My School is Doing Away With Formal & Quota
 

So my school decided not to have Formal Recruitment anymore. We had only 13 potentials come last year. The weather might have had a little to do with it. We have deferred and it snowed on the first day. Plus, we are a commuter campus. On the other hand, we knew there was something wrong when one chapter had 1 NM from Formal, then had a class of 15 the next week.

So our solution was to just not have Formal anymore. We also threw out quota. Quota would basically be ceiling (or house total) which is 45 on our campus.

This is what we will be doing instead:

Wed 9/8 & Thurs 9/9 is a Greek Expo and sign up from 11-3. (They're just info tables)

Mon 9/13 is a Round Robin where PNMs will go to each chapter for 20 mins.

Tues 9/14 open COBs, ecah chapter choses their own location, PNMs can go to anyone they want to
AEPhi - 6:30-8
Tri Delta - 8-9:30

Wed 9/15 open COBs
DG - 6:30-8
SDT - 8-9:30

Tues 9/21 open COBs
SDT - 6:30-8
DG - 8-9:30

Wed 9/22 open COBs
Tri Delta - 6:30-8
AEPhi - 8-9:30

Thurs 9/24
Pref 6-10
Each sorority will have 50 mins, PNMs can go to as many as they like, all 4 if they want to

Fri 9/25
Bid Day
PNMs will pick up their bids in the Greek Office between 11 & 2, they must make a decision on which bid they are accepting right away. There is no bid matching and no quota (unless the chapter reaches 45).
Sororities can pick up their New Member list after 2.
Since 9/25 is Yom Kippur, sororities can choose to have bid day celebrations on 9/24 or 9/25.

We will do the same in the spring.

Any thoughts on this? I'm a little shaky with the no quota, I see the big getting bigger and the small getting smaller. But, we're all about the same size and we don't have to extend bids to all the PNMs. On the other hand, it could benefit all 4 of us and we'll be able to increase celing or possibly invite another sorority to colonize. I just hope we have a good showing on Potentials, I heard there was a lot of interest. We'll see. I'll keep you posted.

This sounds like a simplified form of FR to me. It does sound interesting though. :)

I think the big will get bigger and the small will stay the same.

Suspending the rules will help your system. Of the four, one will prosper and become the leader. Two will be similar to each other in size and standing, and the fourth will fail because they don't offer an attractive-enough product. Invite two or three good nationals to come in immediately. They will infuse energy and passion into the system right away.

Isn't this new "Partial Structured Recruitment" that NPC came out with late last year?

Yes, I believe so. I remember it sounds like one of those 4 choices from the "menu" of recruitment styles. My undergraduate campus was thinking of doing this, but last I heard they scrapped it. Which was good, b/c it would have been bad for them. On that campus, of the 5 sororities, there are 2 that everyone wants to join, there are 2 that are in the middle, and there is one that is the smallest and always struggles. By not forcing the PNM's to go to every group each day, they would have all naturally gravitated to the top 2 houses, and those 2 houses would always have the biggest pledge classes, and many girls would have gone bidless. At least, that's what I think would have happened.

It seems to me that in a system such as this, while no quota would be okay, there should be a max amount of PNMs a sorority can extend bids to. It's not fair for one group to take 14 of the 15 PNMs going through recruitment.

Especially w/ no total, the big will just get bigger and bigger and bigger. Then, there will be a house w/ only a handful of girls, and yes, they will suffer and probably eventually fold.

I don't agree w/ this particular recruitment structure. Especially on a smaller campus such as this one. Of course, on this campus, there are only a handful of PNMs, but if one group takes 10 PNMs every year, and another group only takes 2 PNMs every year, it will eventually take its toll. But that's just my view.

Now how is that fair? Why couldn't the campus put the energy and passion into helping the fourth group succeed? Closing a group and bringing on a new one just b/c they have a "more attractive product" will do nothing to help the Greek system. That new package will only be attractive for so long, and then a new group will be on the bottom and struggling. Fix the problems, not the symptoms.

