No, also first cousin once removed. Second cousins have a great-grandparent in common--their parents are first cousins.

Sorry - forgot CHILD of your parent's first cousin. I know several of my second cousins, and tons of first cousins once removed, and lawd help me, second cousins once removed. We're a fertile family.

Thanks for the clarification! Honeychile does know best. :)

Our family is not that close, so given that definition, I don't even know my second cousins!

My family is just tiny and so we have to know our cousins be it 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc.

I can only tell you what I would want my organizations to do, which might be some or all of the following:

1. Roll our eyes, talk about what an idiot the author is, and remember that our organization is going to continue strong decades after this smarmy freshman journalist graduates and the newspaper piece is forgotten. In other words, sticks and stones.
2. Demand that the paper print a retraction.
3. Write letters to the editor and/or op-eds correcting all the nasty lies.
4. March outside the newspaper offices at a busy time with signs condemning their poor work.
5. Pass out flyers and put up posters around campus setting the record straight.
6. Go to a rival publication or campus radio/TV station to set the record straight.

But deliberately try to bankrupt the newspaper? No. I love my university, and it needs a daily student newspaper, just as it needs a football team, an orchestra, and a student government. Student newspapers' eternally rotating leadership will inevitably make some stupid decisions. Going for the corporate death penalty when it happens would be killing a flea with a bazooka. It makes me look silly, and I could end up hurting innocent bystanders.

Things would confuse other people when I mentioned my family (my dad's side is just me & sister for the most part) as we have cross generational bonding due to age. My great aunt & great uncle are only a couple years older than my mom so I usually never use great and say aunt & uncle. My mom was the oldest of 7, but I came along later, so my 1st cousins' kids I am closer to in age. That's the same generational placement that makes my second cousin old enough to be my dad, but my first cousin once removed my age peer.

Before I moved away from the big city and met people who had rural backgrounds, or were Mormons, I was pretty much the only kid who knew those degrees and removals of their family. My dad's family threw that way off though as my grandparents married and had him late, and he had me later in life, but weren't farmers. When one has 10 or so kids the first born is usually having their first born when their last sibling is being born. It ended up that my maternal great grandmother was a year or two younger than my paternal grandmother, which further became skewed as she got married at 14 to my 27 year old maternal great grandfather.

Also way creepy thing (but normal at the time and still in some world cultures) I found in my background: my father's mother's grandfather married a woman who died with no offspring, so he married her sister. So my great great great aunt and grandmother are crossed on my family tree.

Cousin at EKU enjoyed the first night!
*fingers crossed for her to have a successful recruitment*

that whole family/cousins thing has always been confusing to our family because my grandfather and his brother married two sisters. So my Dad has cousins from both sides of the family at once! ... now, go back and read carefully. My grandfather didn't marry his sister... people always seem to get that twisted.

Keep us posted. I would love to read her recruitment story.

The TCU schedule this year had one optional party at the end of days 2, 3, and 4. The sororities were able to choose whether or not they wanted to add their optional party each day based on their returns so that they could space the PNMs out more evenly.

From my observation, some houses used theirs and some didn't - and some used them one day but not others. I know we used ours all three days!

(I don't have exact numbers - sorry - but I arrived at hour house each evening right as the last party was starting so I saw which houses had members pouring out to go to dinner during that last time and which ones had PNMs standing in the tents outside. The way that TCU is set up, you can't see all the tents from one vantage point, so I didn't get to count houses....)

Alpha Gamma (Kappa Delta chapter) - Westminster College, MO achieved quota +7 (21):D

KKG and KAT also made quota but I don't have the exact numbers.

Zeta Tau Alpha at the University of South Carolina has 108 new members!

I think quota was 108.

I got Kappa at South Carolina today! They were who I went in wanting, so I'm excited. :)

My cousin at Eastern KY is a new member of
























KAPPA ALPHA THETA!!!!

She is so excited. Theta was her favorite throughout recruitment.
I'm so happy for you and all you Thetas have gained another awesome sister!

nittanygirl ~ congratulations to your cousin & to Theta @ EKU!

That's ThetaPrincess24's chapter! :)

Congrats on pledging Kappa, kbelle. Your username really fits now (k for Kappa, belle like in a South Carolina southern belle). :)

Love reading this thread! Just a little bit/piece from the West Coast--I've been poking around Facebook and have noticed quite a few seniors in the Facebook group for our university's recruitment this year (they are invited to join the group and write on the wall with questions, etc. after they register online). At our university it's common for sophomores and even juniors to rush (chapters either have a separate quota for juniors or juniors aren't counted in quota, not 100% sure), but it's not as common for seniors to rush. This year I know our house had one senior in our fall pledge class and a couple of other houses pledged 1 or 2 seniors each, but by the looks of this Facebook group, it looks like there are at least 10-15 seniors going through recruitment this year. Just a curiosity--has anyone else noticed a spike in seniors going through recruitment at their schools?

