I agree that you shouldn't have to sign bid cards IMMEDIATELY AFTER pref - it is such an emotional time. It's like agreeing to buy a new house while you're in labor.

I dropped out of formal recruitment for class, time, & work related reasons. When I had my schedule figured out, I contacted the Greek Advisor about a possible COB during the spring. He told me that there were 2 chapters still looking for members. Ironically enough, these 2 houses were on my top 3 list. I contacted the first house & was invited to watch Friends & eat pizza with the girls the next night. I did & enjoyed myself so much, I knew that I had found a home. A short while later, I received a bid & signed it while tearing up & was welcomed into my new home.
I cried more later in private b/c I was so happy. My fiance thought I was sad about joining but I had to explain to him that I had happy tears.


On a sad story, this one PNM 2 years ago wasn't happy with us b/c we were her second choice. She stayed & was initiated but dropped literally the day after initiation. She then wanted to inquire if XYZ sorority was still looking for new members. She literally collapsed when she found out that not only were they not looking, she could never join another NPC group after she'd been initiated into another group. She dropped out the next semester & I've never heard whatever happened to her since.

I'll just add/reiterate:

1. You should not have to sign your bid card IMMEDIATELY after pref. As Meat Loaf said, "Let me sleep on it."

2. You should be notified well in advance of bid day festivities if you did not receive a bid so you can get the hell out of Dodge or else hide somewhere away from all the commotion. I realize a lot of schools have moved bid day from Friday or Saturday to cut down on partying, but they're not thinking about the girls who DON'T get bids and would be well-served by having a weekend at home, or with their boyfriend, or someplace else, to lick their wounds. Bid day Sunday and going to class 12 hours later with everyone wearing letters? Eeeeeek.

3. Women should NOT be made to open their bids or meet their sisters for the first time in a public setting (i.e. "running" or "walking" to your group in the middle of campus, everyone opens bids at once in the student union, etc etc). Putting the pledges, the sorority members, and indeed the entire Greek system on display in this manner is barbaric. Period.

Question from an outsider/

Is that how it is done on some campuses? People post those videos of women running and so forth. Classmates, family, and friends sometimes line up the sidewalks to watch them. Is that the process of opening bid and running to their new sisters for the first time? As an outsider, I can see cons and pros to that approach.

/Question from an outsider

Yes, on some campuses that is how it is done.

Yes, Squeal Day is loads of fun for almost everyone, but can be difficult for the new members who did not get their first choice.

I think part of it stems from the pressure to always "maximize your options". While I of course think that girls should be made to maximize their options and rank all chapters after each round -- anyone who has read a good recruitment story can tell you that a first night flop can become a late week favorite -- making them do so after pref seems silly. If a girl would rather not be Greek than accept a bid to her second choice, she should not be forced to list that chapter on her card. In my opinion if she's that miserable, she's just taking up a spot for someone who really wants to be there. I think listing all chapters you visited on pref should certainly be encouraged, especially if girls leave with the "it's not for me but I didn't hate it" feeling, but forcing them to do so at the risk of being ignored by the matching process seems like a little much to me.

I also like the idea of the girls getting their bids in private or with their PX groups rather than in front of the sororities. That way the girls have some time to consider whether they are going to accept their bid, maybe cry a little bit and have a chance to think about it and pull themselves together, and get to talk it through with their PX or friends. The excitement of the big run is always incredible, but I hate to see girls so upset with their second choice when maybe someone else really wanted that chapter and ended up being cut or placed elsewhere.

We were forced to switch to this method my junior year because the university felt it was too disruptive to storm the dorms picking up new members. I raised hell at the president's council because a) it's stressful for the NM's who didn't get their first choices and b) it's stressful for the chapters that didn't make quota.

Prior to the switch, you picked up your bid in the union, and then returned to your dorm, and then a sister would call you to say what time you should be ready to be picked up. The sisters would show up in small groups and run down the hallway doing the sorority cheer, decorate your door, and give you a t-shirt to change into. Yes, it was loud, yes, it meant non-residents were tearing through the dorms on a random Sunday evening (or Monday, if it fell on Labor Day), but c'mon...you have one of the largest Greek systems in the country, suck it up, rest-of-the-university.

I was one of those girls who cried on bid night. Not because I didn't like my bid, I was on the other side of it.

We had two pref parties back then and I was matched with two girls who I really liked, but they were also going to chapters we didn't usually compete with. My first girl, I really really liked her. We had hit it off early in the recruitment process and I kept making sure to stop by and talk to her throughout. She had kept us to preference and her other chapter was one in a higher tier than us, not one we usually competed with. She came to us first and I was assigned to her. I did my best sell on her, she cried at the end of the party and hugged me. However, i knew she was going somewhere else, but I didn't know where. I thought I had done a great job. Second party, I had a girl who had consistently been at the top of our list. Her sister has just graduated from a chapter on our campus we didn't often compete with. I, again, thought the party had gone well. We connected and she cried. So fast forward to the next day when our VPM is reading our bid list and neither girl is on it. I was stunned. I admit it, I was hurt. More so by the first girl than the second, but still hurt. I cried a little, more out of frustration than anything. We were having bid night at a fraternity where one of my best friends was the president. For the first hour or so of the party, I stayed upstairs and played poker with the guys until I was over it.

