Barbie’s Guide to Writing an Honest Real Time Recruitment Story without Sabotaging Yo
 

Barbie’s Guide to Writing an Honest Real Time Recruitment Story without Sabotaging Your Recruitment

Most of us are painfully tired of the retro recruitment stories, particularly after the recent influx of bad fiction writers. But over the last few years, most PNMs have been reluctant to share their live recruitment stories for fear of having their recruitments sabotaged by interfering Greek Chatters. Now don’t get me wrong, some of those PNMs deserved to be interfered with, but most are pretty normal women who simply want to share the ups and downs of the process with some understanding strangers.

How can we go back to having live recruitment threads that we know and love? In an effort to help head back in this direction, I’ve decided to put together some guidelines to help PNMs hide their identities here during their live recruitments. But please be aware that no matter how many precautions you take, you may still be “outed.” So if you’re hiding your identity solely for the sake of being tacky, catty or otherwise poorly behaved here, it can still backfire on you.

Fellow Greek Chatters, please feel free to add to my suggestions as my little brain certainly can’t come up with a comprehensive list on my own.

Your School
It’s up to you to decide whether or not you identify your school or the area of the country where you’re rushing. Depending on the number of sororities and recruitment dates, it may be very easy or quite difficult to identify your school even if you don’t do it yourself. If you attend a smaller school with much better chances of being “outed” during a live recruitment, you may wish to postpone your story for a few days to make your location less obvious.

However, there are some definite advantages to mentioning your school. Many here are familiar with how recruitment works at various schools, so you could get some extra advice along the way as well as cheerleading. Things like “It is not unusual to get only 2 or 4 invites for 8 party day at Super Competitive U, so your getting 6 invites is really good!” or “No matter what the Greek Life office says, no one wears shorts for the first day of recruitment at SEC U” can help keep your spirits up and provide you with “insider information” for a more successful recruitment.

Your Greek Chat User Name and Profile
If you have any combination of your name, hometown, birthday, high school or other identifying feature in your user name, you’d be wise to create another one for your recruitment story. Also, make sure your home town, web site, instant messenger ID, etc. do not appear in your profile information.

If you have a user name that mentions a preference towards a particular sorority, such as BamaKappa2B, WineandSilverBlueAngelGirl, FleurdeLis4Ever, etc, you are made of fail.

Your Greek Chat Behavior Before Recruitment
Yes, we know you are excited, but sometimes the things a PNM does here in the months prior to recruitment will set her up for stalking and failure. If you’re guilty of any of the behaviors listed below, you should seriously consider creating a new ID before telling your story.

Don’t reveal too much personal information about yourself that can be used to identify you later. These rules apply to posts you make in ALL threads on Greek chat, not just the recruitment related ones. It often takes only a simple search of past posts to put together some seriously identifiable characteristics of a member. Some real world examples of this would be:

-Identifying yourself as a legacy to specific sororities through specific relatives. Or posting on a particular group’s forum here.

-Listing your super SAT score, GPA, high school characteristics (super small all girl’s prep in Mayberry, NC), you won the National Award for Being the Most Brilliant, Talented and Perfect Beauty Queen Humanitarian Ever etc.

-Mentioning you’re a member of an ethnic group that rarely participates in NPC recruitment at a specific school.

-Talking about being a 6’3 basketball player with flaming red hair.

-Mentioning you’re probably the only incoming freshman at Auburn from Missoula, Montana.

-You’re a fifth year senior rushing for the third time, transfer student from Podunk U, or anything other than a first year incoming freshman.

You get the picture.

Don’t behave in ways that would make Greek Chat members believe you might not be a model new member for their organization. Behave respectfully and politely. Don’t become an instant know-it-all and start providing advice to other PNMs. Many of us find that very insulting. Don’t argue with those who have already been where you’re going. Don’t curse. Write in complete sentences. Say please and thank you. Don’t ask us to write recs for you. We don’t know you and it’s rude. Don’t send private messages making outrageous requests or saying stupid things. Many of us talk amongst ourselves and will hear about it, whether in private or in public. And don’t expect to be spoon fed information, especially when it is readily available a million times over by using the search function.

If you have a super sensitive question and can’t get an answer to it out in the real world, consider creating a new identity to ask that question.

Of course all of this applies to anything you do here while your recruitment is actually happening. It seriously isn’t hard to put two plus two together.


Your Recruitment Story
So recruitment’s here and you’re eager to tell your story! You’ve done all the things mentioned above. There are still a few things to keep in mind in order to stay in stealth mode until you receive your bid:

-If something super unusual happens at a party, do not mention it or be specific about it. If the drapes caught fire or a sister dropped an entire tray of drinks on top of several PNMs, it will be very obvious which party and chapter you were at and will narrow you down to only a handful of PNMs. If you feel you have to mention something because it’s important to your story or decision, you can say something like “Something really awkward happened at the XYZ house but they handled it with such class. It really made me feel like I wanted to be a part of their sisterhood!”

