collegian can fill us in though.
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Due to the smaller anticipated numbers for spring recruitment, I have heard that chapters may not require 100 percent participation from their actives. For example, some houses may have just their sophomores, new initiates and some representatives from their leadership run the parties. This is a great opportunity for new members to learn the ropes for recruitment before the chaos of Formal recruitment when the numbers are so much larger. If Spring recruitment becomes a permanent feature, it might reduce the numbers going through in the fall.
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I can see where this may benefit the chapters who regularly have some form of spring recruitment, as they are most likely very familiar with informal recruitment strategies and such. This is potentially a good experience for other chapters though, as they will learn about COB/informal.
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UGA Spring Recruitment
The facts as I understand them:
1. Every chapter will participate 2. There are currently about 150 women registered 3. There is a limit to the number of actives that each chapter can have participate on their side. 4. There will be a quota. 5. Only chapters below total will be allowed to take quota additions. 6. The purpose (as previously stated) is to provide an opportunity for those women who were accepted for this semester to join a GLO. 7. The recruitment is strictly no frills - no decorations, no songs, etc. |
No songs? How do you do this with everyone participating and not have ANY songs? :)
How does the limiting the number of actives participating work? Just curious. |
Each chapter can have 50 actives present if I remember correctly. It's up to the chapters to figure out how they pick the 50.
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Odd as in different - yes. But I wish NPC would consider having a quota of rushers - so often smaller chapters struggle in recruitment because as soon as the door opens pnms are confronted with a much smaller group of actives. The question for them is too often "What's wrong with them?", and it leads to problematic tent talk.
If there were a set number (perhaps determined by the number of pnms divided by the number of sororities, factoring in the number of parties per round?) of active recruiters - wow. It would enable all chapters to compete on an even playing field. |
I think it sounds like a great thing. I've never understood how actives managed to juggle deferred recruitment with class and labs and homework and other clubs and organizations. This means (potentially) not every girl will have to be present for every event. Maybe some gcers with deferred recruitment can explain how it's supposed to work?.. I just can't imagine my usual workload on top of recruitment - I had a hard enough time with fall bid day!
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I can see where the limited # of actives would be a good thing, but on the other hand, I can see where it might play havoc with membership selection and girls getting selected that a good number of women don't know or like. Anytime I've heard of limiting the number, it's only for the first round (often because of space constraints as much as trying to equalize things). |
Deferred Recruitment
Vanderbilt has deferred rush. It used to last 2 weeks long so we did not have rush activities every night. In addition, we would come back to school early from Christmas Break so at least the first part of rush took place before school started. It was the beginning of the semester and it was over before you really got loaded down with work. I never really remember it being a problem. Of course, the number of girls going through rush is smaller than at larger schools so the number of parties were limited. This was all about 30 years ago! Don't know if they still do it the same or not.
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Recruitment at Vanderbilt is now one week only, with half the week before classes start.
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So, when I read the one statement about "rush is smaller", the first thing I thought was "how small can they possibly go?!" |
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But even with every member of the chapter participating, you have to rely on each other - you can't meet more than a few pnms per party. The reservations some of you have are in fact problems right now - especially at some of the larger recruitments, where, let's face it, the vast majority of chapter members are making their choices for membership selection based on what their sisters say, not on having personally met each pnm.
I think every chapter member should still get to vote for membership selection - and it may be that the chapter wants to rotate members so more women get to meet pnms. It could work - and it could be good for chapters, too. Every chapter has women who are great conversationalists and rushers, and women who aren't comfortable doing that. Some can cook, some perform, some paint scenery - I'm not saying to not havethe whole chapter participate. It would be especially good for those recruitments which are held during classes - missing recruitment would not be the crisis it sometimes is now. |
This may seem odd too, but I'm not sure the benefit to smaller chapters is that great by limiting the number of rushers.
Sure, the smaller chapters don't appear smaller right off the bat, but you might have a better chance competing with a whole cross section of a chapter than with just the top 50 (or whatever) most socially gifted. From a pure pragmatic standpoint though, I think you'd have to limit numbers just so not to overwhelm the PNMs. I'm assuming that the PNMs will be broken into groups, and with only 150-200 (or whatever) and 17 groups that you could go to, you don't need 4 member to 1 PNM ratio. My guess is that it's to really make people do an informal recruitment event rather than just recycle parties from formal. |
The problem with appearing much smaller is you never get over that initial "Oh, they must have a problem or they wouldn't be so small". Meeting a cross-section then isn't an issue - pnms too often simply won't give them a chance. Some chapters have used members from near-by chapters to fill out their numbers - I hate that. You need to be meeting girls who might be your sisters.
It's just an idea - I think we all are looking ways for ways to improve recruitment. I would be interested in knowing if any school does do it that way, and if that made a difference. |
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You would HOPE that wouldn't happen and that the chapter would have enough brains to pick a cross section of sisters who are different in all ways, but with chapter politics sometimes you never know. Depending on the chapter's/GLO's voting policies, who knows, they might not be able to rotate sisters - maybe some of them say that you have to see a PNM twice to vote on them. I don't know, I'm just throwing that out there. |
recruitment at uga
Many of the houses will use their most recent initiates - theoretically this should be a cross section of the house, and with Fall pledge classes at roughly 60 for most houses, the numbers are right. I think the idea of seeing roughly the same number of girls at each house is great - should benefit the smaller houses.
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Can somebody who's on campus tell me if women who rushed in the fall need to get new recs for this recruitment?
