LOL!!! :p

Interesting. In Delta a legacy is a legacy regardless of chapter, and it can help or hurt depending where you are.

BTW, we define a legacy as a daughter, or sister, or mother of a member. We added mother a few years ago because of alumnae intake. But again, they do not get automatic admission. So it is more of a designation for the benefit of the family.

I think a lot of Panhellenics do this, too, though, so the legacies don't receive negative bias from their non-legacy chapters.

When I was at UCF, Panhellenic would make copies of the recruitment apps for each chapter. On the recruitment app, there is a section where PNM's fill out any Greek affiliations through family members. Panhellenic blacks out all those except the ones relevant to your sorority, so you may see a PNM is your legacy, but other than the obvious opaque black marker through the other legacy line items, you don't know to which other chapters she is a legacy.

I think it was a good system, but one that was prone to human error. IE: What happened if ABC got XYZ's application copies and could see all XYZ's legacies? It did happen here and there!

I think women also know if a PNM is a legacy to a different org by word-of-mouth, especially if PNMs went to the same high school, etc... as women in the chapter. In-house legacies are fairly obvious as well. Or the PNM could be super naive like me and just tell all the other chapters which org they're a legacy to during recruitment parties.

Girls write legacy info on their rush cards (girls fill these out themselves, not Panhel, so they get to choose whether or not to include legacy information), so we see it after the first round of rush -- but sometimes it comes up before then. If you ask a girl why she decided to go through rush, often the answer is, "Well, my sister joined AXO here a couple years ago," or "My mom was a Tri Delt at Northwestern and she wanted me to rush."

Like I said, "stealing" other group's legacies isn't a big thing here, so having the info on rush cards usually isn't a problem.

and if she goes XYZ, we're disowning her!
 

I think everyone has to 'fess up that while we are all publicly panhellenic, secretly we have that rival house we would HATE
our children/sisters/relatives to join - just because.

I come from a family where I am the only Greek member, so when I married my husband I bonded with his grandmamma because she was a founding member of the Pi Beta Phi chapter of Georgia, but neither of her daughters (who went to school in the 60s) went Greek. We always have little kappa - pi phi jokes with one another, but for the most part we just enjoy having someone else in the family who understands how much our sororities mean to us.

Anyway, one day we were talking about legacies with my husband's cousin (Who is a high school Junior). We told her if she joined Kappa she could wear my key, and if she joined Pi Phi she could wear grandmammas arrow - and at the same time we both said "...but if you join (XYZ) we are disowning you!"

We were kidding (well, mostly) but we all got a good laugh at it..

Probably the worst part of Recruitment for me is having to deal with some very unhappy mothers, sisters, grandmothers, or aunts (which we do not consider legacies) when a legacy gets dropped. That sucks royally! Sometimes they don't even understand when it's for grades because their legacy should be given special treatment.

Even though I hate it, I've made it clear to our Recruitment chair, President and everyone else in the Chapter to direct all those phone calls to me. I won't allow my girls to be raked over the coals by an unhappy alum. I'll take the heat...that's my job.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Zillini
[B]Probably the worst part of Recruitment for me is having to deal with some very unhappy mothers, sisters, grandmothers, or aunts (which we do not consider legacies) when a legacy gets dropped. That sucks royally! Sometimes they don't even understand when it's for grades because their legacy should be given special treatment.

I so agree with you. At my chapter we had issues with one guys because he wanted his brother in, and i was one of the only people to try to drop him. The active brother was pissed at me, but i told him that the best interests is with the chapter and letting in someone who does have the grades and is kinda a prick in is not health for the house

My younger sister was cut by all of the other houses on Pref day. She came home after picking up her invitations completely devastated. She had decided by that time that she wanted to be a Phi Mu--but she still wanted it to be her choice and not the only chapter left. We have great pictures from the two of us on Bid Day and formals. We had a year with both of us in the chapter.

I had told her that I just wanted her to be happy though. I am happier of course that she ended up a Phi Mu but I would have still been happy if she hadn't been.

Re: and if she goes XYZ, we're disowning her!
 

There were a couple of sororities my parents said "Join and you are disowned." This was, of course, going by campus repuations of chapters at a different school in the late 70s. I actually cut both of them, not because of what my parents said, but because I just really didn't click with them.

I can answer this question from experience on several levels:

1. I was a legacy, and experienced many of the pressures previously discussed, and from all sides. From my family, though they wanted me to do what was best for me, I still KNEW what they would LIKE to be the ultimate outcome, thus making me, the rushee, suffer from the proverbial "if a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it," scenario. From other sororities who knew I was a legacy, both from word of mouth, and because it was listed on the forms. And at that time, it was the way it was done. When my daughter was considering attending my alma mater, with several sororities, I was already questioning whether she should put on the rush forms that she was a legacy. Would it help her? Hurt her?

2. As a parent, we have experienced our oldest son attending a university that did have his father's fraternity, Kappa Sigma, but who chose not to be a part of the Greek system.

3. As a parent, our oldest daughter has chosen to attend a university that does not have my sorority, Alpha Delta Pi, and has not yet decided on whether to go through rush. So, I am already feeling a sadness that she will most likely not experience ADPi with me. (Unless she doesn't pledge a sorority as a freshman and transfers to another school with an ADPi chapter and gets a bid. Possible, but not likely.) However, I do VERY much hope that she will end up being Greek with one of the other sororities there, and that we can have the common experiences of sisterhood, candlelights, rush songs, rush skits, big and littles, etc.

And, as Carnation stated earlier in this thread, I didn't really think much about all of this until we began to approach the college years, and, like her, I was surprised at the intensity of my feelings. While it is obviously not the end of the world, as our children are bright and have made important life choices, there is a finality and sadness that they will not capture the part of college life that we so treasure. We do have a nine year old daughter that has seen how much it means to me and assures me that when she is in college "she'll be a part of my club!" Booya!

My legacy story
 

My sister was the president of her sorority at the time that I went through recruitment (she was on another campus). My campus had her chapter and there was honestly no doubt in my mind that I would go that chapter. I liked other chapters, but I also really like my sisters chapter. After the third round of recruitment, they released me, and as far as I am concerned, for no good reason. When they called my sister to tell her, they gave the excuse of "oh, there were just so many girls going through rush this year." My sister was upset and I was devastated. Needless to say, they didn't even make quota that year, which made the sting even worse, because had I been offered a bid, I would have taken it.

Fast forward 4 years, I love my chapter and thrived in it and wouldn't trade if for the world (i was even Greek Woman of the Year), but still I wish I could have shared that with my sister.

My little sister is going through in a couple years and she is set on joining my sorority. Im trying to get her to check out all the chapters but secretly im excited that she likes the girls that are here now enough to want to join in 2 years.

Yes--assuming the chapter was made up of nice guys he got along with. In any case, I'd encourage my kids to go Greek.

Re: My legacy story
 

While we're not required to take every legacy, we do need a good reason for dropping them. So if we dropped the sister of an active President at another campus and then didn't make quota, we'd probably have some explaining to do.