-Do not talk about wardrobe specifics each day. If you want to talk about what you wore, say something like “I wore a sun dress I love and felt really good in” NOT “I wore a pink, green and white floral Ann Taylor sun dress with hot pink Lilly Pulitzer sandals and these amazing 4 karat pink diamond earrings.” And for God’s sake, don’t mention your pink sequined pantyhose! (Or any other “signature” piece you may be wearing through recruitment.) Also, don’t mention what you wear even in the vaguest terms if it was very different from what other PNMs wore that day. So if you ended up in a tee, shorts and flip flops while everyone else was in dresses and heels, zip it.

-Likewise, don’t mention any physical appearance specifics. Things like “I seem to be the only Indian woman going through recruitment” or “My heels were so high that I ended up being over six feet tall and was preffed by someone who was five feet tall” can slip out and identify you.

-Don’t get too specific about conversations. Say “I had a great chat with a member who has the same major and plays the same sport as I do” not “I talked with someone who is also an applied astrophysics major and is on the synchronized swimming team.”

-Mix up the order you visit the houses.

-Don’t get too specific about your Rho Chis or the members in your group. Things like “My Rho Chi is from the tiny town of Mayberry, population 500” and “I’m one of only two blondes in an entire group of brunettes” can quickly single you out.

-Mention legacy details with caution. For instance, if you’re a triple legacy to a house, it’s probably better to say something like “I was really excited to get to this party because I am a legacy.”

-In other words, don’t mention anything in detail that will make you stand out and be easily identifiable here.

Most of the people on Greek Chat are wonderful, nice and normal people. But this is a public board and you never know if something you say here will be taken the wrong way by a crazy person. Keeping your identity under wraps until you accept your bid will help you tell your story with a greatly diminished fear of retribution. I sincerely hope I have helped and encouraged some of you to tell us your 2009 story!

Thanks so much for this! It is SOOO helpful. As a PNM hoping to share her live recruitment story in the fall, I can say you're probably saving me some stupid mistakes :)!

^ Agreed. I am happy I read this before I posted anything!

Can't they just take this info out of their GC profiles?

I believe she's referring to a username (ie. UFloridaJane) or something that gives away who you are/where you go to school.

Consider the pros and cons of mentioning your school, but do realize that the number of chapters and start date alone are almost always enough to identify your school, even if you don't intend to identify it, and the more chapters your school has, the easier it will be to identify your school.

Do make sure to mix up the order in which you visit chapters ESPECIALLY during the first round. In the first round, many schools have a "rotation" where PNMs visit the chapters with their Rho Gamma groups. Everyone visits the chapters in the same order, so if you give enough information to identify one chapter, you've identified them all. Subsequent rounds may not be a big deal because only Panhellenic and the Rho Gammas should have access to your schedule.

Using correct punctuation, spelling, capitalization, etc would also be great, since you are in college. It wasn't until Greek Chat that I observed the epidemic of not being able to differentiate between "apart" and "a part". I've added it to my long list of pet peeves.

ahhhh gotcha... for some reason I thought it said the user info

My honest opinion...

If I was going through recruitment and wanted to post my story in real time, in order to not risk getting into trouble at all (both with sorority sisters at my school, and members of Greekchat), I'd post it all on the morning of bid day. I'd write my story, day by day, in Microsoft Word so that it was all in real time for myself. Then I'd post it all before I got my bid. This way, people on Greekchat aren't waiting two weeks to hear a full story, it was all written "in real time", I wouldn't give away who I was too early, and I'd still leave everyone in suspense about where I'd be pledging.

However, if you do choose to post your story each day, definitely take Barbie's advice to heart. The last thing you want to do is ruin your chances to be in a sorority because you just HAD to tell your story to a bunch of strangers on the internet.

I love ASTalumna06's advice!

:) Wow, what wonderful advice!! Thank you barbie and others- you might have just saved me from a disasterous recruitment and recruitment story!

That sums everything up quite nicely.

Remember also -- not all sorority women will stalk you on line.

Not all will go seeking out information you don't volunteer.

Some will recognize you change things to avoid being detected, and that is not a challenge to test others' google-fu.

Some will realize that you may not know all the unwritten "rules" of greekchat.


It is not smart to state on Day 1 that you wouldn't consider a bid from XYZ if they were the last organization on the planet. Or that the girls could only ask about egg foo yung once they saw you were Asian.

Those who would "out" you against your will are those who give sorority selection processes a bad name.

True. Some situations have been caused by batshit crazy stalkers, but I can think of several where the PNM totally deserved what was coming because of the way she acted here or talked about certain groups during recruitment. No 'unwritten rules of greekchat' needed, just meanness, rudeness and stupidity that would be recognized as such anywhere.

Exactly, but you should write your story as though all of them will!