Fast forward two weeks. I had a job at the mall and the first girl comes into my store specifically looking for me. She told me that her Rho Chi had come to her room first so she was still emotional and went with the tent talk, so she preffed the other chapter and put us second. She was upset because she didn't fit in with the chapter and especially her pledge class, all they did was party and that's not her. We stayed in touch until I graduated, she moved in sophomore year and was miserable. The second girl would have fit in with either chapter. She felt pressured to go to her legacy chapter and we saw each other often on campus.

These two experiences make me feel like girls should have to wait at least an hour to fill our their pref cards. This would give them time to really figure out which chapter(s) they really fit with and which one(s) they don't.

I was a Pi Chi (Rho Chi, Rho Gamma, whatever) my junior year of college. We had probably about 90 girls going through formal recruitment for 3 chapters. I told my Pi Chi group that my goal was for each of them to receive a bid. Luckily, that happened. My university smartly takes each girl in one at a time on bid day to give them their bid cards and t-shirts. Only then do they sign their bids. Sure, after pref they put their preference in terms of groups, but they don't sign until the next day. In our total recruitment group, only one did not sign her bid card. Because the office where you sign your cards are at the back of the student union, she was able to go back to her dorm quietly while everyone met in the common area after they got their bids. I think this allows for less disappointment, or at least if there is disappointment, you can deal with it quietly. We of course encouraged girls to at least go to the bid day activities and that they didn't have to go through pledging ceremonies if they didn't "feel" the connection after that day. Sure, it meant you couldn't go through recruitment for another year, but it's not like they were missing out on COB (because all groups were always over total after recruitment).

I do remember that I COB'd my sophomore year (there were only 5 open spots in my sorority at that time due to sisters studying abroad (they become inactive or alumnae if they do this)). I remember going to CB's and Tri Sigma's preference nights with a few other girls. I came back to my apartment and got onto AIM (before there was facebook) and a girl that was at CB's preference with me IM'd me and said she was so excited we were gonna be sisters. What? We hadn't even gotten our bid cards yet (we don't sign preference rankings during COB) and I had been to two houses, how could she know I was going CB? Well she had ONLY gone to CB's so she assumed we would be sisters. We talked about how the parties went, and while I agreed that I had a connection with CB sisters and everything went peachy, I was unsure. Frankly, at this point, I would've been happy either place that I went. Most people don't feel this way, but I had friends in both chapters and saw that they were dedicated to their philanthropies as well as being good sisters to each other.

My roommate came home soon after I got this message. She was a CB and we had a hard time during this week keeping silent about recruitment. Luckily we were both music majors so there was plenty more to talk about. Anyway, when she came home, she began to get ready to meet her sisters (bid activities were set to begin at 10 PM that night). I could tell she wasn't happy. Before I could ask her what was up, I got a knock on our door. It was the Greek advisor, handing out bid cards. She handed me mine. I thanked her, came back to my room to open the card. I was happy to see Tri-Sigma's bid card with the crest emblazoned on it and a hand written note on the inside extending a bid to me. That was when my roommate told me that while CB thought I was awesome (with a 3.9 GPA and loads of activities to my name), she mentioned that they thought I was "fake" and "stuck up".

Color me shocked because I had never been called that before in my life. Frankly, I was offended. I called my mother to tell her that I was happy that I was going to join Tri-Sigma, but that I was unhappy that I was labeled something that I was not, especially if that affected their decision to extend a bid to me. The Greek system at my school is small so if one chapter thinks one thing, it usually goes around pretty quickly and can ruin your reputation.

I came back in to find my roommate crying, sad that I wasn't going to be joining her sorority. I told her that it would be okay, that we would still be roommates, but jokingly told her that when greek week rolled around, all bets were off. She felt better and went to join her chapter.

I told the girl on IM where I received my bid and she was shocked. She told me good luck but was sad we weren't going to be pledge sisters. I dressed and went to meet my new sisters. They were so happy to see me- so many of them said "I was sure you were going to go to CB! We wanted you so badly but we were sure we weren't going to get you!" We had a great night that night and spent the next day tanning at one of the school's pools. We even had the entire chapter go to a tattoo salon where a few sisters got violet and sailboat tattoos. That night I went through our pledge ceremony with four other girls who would be my pledge class.

TL/DR: I was happy where I joined even if others were sure I was going another route. I wouldn't change it for the world.

Two years later, my roommate from that year turned her letters and pin in and dropped her affiliation. While her chapter has had some rough years, she felt that they were targeting the wrong type of girls for their chapter. She expressed this to me when were were Pi Chi's together. My chapter has maintained their standards and has always had quota + since I graduated.

:eek: I can't believe she would tell you that. With all the secrecy surrounding how new members are chosen telling you something like that is just tactless, rude, and likely violating sorority policy. Yikes.

She apparently was very upset about the matter resulting in her disaffiliation a year later. I think that right there is a sign that things are going down.

I "got" to hear what my sister's chapter said about me after they cut me. My sister had just graduated but still had several friends in the chapter, of course. I heard they didn't think I "would be a very enthusiastic member." Me, who has never stopped being involved since pledging in 1984. Anyway, I wasn't devastated and really think it would not have been the right place for me. I'm not NEARLY bitchy enough to have been one of them.:eek:

I'm glad I got to know because to me, even then, it told me they were clueless.

Well, I suppose we need to look over this before Bid Days start, even though I hope we won't need it.