I totally agree. When I have kids and if I am lucky enough to have a legacy, she will not be listing it on the general recruitment form. I will send information to ADPi (if there is a chapter at the school she is going too). I don't want her legacy status to impede her into not having a wonderful recruitment. Of course I would want her to go ADPi, but if she doesn't feel at home with them, I would just want her to find her home. That is what is important.

Excellent!!!!!

And that's the kind of stuff that I just think is jerky all the way around. Here's a girl who should be an outstanding potential new member, but the local chapter decides to have an attitude and say that she's not a good fit geographically? That's junk.

It's not that I think her mom's involvement should make the difference, but that the organization is probably not being as true to it's founding principles and ritual if they are rejecting well qualified members to take someone who "fits" with them on a hometown level. That's not the point. Even the groups founded in the south have chapters outside the region.

And conversely, if the national group has a problem with who the chapter is choosing, they should address it systematically, not just because on influential pnm got turned down. Yes, membership selection belongs to the active members of the chapter, but they shouldn't be allowed to subvert the values of the group for stupid reasons and tank the chapter overall. You should need to see one particular girl get turned down before you catch on that something weird is going on.

Oh, well said!

And don't kid yourself that subjectivity is limited to big Southern schools. I'll go out on a limb and say that most don't know what a debutante is, don't care where you're from, what your parents do for a living, what your activities resume looks like or what your SAT score is. They care about how you present yourself and whether or not they think they want to spend the next four years hanging out, studying, sharing laughter, tears and a bathroom with you.

If you've got a legacy going thru recruitment the best advice you can give her is to be herself, try to make the best impression she possibly can, give every chapter serious consideration, and know that whatever happens you'll be so happy for her and supportive of whatever works out for her.

So I take it you were in the room when this PNM was formally released and voted on? Because having been through membership selection myself, and having been through the process with a national officer overseeing our recruitment, having been through the process of dropping a legacy, I find it very hard to believe someone would be cut specifically because of her geographic position... especially when there was so much pressure to bid such a high-profile legacy during a recruitment with a national officer present. Not to mention the advisers. There had to be a lot of screaming, crying and pleading to release that little girl from that sorority's recruitment... and they had to have a damn good reason to do so.

I agree that no amount of volunteering or influential letter-writing can guarantee any PNM a place in a sorority. And at the end of the day, it is the chapter's choice. But releasing a legacy, especially one who is high-profile, is not an easy task and has to involve more than a dismissive wave of the hand.

Years ago, a chapter alumna of XYZ State University was actively involved on the local and international level for ADPi. Her two daughters rushed at separate schools. One rushed at the campus where her mother had local influence and joined ADPi. The second daughter rushed at mom's alma mater where mom had international influence and was dropped from ADPi before prefs. I know the girl; she wasn't a fit for this chapter. Mom was pissed and is no longer involved with ADPi.

That ADPi mom was involved enough to know our legacy policy. It's a shame. We lost a terrific alumna volunteer, but I think her non-ADPi daughter and the ADPi chapter in question were better off going their separate ways.

Being a legacy isn't enough of a reason to get a bid. It's going to be your chapter, not your legacy sister's.

Can you tell me why exactly she wasn't a fit for that chapter? I don't know the girl or her mom, obviously, but if you can without divulging MS, what were the aspects of "fit" we're talking about?

No. To do so would divulge too many aspects of MS. But the decision to drop a high profile legacy in this case was not made lightly-- and was not without consequences-- namely, the withdrawal of the mother's financial and volunteer support to the sorority and her chapter of initiation.

That is so sad. I can see how I, personally, would be torn between wanting the chapter to give that legacy special consideration, as a matter of loyalty to the mom, yet also I would not want the chapter to pledge someone they did not want as a sister. That would be depriving the legacy to go out and join a chapter that did truly want and love her.

At some of these schools where the number of legacies is so large, do you think it would help to relax silence rules to allow the chapters to host "legacy" teas close to the start of recruitment? almost like a separate open house? or would that just make the problem worse?