True. And as I've said before - very few people on GC who say "I know the school" are going to do a damn thing about it, or are saying it to be malicious or mean. They're just so happy they got it. :p Most of the real messes that happened with PNMs losing bids or having bad rushes were because a non-GCer at the PNM's school saw the posts, figured out it was their school and went back to their sisters. I can't think of any time where a GCer did something like calling up a chapter (which is basically what's being implied).

So rushees, if you get a PM from a GCer or see posts on here saying you're being indiscreet - don't get pissed. It is the equivalent of a mom yanking her child's arm off to get him out of the way of a car.

Exactly.

Exactly! There are GC members and tons of lurkers who are active alums or collegians in the Chapters. I personally know at least a half dozen locally active alums who regularly lurk here, especially reading Recruitment related threads at this time of year.

Any time my school/Chapter is mentioned, my ears perk up. No, I'm not stalking. Rather it's a simple case of: my curiosity + my responsibility = I'm going to check out other posts by this person. If you (the PNM) put info out there for the world to see, then you shouldn't be surprised when someone actually does see it.

Since bumping recruitment stories seems to be the new thing to do, I think this is just as important this year as it was last year.

Good thread!

Ban all live recruitment stories.

20something's thread was. fucking. awesome. but i REALLY wish i knew who haley was.i LOVED how they made her grow and that she matured and saw her org in a different light. but still. i wanna know!

eh. i'll stop caring by the time i wake up later today. :p

now i might just read curlygirly's....i hope it's not the same torture.

I know of at least 7 and I'm sure there were more. Y'all be careful.

Actual logged in, you know their SN, GCers or the non-registered lurkers 33girl specifically mentioned in her previous paragraph?

The 7 I'm speaking of were real live, screen-named GCers. A couple are still active here and PNMs, it's just not worth it to mess up your recruitment even though live threads are fun to make and read.

@Barbie's_Rush, thanks for bumping this.

20something's story kept me up late. Talk about well-written & insightful. It would be great if she'd come back & update us.

Let me rephrase that.

"I can't think of any time in the past 2 years (or since we started shunning those who shameless plug) where an ACTIVE, NON-NOOB GCer called up a chapter."

Active as in, posting on a regular basis. Again, I'm sure those who I'm talking about are still lurking though and undoubtedly still doing isht like this. But you could just as easily include them in the non-GCers camp. It's the same concept.

One we don't see so much, the other we do. That one has actually visited a campus and her sorority's chapter there at least twice just to get involved in other GCers' recruitments. I wish I were exaggerating but I'm not.

I would just rather the girl post her story right after bid day so she can include funny, fun, interesting, descriptive, etc details. Basically all live stories are going to sound the exact same.

^^^This is my favorite quote of the whole post.

The one I can think of off the top of my head was veniceissinking/soliloquy where apparently several greekchatters made damn sure to give their chapters a heads up (and rightfully so.)

What? No... to me, that just is not right. I can understand "involvement" if one is an advisor, or if the actives are requesting alumae support, or the national has requested alumnae support, but otherwise I'm completely HANDS OFF the recruitment process. There is a recruitment advisor, a membership advisor, and it is the actives' chapter and their membership recruitment process. To me, that's creepy.

Now this I can understand, and I agree. As an alumna, if I had knowledge of a PNM that was not in line with the membership selection process, I would contact the recruitment advisor and membership advisor. Definitely.

PNMs would do well to remember that there are GLO alumnae everywhere they go; we are all connected to the high school world (either directly or indirectly through our friends and social groups). And we all talk with one another. You might think no one is watching, but in this day and age, someone is. Good or bad, someone is taking note of what you say and do. Behave accordingly. Yes, it makes a difference.

All good points, AZTheta! And I've written a couple of 'no-recs' in my time and I don't feel guilty about that.

I made a mistake; someone has contacted me to remind me that the aforementioned alum has visited 2 campuses, not 1, to mess with GCers' rushes. You're right, sorry about that.

That's what you call PSYCHO!

TOTALLY psycho!

I was just thinking back to the old days, when signatures said, "UNABASHED PLUG FOR XYZ" and such. As a noob, it freaked me out! GreekChat has come a long way.

Another thing I remembered was in my own chapter (before Al Gore invented the internet, and before our MS changed): Sisters were to write their thoughts about each & every PNM each & every day, and these notebooks were to be destroyed prior to Bid Day. Somehow, the one when I rushed wasn't, and I got to see exactly which sister thought what about me - thank heavens most were very, very kind! The one that I'll never forget was, "Too big-breasted, & sexy, must be easy." :eek: And those of y'all who have read my retro-recruitment know that I was pretty straitlaced at the time, especially during rush! I couldn't help but remember some of the other comments about PNMs who didn't go ADPi, either!

As I said, Membership Selection has changed drastically for ADPi, but Precious PNMs, I have no idea about the others. As exciting as a real-time thread can be, you will probably do so much better if you do as others have said: Write it out as a document, then post it after Bid Day. And if for some reason, you don't get a bid, it's not the end of the world. Feel free to post about that, too, if you find it cathartic.