Thanks for all of your help everyone! I understand the nonattendence and apathy towards the sorority is a problem and could hurt us, and the thing is, the girls we've gotten from informal are mostly FANTASTIC!! My pledge class from formal is an excellent group as well, but we're actually the ones with the couple girls that are not exactly what would be ideal, and I wish I could change that. They're great girls, I just think they don't exactly have their heads on correctly.. at least not for college I guess.

About the GPA thing... I KNOW that's a huge problem! But honestly, there's nothing more I can think of we can do to help them, except maybe take their tests and study for them! Which, uh, yeah right.. I have a 3.6, so you can understand that being in a chapter that has a lower gpa would bother me because I'm doing my best. We do "grade checking" (there's a real name, I can't think of it) and based on our GPA, we have to do in-house study hours - up to 5 a week! - and we can get on probation as well. We really are doing a lot to try to get it up, and I really don't know what else to do.. suggestions?? You've all been really helpful..

You could up the study hours and have strict monitoring. When I was a collegiate we had up to 10 study hours per week, and social probation if your GPA was under a certain amount (I believe 2.5). I know I had a gpa of 3.25 and still had 2 mandatory study hours.

Good luck to your chapter.

I so agree with the above statement.

At my campus, there are (or were during my years in school) three tiers of sororities- elite, middle and struggling. At the time I pledged, my sorority was solidly in the middle tier. By the time I graduated, we were probably in the top tier. (I recognize people will have different opinions about which sororities are in which tiers, and that some people, including myself, hate to even recognize that there are tiers, but, at my campus, the truth is that there were tiers).

Anyway, we improved our lot by focusing on quality over quantity, even if that meant we might not make quota, which was probably easier for us to do than a truly struggling sorority since we didn’t have a numbers problem. The first year we took this approach, we were one PNM short of reaching quota, but we were absolutely thrilled with our entire new member class. The strength of this class made subsequent recruitment efforts much better, and, within two years, we had a very high quality of members and were one of only two chapters that could not participate in COB due to having reached total.

A few problem members can bring down the recruitment efforts of an otherwise strong group, while having a group of solid, quality members is self-perpetuating. I think PNMs want to be with the quality group, even if it is not as large as a group that has a mix of some quality members and some problem members.

zeta sister, please check you pm's.

Perhaps we should warn active members they may want to mask some of the details about their chapters if they are going to be really specific. While GreekChat can be really helpful sometimes, it can just be used as a gossip center as well, which will feed the issues of struggling chapters.

Unless you're an alumna looking back at your chapter with years of perspective on a chapter whose problems are long gone, it's probably not a great idea to out a specific chapter's problems too clearly.

I didn't even think I should name the chapter in my turn-around post because I didn't want to dreg up any bad history. Let's be careful.

^^ co-sign, but how would such a warning take form? A sticky? Because from the way most first posts read, I don't think most are reading those before posting (despite the good intentions of the sticky posters).

I usually just try to be one of the first posters (before the post is quoted) and tell the OP to edit. I'm not sure there is a better way. Maybe if there was a concerted effort by more active posters to limit their quoting potentially damaging posts for a period of time to give the OP a chance to wise up?

I think you just take it post by post and try PMs too.

I think it would reflect good manners in cases in which a person posts something innocently but later realizes it might have been a honest mistake and edits, for the people who quoted it to edit their posts as well.

Obviously, in troll type situations, I don't think you should: the comments should be preserved for other readers. But in cases like this, if the OP edits because she's said too much, we ought to be kind.

Getting back to the original topic (not that I don't agree with everything the past few posts have said about not perpetuating negatives about specific chapters, let's be tactful here people!!), I know on my campus (which only has 4 Panhellenic sororities), there was one chapter going through recruitment that a lot of people seemed bad-mouth. However, once I went to their parties, I realized that this stereotype was in the eye of the beholder; it was a fairly new chapter on campus which was the smallest of the chapters (which is understandable, you have to give them time to grow, they're now on par with the other chapters and growing every year) but I LOVED them!! I understand why they were put down by a certain group of girls; that's because those girls are nothing like my (now) sisters and as a result they all belong to XYZ and fit in there just fine. But as for me, I'll repeat again what I said: a sorority is in the eye of the beholder; don't let other people taint your view of a chapter simply because you don't feel like giving them a fair chance.

