To suggest that a school do something to fix a problem in the Greek system that isn't a Greek problem, but a human problem, sends the FWAP FWAPs off in my mind. I can just imagine if I would have told my parents that the sorority I joined wasn't as popular as another one and didn't have as many mixers. Their response would have been something along the lines of "well then, why did you pick it, dumbass?"

Her daughter received a bid to a sorority. She is happy with it. Why on earth, then, are there complaints?

I guess I'm looking at Dartmouth differently since they have a whole year until recruitment, and a year to actually meet individuals and mature a bit to know that people can be full of it. Maybe it is related to high/over achieving and the push to be THE BEST at everything since Dartmouth is an Ivy.

< when it comes to subject matter, kinda pulling off onto a frontage road here >

Just wondering if guys at Dartmouth who don't get bids from the house(s) they consider desirable are as upset as women who drop out of recrutiemnt seem to be? I'm guessing that the fraternities also are perceived to have tiers? And I can't imagine tha every guy gets a bid to the house he really would like to be in?`

Then again if they have a informal system like most fraternity rushes I know of, they wouldn't know if they got a bid or not until the end. And men are more likely to form stronger opinion about what org they would like to join because their contact isn't restricted.

The fraternity recruitment process is only two days long, with the majority of bids being given out on the first night. It's less common for guys to be upset over the house they get a bid to (since they generally only rush one house, and its their choice), but guys definitely get cut from their house of choice. And, one of the downfalls of fraternity rush (since everyone seems to be suggesting that sororities should use fraternity-style recruitment) is that if you're cut from the house you "shook out" at, it's super unlikely that you'll get a bid anywhere else. At least with sorority rush, when you get cut from a house in round 1, you still have other houses as possibilities. I'm not saying sorority rush is better than fraternity rush, I just don't think that converting to an informal, fraternity-style system is the perfect solution to our "recruitment problems".

One of the big differences is the PR. Firstly, the newspaper doesn't seem to to seek out the numbers (e.g. number of men who didn't get a bid) in the same way they do with sorority rush. BUT, a huge difference is that the men who don't get bids DON'T talk about it. Instead of complaining (loudly and openly), most guys will deny that they even rushed if they didn't get a bid.

I want to start this off by saying that Dartmouth was my dream school but I wasn't their dream applicant because they wait listed me and I ended up with my second choice university. That being said most of the comments on this thread inply that a) girls unhappy with their rush results should just shut the f**k up and b) the university should but out of the operation of the greek system and let the greeks do whatever they want. With respect to point a, at my university the school newspaper runs articles after every recruitment about how rush sucks. No matter how much we all want these articles to go away, they are not going to. We are just going to have to live with them and if they have valid points try to change the way we run rush. With respect to b, universities have a valid interest in the greek system and how it is run because to the extent the greek system contributes to a toxic social enviornment, the classic example is Vanderbilt, the university has a big interest in trying to change that because it does the university no good to have a large number of pissed off students, some of whom will just transfer out and bring down the graduation rate and no elite university wants that.

Actually that is a huge change as part of RFM. Accept/regret is too cut and dried. If a PNM has a negative preconceived notion about a Chapter based on popularity, campus rep, tent talk, or even "I know one XYZ and can't stand her", then she will often regret them without really giving them a chance.

RFM requires the most popular Chapters to make larger cuts earlier in the process so as to not string PNMs along with false hope. Then the ranking system allows a PNM to remain in the process even if her favorite Chapters didn't invite her back. Sure it can be harsh on a PNM getting cut from her favs, but it makes her give her least favorites another shot if she truly wants to be Greek. When a PNM spends more time with those actives (hopefully) she will make a connection and change her opinion, especially when she now knows these are the ones who are interested in her while her original favs weren't.