I think you're seeing the increase in seniors interested in recruitment due to the economy. Students aren't hurrying to finish a degree in four years so they can enter the job market. Often students are staying in school 5 years or longer to add minors or changing majors to something more economically friendly. In our area, many education majors are staying in longer to pick up different/additional certification areas in hopes of being more marketable. Business majors are picking up foreign languages to make them more marketable internationally, etc.

Yay, I didn't think of that! I like that. :)

I didn't know that! That's awesome to hear!

I usually just lurk around here and don't post, but I thought this story from the SK field consultant at Washington State was so touching I just had to share!

http://sklconsultants.wordpress.com/...a-sigma-kappa/

I teared up a little when I read this. What a wonderful story! And I'll say it again - I love quota additions!

I love happy Sigma Kappa stories!

The LC who wrote this comes from my chapter. Proud of her, proud of the Alpha Gammas!

One heart, one way!

Now that an appropriate amount of time has passed...

I lovelovelove this year's pledge class for my chapter. <3 it's a little smaller than some girls were hoping for, but we have a lot of really strong, dedicated girls this year and I think it's going to work out great!!

Plus, I'm super-happy - I hadn't gotten the chance to meet one of the new girls in recruitment, but I got to show her around today after our bid day pictures and we clicked immediately and eeee, I'm just all-around happy. This is going to be an awesome, awesome semester.

good for you, crosscaravan!

Haha! Thank you. I've been logging in and wanting to post that for days now, but I finally got the OK so I spammed it. Eeee.

Things are going really, really well. I hope everyone else is just as happy with their new members. :)

What I learned this year on the "other side" of recruitment:

PNMs, if you're interested, show it!!!! I met a girl during the round before preference, she was very nice and polite, but generally did not seem interested in going Chi O: she didn't ask any questions, and gave pretty minimal answers to my questions. She did not seem to want to open up. But we decided to invite her to pref anyway, and I wound up preffing her. About 15 minutes into the party, she started crying hysterically. I figured she was upset at having been cut elsewhere, but then she told me she was so glad to have found a sorority like chi omega where she felt at home and would be accepted for who she was etc and if she did get a bid she was so excited that we would be sisters. I was dumbfounded but incredibly touched!! I wish she had shown her interest earlier, I would have communicated that to my sisters before pref. So PNMs, you obvs shouldn't say "omggggg I love XYZ SOOO much!" at round 1, but asking questions and showing your excitement for sisterhood goes a long way in your recruitment. If we think you want to be here, we want to know that!

Rush Crushes: I didn't understand this concept. How can you fall in love with a girl after 10 minutes of conversation? But oh boy, it happens. There was one PNM whom my chapter LOVED, and on pref night we found out she had dropped and we were all crushed. PNMs, chapters are inviting you back because they want you to be there, especially by pref round. We see something in you that we love- nobody is forcing us to invite you back (usually). We genuinely really really want you there and when you drop out of recruitment it makes us sad :( Always always give chapters 2nd and 3rd chances. You might be surprised just how at home you feel when 100+ women are ecstatic to see you on our lawn for bid day!

I'm hearing from other sources that cuts are being made based on the rushee's expressed interest. Other than the girls who are being outright cold, this seems kind of new to me. The chapters are trying to find the girls who want them right from the get-go. This is no time to play it cool! The trick is to find that balance between expressing interest and gushing. A simple, "I've really enjoyed being here today and hope to come back tomorrow" could go a lot further than you think! But make sure it's authentic.

With RFM, the strongest recruiting chapters don't have invitations to waste on girls who may not rank them high enough.

Unfortunately, some of this is out of a PNM's control...if she went to X high school with all of the girls in ABC, XYZ and DEF may write her off too soon, even if she says she loves them.

HannahXO, did she pledge?

I was excited because I thought that FINALLY someone from my hometown had pledged AGD because she suddenly became FB friends with some AGDs.

Good news....she pledged...Bad news, it wasn't AGD, lol.

(It was Phi Mu. The other hometown girl pledged XO but I figured that out from her FB profile pic,lol.)

Luckily, yes! But it would have been bad if she wasn't high enough on the bid list and I could have changed that if I had known she was so interested early on.

I told you that you were going to love it! I like the stories about your retail job, too -- too, too funny! :)

Throwing in update in for the University of Pittsburgh. Recruitment starts tomorrow and about 400 PNMs have registered. It's a record for Pitt and setting us up for an exciting week!

An article about North Carolina's 1st year using Upper Classman quota.

http://www.dailytarheel.com/index.ph..._upperclassmen

nice. thanks lanesig.

What the article doesn't mention is that although more women signed up for recruitment in 2011 than 2010, quota went down from 50 to 49. Of those 49, at least 11 had to be upperclassmen which meant that UNC managed to place far less freshman in 2011 than in 2010.

Just got back from bid day!!! my chapter took quota plus 6! giving us 29 beautiful new alphas :)

Congratulations.