Thanks Carnation - I must have missed that - I need to look at the Rec and Legacy introduction forms again! I thought both had indicated only daughters and sisters. I filled out a ton of them but don't want to be incorrect again.

I guess this means I should still keep my badge to pass down given that there's still hope for me to have another Pi Phi in the family someday! But of course I'm really "jumping the gun", I don't even have granddaughters yet. LOL

Step-daughters but not step-sisters? Huh, that seems odd.

I love this thread! Because it is so true - legacies are important to all of our organizations for so many reasons. What surprises me is that at schools with tons of legacies (lots of PNM's to pick from as potential new sisters) only a small amount are actually pledged. Come on girls, if you have your pick from 200 legacies and have a large quota (80-100) you cannot tell me that at least 20 of them wouldn't be fit as well as a terrific asset for your chapter! You are blessed with a wealth of choices.
Hey Kappas... a question for you, I read something about a special effort you have made to encourage more pledging of legacies (along the lines of this thread) - is this true? One SEC chapter proudly announced after recruitment that they had a high percentage of legacies at preference. That was impressive!

Also - I want to apologize to everyone now for any grammatical errors or misspellings I may have in my posts - I'm posting with 4 year old twins underfoot - so I have to be FAST! I just noticed one above - darn!

Agree!

I'd love to know if the Kappas have made a special effort and how it worked.

I do:two and I hope the baby on the way is one too to even up the boys and girls! But their moms keep propagandizing by getting them owl and panda stuff.;)

I have 3 more daughters who can rush but none of them are currently considering universities with Pi Phi. @@##!

A great print for all your granddaughters' nurseries especially if you can change the pencil into an arrow...
http://www.briandemeter.com/images/f..._owl_thumb.jpg

My guess is that if it is step-sisters who grew up together, it would count, but if they grew up separately it wouldn't? It does seem kind of odd though!

Aieee! Perfect! Maybe I could put it on the wall in the playroom! Of course, I'd have to put a lion in the picture plus a crown on one of the animals too!

Granted this isn't my person opinion, because I would have died if I wasn't offered a bid from my family sorority but isn't the issue for some chapters is that they take all the legacies and are so "exclusive" others are not given a chance? It is just a sticky topic because this is half a New York Times article on Southern White Supremacy. There are always those hard luck stories where a nice sweet girl was cut but that helps you in life, we have to remember she will find friends and the sorority of her own. I am trying to see things openly as I have fought for one girl who others didn't like but all I can say is it's life and God has a plan. Im almost 21 so I can say you gravitate to the girl with the "red heel" D'orsay shoes or the one you know who is a cheerleader at your school so some girls do slip through. Also not every legacy has the same personality as her mom and young college girls haven't built that loyalty our mother's have to even the more "odd" sister and it comes down to catty reasons girls are cut. I think we always look back and see a legacy or other young lady and say wow she should have been our sister and this only educates us on how to better select sisters, in a more honest and true scale.

1. RUN ON SENTENCES MAKE MY HEAD HURT.
2. QFP.
3. Plural, not possessive.
4. WTH?

WTF are you talking about? Have you been drinking early?

Your family has its own sorority?

Bless your heart.

I'm glad my group does not have to go through all this stress. If you are a legacy, you will most likely get a bid. I don't know how all fraternities work, I would hope it be that way though.

Why? If that legacy doesn't fit with the chapter, why force a group to give him a bid?

This is a thread about NPC legacies in the sorority recruitment forum. I don't think how fraternities handle legacies has any relevance.

Oops, sorry about that. Carry on :)

Still hungover from last nite :)

Exaggeration aside, it's interesting to speculate which schools/chapters really do have the largest legacy-to-quota ratio. Indiana makes sense because of its quota system -- and some of the older chapters have a smaller number of beds. I imagine the organizations at Texas that have lots of other chapters in the state would have to be up there too.

I'm still seeing very few legacies get bids at their legacy houses at the more competitive schools. You guys who've been involved at the schools with the mega-pledge classes (80 and up): are your sororities pledging more legacies?

I know three girls who pledged their mother's sororities last year (Chi O, Zeta and Alpha Chi Omega), but I really am seeing and hearing more and more about girls getting dropped by their legacy chapters...UNLESS they have a bio sister in a sorority and attend the same school while sis is still an undergrad.

I had three PNMs (at different schools) one year who were in that situation. All three were dropped after second round by every chapter except the one their bio sisters were members of.

I have long noticed that bio sisters on the same campus usually pledge the same sorority. For years, I assumed it was family thing, but now I wonder. Does the younger sister pledge because it's the sorority she truly wants, or is it because she wasn't given any other options? Hmmmm....

Me too.

I was in that situation. I technically wasn't given a choice since everyone cut me after I asked them all if they knew my sister the AOII (PNMs, don't do that.) But, depending on how close the sisters are in age, there may be a feeling of loyalty to the sister that supersedes the process. I honestly would have felt really weird being in another sorority than my sister. Do I think I would have been given a chance at another group had I not given them the impression I was all in at AOII? Sure... My campus LOVED to poach other groups legacies! I think it is really hard to draw conclusions without talking to the girls about their experiences.

