You have to be really careful about no-recs. When I was Alumnae Reference Chair, there was a PNM who asked me to write her a rec. I made some calls, and an alumna (who was known for being very judgmental) told me not to recommend her because she wore black nail polish and black clothes in the 8th grade. Um, no. I spoke to the PNM myself and wrote a basic rec for her. The chapter can decide if they want to take her or not.

Another time that year, an alumna was willing to write a lot of recs for women in a certain high school, with one exception. She said this girl was trouble and not a woman of character. So I called the recruitment advisor at her school and relayed this information. She said there was a girl in the chapter rooting for her, so I let it go. I had done my part to give them a heads' up, but it is the chapter's decision.

If there was truly a TERROR going through recruitment (the stories here definitely qualify!) I would call the recruitment advisor. People can change, but there is a difference between being emo and going out of your way to be disrespectful and break the rules. People don't change that much over one summer. :rolleyes:

LOL! If this were acceptable, I would have had no-recs out the wazoo! (Not that I actually had any when I went through recruitment.) I went through a very goth phase in 8th grade (which was long over by sophomore/junior year of HS.)

Yeah, I've wondered about this too. If you've ever read recommendation or evaluation forms for a big group of people especially over a period of time, you notice that some evaluators/recommenders are just way more critical and way more certain about their own opinion about people than others. (I'm thinking of school club stuff here, so you have a limited number of people filling them out and notice patterns.)

Unless it was something really extreme or really likely to put the chapter at risk, I'd be hesitant to no rec, and that seems to be the case for most of the people posting. But having seen how critical some people are, I wonder if they'd be pretty casual about assuming that black nail polish actually was a valid reason to no rec a person four years later.

Me too. This is why I would need a reason why the PNM got a no-rec.

I'm not an alum, but there is a girl from my old HS I will do anything possible to prevent from joining my sorority! No one at all likes her anymore due to a lot of drinking and sleeping around with people she shouldn't, and she even put up pictures of her playing beer pong topless while random guys groped her. I actually saved them just in case she decided to go through recruitment, which I found out today that she did!

Ohh, I'm guessing it's not going to be a good recruitment for her.

Oh my.

I have no words.

Well, except these: would you mind passing this info around to other houses too? I don't really want her to join my organization either!

I've been telling my friends in the other sororities as well, but there's 2 that I don't really know anyone in and I'm still trying to figure out how to best approach that. I don't think anyone deserves this chick.

I'd give the pictures and information to your alumna advisor, and ask her to let other alumnae advisors know about it. They will do what they think best for their GLO, I am sure.

Facebook no-rec
 

My one and only no-rec was a last minute thing...for a young woman who had some truly outrageous photos on her Facebook page WHILE SHE WAS GOING THROUGH RECRUITMENT. We're talking *barely* street-legal upper body photos, not-quite-street-legal lower body photos, and pictures of her licking various phallic toys, and pictures of her in compromising positions with other people, both male and female. It was so bad that the "drinking from the liquor bottle" pictures didn't even faze me. It was hard, because the chapter really loved her - she was very personable, had good grades, was pretty, had many outside activities (in some of the less-horrible pictures she was wearing her cheerleading or volleyball/basketball uniform).

I think the thing that most turned me off was the level of stupidity you have to have to leave photographic evidence of your less-desireable activities up on Facebook DURING RECRUITMENT! So a word to the wise to all the PNMs out there - clean up your Facebook/MySpace pages before recruitment starts. We DO look at them!

That's terrible!! You No Rec'ed someone for that? There have been girls in my chapter that have had abortions and we stood by them for it. That's so sad.

Keep in mind, every chapter is autonomous in choosing their members. If a chapter receives a no-rec and the members think the reason given is stupid, they don't have to cut her.

I doubt my chapter would cut a PNM that we otherwise liked for that reason alone.

I didn't No Rec this girl, but I did let our Recruitment Chair and Advisor know how horrible she was BEFORE recruitment and after she was assigned to my bump group! Ok, here goes:

I had a lot of guy friends and friends who had boyfriends in the campus fraternities, so it was pretty common for us all to hang out with them at their various apartments and suites (no houses on my campus). Of course, there were always the handful (or more) of cute freshman girl hangers-on who would be at their parties. One who was at EVERY party (I'm talking every night, every week!), would get plastered and pass out practically every night, was known to be sleeping with numerous guys in the different fraternities, and, oddly enough, was really into smoking cigars (gross, right?). To top it all off, yes this was a school in the warm South, but she literally wore a way too short mini-skirt every single day of the year--believe me, everyone in the caf saw WAY too much of this girl's body because of this wardrobe. Of course she signed up for Recruitment, joy--not! Ice Water comes around and she is assigned to my bump group. Understand that I'd actually spoken to this girl before, but she acted like she had never met me before (believe, our school was TINY) and was beyond bizarre and, well, not very bright. Needless to say, I told what I knew and so did countless other girls in may chapter. We dropped her immediately. She did end up pledging another chapter, but dropped out pretty quickly. I'm guessing they somehow missed her bad rep, but they wised up pretty quickly. I was just happy I didn't have to call "Mini-Skirt Girl" my sister.

The chapters that I normally write sponsor forms for know when I say "no", I mean it. A no rec form me means she was arrested, has DUIs, etc. Otherwise, I know how to write a glowing sponsor form and how to write a negtively slanted one. We can also do an "information only" form that we don't recommend one way or another. I do some of those when it is obvious that the girl would be known from her school but her rep is really not great. I leave it up to the chapter. After doing this for more than 20 years, the area schools know me.

Ok, this is a twist on the topic-let's say you wrote a PNM a rec and after a while found out some not great things about her? Nothing horrible, like murder or anything, but just things that would make you think-you know what, I'm not sure I'd like you as a sister after all. Would you contact the chapter and let them know? Or just leave it?

This is not happening to me, but I was thinking about it the other night and was just curious.