Whatever happened to making your own decisions?

i realize i may have said too much, i've edited my posts, and like ugaalum said, i would appreciated it if everyone who quoted me would do the same, or to make it easier, even just delete the quote part of your post.

I'm simply trying to gain different perspectives on how to help my chapter and I appeciate all of the help I've received, in many, many ways.

^^ ztamsu07: I'd PM the people who quoted you. People might not be checking this thread, so I'd think you'd get the best results that way.

You might also consider changing your user name. This would be a good lesson for any actives out there!! I know you are proud of your affiliation (and that is a good thing!) but to describe problems and then ask for advice anonymously on a chat forum when you have pinpointed your chapter and location in your name is an oxymoron. Not trying to be critical, just a little well-intentioned adivce.

I changed my post to reflect your changes, ztamsu07. Don't worry too much about what you posted. GC reactions should be able to tell you what needs to be changed. Will posting on this board really negatively affect your chapter? Probably not that much....what you've said about your chapter is apparently self-evident on campus. Your job now is to fix the problems in your chapter. I wish you and your pledge sisters luck in a difficult process.

What do you mean by "new release figures"? I'd really like to find new ways to help bring our chapter up to total.

Please look in the recruitment forum; I think there's a stickied thread at the top about them with a detailed overview.


In short, though, they are a method that a campus panhellenic can use to get the chapters who usually have a high percentage of their party invitations accepted to release many of the girls who will not get bids much earlier in the recruitment process. Rather than going all the way through recruitment hoping to get a bid from a chapter that probably won't bid them, the PNMs start looking at other chapters more seriously relatively early in the process.

Excellent! I was writing when you were posting it.

I agree with you BrunetteDDD 100%. There is a chapter at my school that has not made quota for a few years, and many girls on campus, and through rush, were rude to them and put them down. I learned through rush that they were an amazing group of sweet girls, it is really just their numbers that is the issue. I wish more girls would make their own decisions, and give this group a chance.

Bumping this thread (which has a lot of great suggestions and thoughts, BTW) to ask if anyone has any suggestions for things a chapter might do during freshman orientation week to put their name out there BEFORE the stereotypes begin forming?

I'd check your campus recruitment rules before doing anything. The last thing a struggling chapter needs is rush infractions! A good way to get your name out there is to have all of your members wear their letters and hang out where freshmen may be. These members should take care to look clean and presentable and should be VERY polite and pleasant. No body can really speak with freshmen directly, but making it look like your letters are all over campus could help you get your chapter's foot through the door so to speak.

Does your campus have an organized freshman dorm move in?

We've had our girls wear lettered shirts and help girls move into the freshman girls dorm. If your housing and Panhellenic allows it (and depending when your rush is!), maybe that's something you can look into.

I guess it would help to mention that this campus does informal recruitment in the fall (no freshmen allowed) and formal in the spring. What I'm looking for is just some small things to do so that the freshmen start thinking "oh, the JKLs are such nice/fun/sweet/cool girls!" and generate goodwill and positive feelings to hopefully roll through to formal recruitment.

Don't whore around, don't be the chapter drunk at every fraternity party, and don't be stuck up.

I think a big aspect of this is creating your own positive PR. Participate in campus and greek activities, get (or keep) a high GPA, and make sure people on campus know about the things you're doing - it can't hurt to befriend someone on the school newspaper and let them know what great things your chapter is doing. Or even the city newspaper or tv station if it's a big deal.

Of course the key to this is getting members who want to generate this PR and are willing to do the work. That can be another issue entirely.

Roll out in huge numbers for EVERYTHING. This makes it look like it is fun to be an XYZ and that it would be great to be one!

If they don't have numbers, would not that be very hard to do?

If the whole chapter shows up at events, it will look like there are more of them than the largest chapter that shows up with a fraction of their sisters.