I've got numerous anecdotal proof this can happen, but all anyone needs to do is read through some of the Recruitment Stories here. How often have we seen a PNM at first rank a Chapter low, get dropped by her #1's, then wind up loving one or more of those she had left? Had the accept/regret system been in place she would have never had that chance and might have been totally cross cut.

That push is present at all the Ivies, but it doesn't necessarily express itself through social-climbing. I'd point to Columbia, Harvard, and Brown as peers of Dartmouth with overachieving students who are mostly concerned about proving themselves through non-social organizations. Greek organizations exist at these schools, but they're kind of a niche interest. Publications, theater, political groups, etc. are a much bigger deal. For good and for ill, having a large and prominent Greek system contributes to the importance of social rankings on campus.
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Aren't RFM and accept/regret or priority separate from one another? I know most CPHs are encouraged to use priority ranking, but theoretically, a CPH could use RFM and accept/regret. Priority just removes a step so the Rho Gammas and the PNMs don't have to meet up between rounds and a PNM doesn't have time to think and sulk and decide maybe she won't go to the next round if she doesn't like her invites.

Hopefully with RFM, things will improve in the next few years at Dartmouth.

And as I said...if the university interferes for good (or their interpretation of good) they will also end up interfering for bad. You can't have it both ways.

Honestly, the schools know that Panhellenic runs rush. These ARE NPC rules, made by alumnae with years and years of rush experience behind them, not capricious and arbitrary things that a bunch of college aged girls dreamed up while sitting around swilling beer - as some papers seem to imply. If the school doesn't want to deal with NPC's rules, then they need to kick the nationals off campus and go with an all-local system that they can manipulate however they want. Oh but wait - those locals wouldn't have the insurance behind them that the nationals do. Again, you simply cannot have it both ways.

I think the locals may have been taking their ritual a little too literally (and not taking into context that their GLOs' rituals were written in 1870, 1874, and 1885!) and not looking at the values of their organizations. I am a member of one of the NPCs with a chapter that went local at Dartmouth and I am a feminist and I don't see anything wrong with my sorority's ritual.

I think that it was more a question of some of the rules being enforced and the reasoning behind them, more than the actual ritual, in "your" group's case. There is IMO a disconnect between the spirit of the women who created the groups and some of the edicts today, but that's another thread.

Incidentally, after searching through that neverending blog that DMom referenced, I found the article she talked about - it's over 3 years old and does not take into account the newest sorority. It was written by 2 anonymous alums, and in content is actually no worse than the infamous "Big 6" article - the tone is just a lot nastier.

Dmom, if you're hung up on your daughter's choice because of things like this, may I suggest that you get a life of your own.

It always sucks when a chapter decides to o local. However at least I can respect it when it is done for matters of principle, like your former Dartmouth chapter. We have a former Owl Club (our term for recolonization) at Yale who decided they didn't want to pay national dues or chapter services fees and seperated from us, while still using the name Psi U. That makes me so pissed.

/rant

We've been using RFM for a while. The switch to S&R was made, as said, to 1) stop the process where PNMs felt "led on" by chapters which the PNMs would never receive bids to, and 2) use invitations more efficiently. When we used A/R, there was always a large group of women who would receive invites to all the houses they were invited back to. This was lovely for them, but they only cared about their top houses. Then there were women who ended up with few or no invites who would have been ecstatic to receive the invites "regretted" by the other women. Thus, S&R made sense.

What I meant by "it's not a huge deal" is that the press made it sound like we made this change and that was the reason more women didn't get the bids they wanted and/or dropped out of rush. There's this weird perception on campus that because we use ICS, we are randomly placing the women into chapters, and that somehow S&R "mismatches" women more often than A/R. What everyone fails to grasp is that this whole thing is based on the preferences of the PNM and the chapter. Panhellenic (or ICS for that matter) isn't arbitrarily making decision.

Even the comics are weighing in:

http://thedartmouth.com/2009/10/15/comics/touchthefire

http://thedartmouth.com/2009/10/20/comics/4coffee