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On the other hand, if I were in charge of selecting for a chapter who would attract for my group this spring, I'd go with the folks who I thought had the strongest interpersonal skills and represented the chapter in a outstanding way. These folks might not be absolutely new to recruitment. I think most chapters are going to do very well no matter how they decide to select participants and going with one fall pledge class avoids any hurt feelings. There are pluses an minuses to any method of selecting them. |
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I tend to think that bringing in members from other chapters actually hurts a chapter. The women may be passionate about XYZ, but they can't speak to the experience of being a member of THAT chapter, which is alot of what the PNMs will be asking about. The women from other schools can't talk about how fun the mixer with ___ fraternity was, or why they do _____ for the local philanthropy event. That leads PNMs to wonder "Why are some of the girls at XYZ from different schools, and the girls at AAA, BBB, etc. all from the same school?" |
Agreed. I've never know bringing in other chapter's members to work. (But of course, my experience is limited.)
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That seems like it might help if you had enough actual chapter members to still rush girls. When you've got 70 or so PNMs per party, as I think you would at UGA for first round (1200/17), I think all the chapter have 70+ members. So if you brought in some members from other chapters to seem as big and the party as full as others would be, maybe? I honestly don't know what they do these days in terms of door chants or whatever, but I can remember all of us assembling in the foyer. If we only had 100 girls and other groups had 150+, the first impression was still different even if PNMs liked the members they met. With girls from other campuses to swell that first assembly, you could avoid that and still only really have PNMs meet your chapter. It's still a little bait and switch and for that reason undesirable, but when you're dealing with first impressions carrying a lot of weight, I'm not going to judge. |
The chapter I advise is at a small D2 state school so I assume that UGA would be even more competitive and have a larger spring recruitment. Another concern of mine about limiting the number of actives during recruitment is this:
We have to release significant PNMs after the first day thanks to the RFM. I understand that there is a certain level of trust that sisters have when making decisions to release PNMs (many decisions can be made based on black and white issues such as year in school, grades, etc.) but having only a small fraction of the chapter meet women on one day seems like it would be unfair to both the PNM and the chapter as there would be so few people who got to meet the PNM before a decision had to be made. At least by having more actives in the room, they can gauge body language or recognize a face as "that girl that sat behind me in church" and potentially give the PNM a better shot at finding a home because she had more exposure (albeit silent) to the entire chapter and not just a small cross section of those selected to recruit. |
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Struggling for numbers here is just kind of relative, I guess. Sure, if you had a chapter of 30, you'd need them all. |
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we should keep in mind that with more than 1000 PNMs at UGA for formal and the nature/quality of the photos girls send in, I'm not sure the chapter really does always completely recognize everyone they know in real life until the actual parties. And unless you're talking about limiting the number of rushers to under what it would take to single rush, there are girls who wouldn't be busy with PNMs who can float and met girls, but there'd be triple this number if you didn't limited rushers. I understand your point about the issues of MS at large recruitments, but I'm not sure that limiting rushers wouldn't make the problem even worse. For informal, I don't think it's a big deal and with the relatively small size of the PNM pool might actually keep it from being awkward and overwhelming for the PNMS. I suspect they will still have actual conversations with the same number of members they would have in formal. |
I don't think it would be needed, or work, at every campus. I do think there are situations where it would, and one thing I like about NPC offering different kinds of recruitment is the idea that different campuses needed different approaches. I just think limiting rushers would be one possible approach to help some chapters at some campuses.
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For those interested, the schedule and details (including some FAQs) are up on the UGA Panhellenic site:
http://www.uga.edu/panhellenic/recruit/index.html January 25 – Online registration closes January 29 – Informational meeting at 5:00 p.m. in Tate Theater, Tate Student Center January 31 & February 1 – Open House events at ALL chapters February 3-5 – Round Two events February 6 – Round Three events (PNMs only attend up to three events) February 8 – Bids extended by Panhellenic from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. (PNMs pick up bids in the Greek Life Office) February 8 – New Member Activities at sorority houses: New Member Breakfast/Brunch (12:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.) ETA: How many events will I attend during Recruitment? During the first two days of Open House events, you will visit all 17 chapters for 15 minutes each. This will give you a chance to see what all of the chapters are like. For Round Two, you will be allowed to attend 30-minute scheduled events at the chapters which invite you to Round Two events. You will then select up to three chapters you would most like to visit for Round Three events. Round Three events will be 45 minutes long and you may attend up to three events. After Round Three, you will rank in order the chapters you would most like to join. |
Some FAQs from the website:
What if I am already friends with members of a specific chapter? We encourage you to keep an open mind towards all of our 17 chapters as each one has great things to offer. It is important to know that the opinion of one chapter member cannot promise you membership into a certain chapter or prevent you from joining a certain chapter. Additionally, no sorority member should invite you to a Pre-Recruitment event (luncheon, tea, etc) or promise you any future connections with the chapter she belongs to (invitations to Recruitment events, a bid, etc). This is inappropriate and unfair to you – any such actions should be reported to the Panhellenic Advisor or a member of the Panhellenic Executive Board. What if I am a legacy? If you have a mother or sister who is a member of a sorority, you are considered a legacy to that sorority. Some sororities also consider granddaughters, nieces and cousins to be legacies. Panhellenic has no policies regarding legacies because each sorority has its own policy. If you are a legacy, it is important for you to consider your compatibility with the group and not feel obligated to a group because of your family members. Chapters vary from year to year and from campus to campus, so basing your decision on the experience of a relative would be unfair to you. What about recommendations? Recommendations (recs) are letters or statements from an alumna recommending a PNM for membership into a sorority. Panhellenic is not facilitating a process for recommendations for Spring Recruitment, they will handled internally by each sorority. The site also includes a list of email addresses for the person who is in charge of recs at each chapter (I'm assuming they're the VPs of Recruitment) |
thanks ksuviolet06...you rock!
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