Also, make sure to work on your internal PR. Freshman will notice if you have a great sisterhood and seem close when you're out and about.

Okay, good point. :) But what I meant was to make sure that they are present and visible at all campus activities. Whether there are 10 or 100 of them, wearing letter shirts, big smiles and good attitudes will be a plus for her group.

Agreed, but on the flip side of this it can lead to chapter burnout. With smaller chapters everyone would have to show up all the time; with larger chapters only half or 3/4 would have to show up to have the same effect. It can definitely be a tricky situation to manage (high attendance/lots of PR vs. chapter burnout) and unfortunately I don't have a good solution other than having determined members who are willing to put in the work.

I know a lot of universities have a juicycampus catagory (or whatever you want to call it) and I have to believe that it will make it much more difficult for the less popular sororities to turn things around. Has anyone else seen juicycampus? It's horrible. I feel so bad for the people & sororities that get written about. Many pnms will go on & if they hear bad things about certain sororities they may want to drop them more. It's sad really. There's one sorority in particullar & although they've been turning things around the past two years no one (especially the fraternity men) will let go of their old rep. They get so much bad talk on juicycampus.

Juicy Campus is by school. At one school the XYZs are awesome, at another they're awful, and it says so. As heinous as that website is, it does point out that chapters of the same sorority are different at every school.

This is why I believe so strongly in a recruitment week that starts the day girls move into the dorms. (Actually, they move in a day early and do an FFR orientation, then start Open House rounds the next day when everyone else was is moving in.)

Many of the girls that come through have never even heard of the majority of houses. Generally, they know Chi Omega because the Chi-O fountain is a campus landmark. Theta is also one they seem to know; I always hear "Oh my mom was a Theta."

If the PNMs stay away from the three B's (boys, booze and bars) like they're supposed to, they have very little chance of hearing false information that may unduly influence them. We point that out during FFR orientation.

I always felt bad for the girls who pledged a certain house because they seemed fun and pretty, only to find out that chapter was on social probation and wouldn't be having as much fun as they hoped! And I really feel bad for the girls that pledge a house with significant debt, because they could choose that chapter for all the right reasons and then have such a huge weight put on their shoulders.

:(i feel bad for girls who pledge the less popular sororities.

I think that girls who are going through the rush process & know about this site most likely know about jc already. Also, I wasn't saying that everything written on that website is true...my point was really the opposite. It's not only fraternity men that bad talk sororities it's also certain sorority members that do it too.

Are you talking about/to me? Or maybe you're talking about something else and I just can't tell what. I'm confused. (FYI, I'm not an AXO).

ha ha, no, I was talking about some skanky sleazy posts that were deleted. (I'll also be deleting mine as it makes no sense now, obviously.)

Obviously I am a little late but I wanted to share a story about struggling chapters. One of my best friends from high school attended the same college as me and was cut severely after the first day of recruitment. She ended up joining one of the two sororities that was considered the least popular. When I went through rush both houses seemed very defeated and almost like they were trying to fake being bubbly and perky and "Legally Blonde."

Anyways, my friend's pledge class got so into their sorority and they adopted a "we're going to do what we want to do and not fake being a top chapter" attitude. My junior year their return rates were higher than everyone except the traditionally top chapters. They even had to add an extra party last minute. The girls in our pledge class said they were the most "real" sorority during recruitment and they all felt comfortable there.

What is interesting is that the other "low" sorority adopted a different attitude...they tried even harder to be "sorority"...dying their hair blonde, wearing Lacoste polos during rush, talking about subjects they were unfamiliar with, etc...as a result all of the "non-sorority" girls that were still great PNMs chose my friend's sorority over theirs. Their return rate was by far the lowest and they did not even come close to filling quota (my friend's house was tied for the biggest pledge class with my chapter, incidentally).

If you made it through this novel, the moral of the story is that I think you should really consider what makes your house special and sell it, sell it, sell it! If you can't compete with the other chapters don't fake their attitude...even if you do it well, they'll do it better because it's really their personality. Find a niche market that is wide enough to get a full quota every year and focus on selling that.