missing a night of recruitment
 

how much does it affect someone?

All depends...you'd need to talk with your recruitment counselor or the Greek Adviser about your particular case. Often women who are in band or dance line, etc have to miss part of recruitment and they generally make concessions of some sort.

That depends on the campus and the night. You need to talk to your recruitment counselors immediately. They will be able to advise you. You should not miss a night of recruitment unless you have a very good reason...like you're on an athletic team, in a show, in a wedding, etc.

one girl here, on another thread, noted that she got an ok from her professor to sit in on another class to make up the time she was missing. That's nice of the professor, and worth a shot if your problem is class.

^unfortunately, that won't fly. i have a biology lab and we are absolutely not allowed to make it up. ever. you can write a report for points but only with a valid doctor's note. i'm not allowed to go into another lab session, either. so it's either go or miss all those points. it would just affect my grade WAY too much to skip it.

my rho gamma will let the two sororities i can't make know i have an excuse, but i have to miss one of my favorite sororities, so i'm really stressed out. basically... i'm trying to work out if i'm going to get cut because i'm not there. there's really nothing i can do but it'd be good to kind of know what's coming, you know?

Whether it will be a problem or not depends on the school and the chapters. So stop worrying about that for now. There's really nothing you can do. If you can't miss the lab and it will effect your grade you're making the right choice to go to class. You might consider telling these two chapters you will have to miss the next night because your biology teacher is so strict and you are very motivated to make good grades, but you're really upset you have to miss the parties. This will let them know you're interested and that you are careful with your grades, which is certainly a plus.

I'm curious - when is Recruitment and how far away is this particular day in question? Is it the first day? I ask because it appears that you already know in which order you'll be visiting each chapter (you said that you'll miss one of your "favorites"). Is it common to know the order before recruitment even starts?

we're given our schedules the day before each round, so i found out yesterday about tonight, which i'm missing half of.

But did you not realize going into recruitment that you were going to miss part of tonight? It really sounds like you were just hoping to end up with chapters that you didn't want and it wouldn't be a big deal to miss, but now that you have a group there that you like, you're panicked. You're at the age now where people start expecting you to plan ahead. Sounds like you just got Lesson #1 in this...and it was a hard one.

i told my rho gamma from the beginning that i was going to be missing part of tonight, and i was told that that was fine. i assumed that i would just be visiting my top two, not two random out of my top four. this isn't my failure to plan ahead. my understanding was that i would be able to visit my top choices - since i just found out that's not how it works, i was hoping for advice.

From an NPC perspective, it is fine. It won't be counted against you as if you dropped out of recruitment. Will it affect your outcome? That's the question that you wanted them to answer - which, by the way, they can't. Mostly likely, it will. And you might have had the wrong impression about how rush works, but that's still on you, not them.

okay. i'm just trying to gauge whether or not it's a big deal or not. i apologize for everyone's time, since i seem to really be giving off the wrong impression here.

If it helps any, I was on a campus with a pretty competitive rush, and there would be about 1 girl a year who had to miss for class (evening classes are really rare). These girls had a success rate that was about the same as everyone else. Out of, say, 5 girls in this situation during my time as a collegiate, 1 of them dropped out of rush (or was dropped), and everyone else was placed. Whether they placed where they wanted to go is another question entirely, but they did make it through the process.

If you get cut from your favorite, then you do. I understand your misconception, but it didn't turn out that way. I hope everything goes well for you, and just remember that one of your least favorites last night could become your favorite later. The situation exists, make the best of it, and don't dwell if you do get cut. It could have happened even if you did make the party.

You might want to call the greek advisor and ask if you can write a letter to the sororities whose parties you'll miss tonight. Towson allows this, and I've heard many a letter during member selection sessions from PNMs who could not attend a party for one reason on another. This would allow you to give out the information that you didn't give them earlier, ie. you are really interested in their chapter but couldn't miss your biology lab. It may not make a difference, but at least you let them know that you liked them. I personally think this is a fair option since the rest of the PNMs are allowed to tell the chapters this in person.

I mean... think about if you were on the other side of recruitment. Would you want to vouch for a girl over dozens of others who didn't go to the party (for whatever reason)? If no one else knew her?

Sorry for sounding negative - it does ultimately depend on your campus and the chapter.

Like others have said, it depends on the chapter and the campus. DO NOT miss class for recruitment. At some schools, that will disqualify you from receiving a bid.

Think about it this way...it would be totally unfair to the PNM for a chapter to cut her just for not going to the party for a completely legitimate reason...but it would also be unfair to the rest of the PNMs if a PNM who missed a party was automatically invited back. If they really like you, and more importantly, if you were memorable enough to have women pulling for you, they'll invite you back, but you've had one fewer opportunity to make an impression when you miss a party.