My tendency is to want to eliminate the "legacy" title during recruitment so it isn't limiting the PNMs options. But then again, we all want to give legacies special consideration, but don't know how to do it in a way that is fair to the PNM and demonstrates loyalty to the sister, without giving the impression that a legacy is going to be guaranteed a bid, and without restricting the chapter's ability to choose its own members without outside pressure. any thoughts anyone?

I understand, and I'm not trying to press for more, particularly in this specific case.

But one of things that is frustrating in talking about the legacy issue is that because the chapter can't openly say why they cut her or what was discussed, it kind of leaves the situation seeming that one hand you've got the mom's involvement and years of dedicated service and apparently a strong desire to share this sisterhood bond with her daughter and on the other, we've got "fit."

And at some places, "fit" is the term to use when someone isn't as pretty as the rest of the chapter, which while it's certainly a plus to have gorgeous girls in your chapter, is harder to see as a truly valid reason to drop a legacy in light of most of what many groups officially consider for MS: scholarship, leadership and involvement, character, etc.

So the only times that anyone can ever say why a girl was cut without violating the rules of her own org. is when she is repeating something that she probably shouldn't even know in the first place has someone else not broken the rules of her org.

And it means that we're having a conversation with one half of the evidence missing, you know?

Considering it's a conversation we're not particularly supposed to be having, that's not surprising.

here is my two cents....

the schools that have twice the number of legacies going through rush are also those that:
-have "rules" that only take women from certain towns/ states
-people know you, your family, your pets, etc. and you couldn't hide your legacy status even if you wanted to
-are located in places where women are groomed for recruitment from birth...even their teachers say things like, "if you want to get in to a good sorority when you go to college, then you won't XYZ"

i also think the numbers are a bit inflated. patty pnm might be a legacy to kappa from her grandmother, chi o from her mother, and phi mu through her sister. one pnm counts as a legacy to three groups. there are probaly many women going through in the same situation, so....of course groups can have more legacies than quota.

What do you mean? The why was someone really released part? That I'm with you on: if you validly know it because you were there, then you shouldn't be saying here.

But just talking about legacies and the policies that would be ideal doesn't seem in any way forbidden.

My GLO's legacy policy is pretty open. I'm not completely sure that it should be this easily retrievable, but you can google and get a copy of the policy and form itself.

A policy or a form are public knowledge; the goings-on specific to how a chapter conducts MS on a specific person is not.

I think the numbers are inflated for exactly the same reasons that you do and when you figure in the groups that the PNMs may think that they have special status with because of their aunts, cousins, whatever, even though they aren't really legacies, the list of relatives and connections to groups that many forms ask for is quite extensive.

But when a girl who is a legacy really wants a particular group, it's still a problem if the group doesn't want her even if she still has legacy status at other chapters. So there's no real way to cancel out the inflation in the numbers.

Yeah, and I'm sorry if I was asking for too much earlier. It's just that aspect that makes figuring out how to reform any policies really hard. It's either lame FOAF stories or divulged MS that one is basing the info. on.

I don't mean I need or want to know anything particularly, because I don't even have a real dog in this fight with either a legacy or a chapter that I'm advising, but without a lot of insight into how and why legacies are getting cut, it's hard to know if the policies are working well.

ETA: It's kind of interesting that it's only the legacies who seem to be cut for nebulous or (what people who know the legacy suspect are very) superficial reasons that you ever hear about with legacy policies complaints. When the people who aren't in MS find out that a legacy who they know has a 2.1 gets cut or who has a terrible hometown reputation or zero personality has gotten cut, and I think alumnae do realize and know these things even if the mom doesn't, does that ever become a big deal? It's only the idea that we use terms like "fit" that suggest to some it wasn't for a good reason. Maybe a policy that requires the chapter to list a specific reason would be the best policy of all. I don't even mean that they would have to tell the mom or the sister, just that they would have to own up to IHQ that they cut the legacy of a devoted member because of her appearance.