And how can you say "invite good nationals to come in" - aren't they all good?

It borders on Fraternity recruitment, but I don't think it's bad necessarily. I think that the big will get bigger in *THIS* process. Ultimately though, it will be up to the chapters to go out there and FIND the quality new members that they are looking for and get them in their houses. On a campus such as this, sororities can't sit on the sidelines and wait for formal recruitment, like say a Florida or Texas. You have to go out and find that 60% of 'maybe' women, and show them what you've got.

I think NPC really meant this recruitment strategy to be used when the most popular houses are close to total. This would force them to limit the number of bids they give out (since they can't exceed total at all, unlike formal recruitment where even the biggest house can get quota), which allows the smaller houses to give out as many bids as they like and see who accepts. This mixed with the fact that total can be changed yearly, could work well.

Unfortutately, I've heard of a lot of campuses which have very high totals compared to the number of girls actually in the houses. If all the houses are at 50% of total, then the situation describe where the big get bigger and the small die could definately occur.

My big beef is that this recruitment strategy doesn't really force the PNMs to keep their options open - they can basically suicide after the first day?

That's exactly my beef too - these PNMs that want the top house will choose to only go to the top house, thus limiting their options. And since the top house is limited to only so many, you'll see a lot of disappointed, bidless girls.

EDIT: Stupid question.

As long as you keep total/ceiling, and it's REALISTIC - i.e. don't have it be 60 when 3 of the 4 chapters have 30 or fewer members - it should work fine, actually may help since no one will be able to go over total. Although I'm a little fuzzy on the bid thing. Will the rushees be able to see if they got multiple bids and pick which one they want? Will this be a "first come, first serve" situation if a sorority goes over total - the first girls to show up at bid day get a better choice?

I also think that rushees should have to be invited to pref parties. It's not fair for the sororities to have to entertain girls at their pref party that they aren't interested in at the expense of paying attention to the ones they DO want. It also can give the rushees false hopes, whereas if they have to be invited and aren't they know they don't have a chance in that group. Even with structured informal, I've never heard of anyone who wants to come to pref being allowed to.

I would hope that it's the other way around - that groups can only bid to total. So, in the end a PNM could get 3 bids and accept any one of them. And of course, that leads to it's own bag of problems, which is why I think this recruitment strategy would never work on a mid-large size campus.

That's what I meant.

Say DG is 2 under total and SDT is 10 under total (completely random name picks). There are 7 girls who get bids from both SDT and DG and they all want DG. Once the first two of the seven get there, even if the remaining 5 are holding DG bids they can't join DG, from what it sounds like. That would be sucky for the rushees to know that if their elevator would have gone a little faster they'd get the bid they want. :)

I have a question: Decision on a bid has to be made immeaditly? Don't they get some time to think about it?

Okay, I need to stop chatting on AIM with you people and get more sleep. It's starting to affect my reading comprehension. :D

I went back and re-read...for some reason I originally read it as the campus was doing away w/ quota AND with total. So here I am, thinking, "Goodness! They're doing away with quota, and since they won't have any total to cap off at, these girls can take as many PNMs as they see fit." So in my mind I saw, basically, a free-for-all where XYZ snatches up 15 PNMs and ABC, DEF and GHI are left w/ no one.

But, I still stand by what I said about the PNMs will be shooting themselves in the foot earlier in the week. Many girls, as much as we hate to admit it, have a preconceived notion about a group going into recruitment, and visiting these other groups throughout recruitment helps them to realize that what they hear isn't always true. That's why I don't agree w/ this system.

As for not having total, well, that's a different subject altogether.

How I'd assume it would work is that DG can only give two bids. Period. So if those two PNMs join another group, then DG is SOL. Which sucks for DG, but is best for the PNM (no holding bids the sorority can't actually use).