That was the climate at FSU in the late 70's early 80's but that has not been the case for a some time. What I am seeing now is that chapters are not willing to take a chance on a legacy, especially if the legacy chapter is a chapter that is popular with the PNMs. The best chance the legacy has is to not be invited back to her legacy group early in the recruitment process, so that other groups see that she is now "fair game."

At Indiana, at least for us, if we extended a bid to every legacy that registered for recruitment, it would easily be half our new member class. However with now 22 chapters, it's not uncommon for girls to be legacies to more than one chapter, and not uncommon for legacies to cut their legacy chapters.

That's FSU. I think we should be really clear that at really competitive recruitments this may be an issue. Other locations it probably is not.

That's why i prefaced my statement "at FSU"

I know what you meant, but the original discussion was not about FSU is why I countered back. You said my statement was like FSU in the 70s and 80s, which could confuse PNMs that it is was like all recruitments in the 70s and 80s but has now changed. I just wanted to make that clear.

Back in the day it was much easier to keep legacies, both yours and other groups', around until right before prefs even if you weren't really that interested in them. Sometimes the extra rounds would give those PNMs a chance to wow a chapter so it would work in their favor. Now with RFM and its required massive cuts, if you're a strong chapter, you simply don't have the luxury of keeping around PNMs you're initially not too interested in and more legacies are dropped as soon as allowable by the organization.

I went through recruitment at one of the most competitive schools last year and was cut by all of my legacies after Philanthropy round. I know that my mom was shocked - she didn't realize that because it was so competitive and there were so many legacies (seriously, I think there were two others in my Rho Chi group alone) that it was absolutely not a guaranteed bid. I know that she was upset because she told me she "Always thought I'd go Chi O" and knew that I really liked them during rush. She thought that because she did everything right - did the legacy introduction form, had her little and my cousin (an alumna of that particular chapter) write me recs - I had a really good shot.

I was prepared, though - I knew that unless I really impressed them, they would probably drop me just because of numbers. I'm an out-of-state student and they traditionally pledge a higher level of in-state girls, I didn't know anybody in the chapter...I just saw it coming. I would have absolutely loved to be a Chi O (and honestly still love the chapter), but for whatever reason, it just wasn't in the cards.

My two grandmothers' houses dropped me after Philanthropy too, but I didn't like their chapters nearly as much as my mom's - and they'd already told me that it wouldn't upset them if I pledged elsewhere. It was a little hard to find that they all dropped me, but it all worked out in the end.

I do think that having three legacies may have hurt me a little...of course I don't know anything about other chapters' membership selection, but I know that it had to have been a little discouraging. My chapter wouldn't necessarily drop someone in my position (obviously they didn't drop me), but I know that I was a real "get" - they thought that because I had three "ready made" connections already that I'd choose one of them. Luckily, they didn't give up. :) But because cuts are so heavy, I can see that being an easy reason to cut someone.

When my niece went through at a competitive PAC 12 school with a sitting sister I told her not to list her legacy status on the recruitment form. It also helped that my 2 nieces look nothing alike. She had a very good recruitment. I don't think she would have pledged the same Chapter as her sister had her sister not been in that particular Chapter. I think there was some pressure from sister and mom and dad.

The sitting sister legacy is a hard one. At my campus I would say 9 out 10 sisters end up in the same house as their sister BUT I have seen a couple of times where they do not go together.

You know how a lot of the time, twins are either together constantly or poles apart? That's how it worked with sitting sister legacies at my school. One of our sisters had a horrible relationship w/ her bio sister and we would have been more shocked if she HAD pledged us.

Old, but I went back to read...

Very timely. Several different opinions, all thoughtful, on legacies! Except when they veered off about cookies and political correctness!

I see just the opposite. Most collegians I know aren't thinking marriage and kids; they're thinking career and making a mark on the world. Maybe the newly married young alumnae have this great vision, but I just don't see it among women I know.

I cannot fathom even having bought my daughter clothes in sorority colors, or dressing her in anchors. The only immediate family member I have now who's a legacy doesn't get dressed in pink and green, and might not even know what sorority her oh-so-southern Alabama mother calls home. She didn't a couple of years ago anyway.

I think pushing our daughters toward our sorority is so far from letting them be who they are as to be laughable. Our dreams simply don't matter; theirs do.

From all the various legacy-policy and rec-policy threads, I think I'm in the minority her on GC, but I wouldn't bet on that being true throughout the alumnae world.

"Pushing" isn't how I would describe daughters growing up knowing of their mother's (or other relative's) sorority. Growing up, my children all had t-shirts with my alma mater on them. That didn't mean they weren't free to decide where to go to college, but they grew up knowing I loved my school, came with me on visits to campus, and thus they were more familiar with it than they otherwise would be. It's fairly common for parents to do that, and I don't think anyone regards it as sinister. I see parents who buy their children clothes and toys emblazoned with the parents' choice of professional sports team. It's about sharing something you love with your children, not forcing them to be exactly like you.

As for my sorority, I sang them sorority songs because while rocking colicky babies for literally hours on end, I went through my entire repertoire. It wasn't some sort of brainwashing. I took pictures of both of my daughters as babies in pledge ribbons on the off-chance they would pledge my sorority; I was lucky in that 1 of the 2 did, but it wasn't because it was my sorority. It was because it was right for her. Obviously, if you look at my signature, I was thrilled, as was my mother. It is undeniably special. But had she chosen a different group, I would have been 100 % behind her choice.