Closing the door after the horses bolted
 

I've been lurking during my daughter's recent recruitment at a competitive southern school, mainly trying to re-oxidize the stress hormones that I discovered I still carried around from my own, ultimately successful, recruitment 30-whatever years ago.

We dropped off our beautiful (I know, but she is) daughter at the dorm, a bit anxious, but generally bright, shiny and optimistic. I'd tried to prepare her for the process, the do's/don't's, what to look out for etc. and I told her to expect cuts for whatever reason (actually, I recall some of the reasons, but didn't think the truth would help). Recruitment starts, cuts ensue, of course, including a couple that took her by surprise, but by pref round she had a couple she was fine with and one that she was convinced from the get-go wasn't for her, for whatever reason that 18-years olds get convinced about such things. Without describing the gory details, college has barely started, my bright shiny daughter is miserable and heart-broken, adrift in an unfamiliar environment full of happy strangers living the dream. I'm so sad for her I can't stand it and my resolutely GDI husband says he's going to shave "I WARNED YOU" into the dog.

Other than venting, where I'm going with this is that I wonder whether we shouldn't do what we can to encourage the recruitment process to be more humane. I mean really, girls, even those of us who got the long straw have to admit that we're perpetuating some of the truer-than-we-like-to-admit stereotypes about sororities. For one thing, I've always thought it was out of whack to have recruitment before college even starts. At my daughter's school, the sororities are dominated by girls (and helimoms) from a few metropolitian areas and there's a high-school popularity contest aspect to recruitment that's skewed against girls like my daughter--out of state, solid if unspectacular resume, no drawl. Rather than indulge in a hurried, gratuitously stressful and exclusionary process before college even starts, wouldn't it be better to do it like some schools do and wait until later in the first/early second semester, extend the process a bit, eliminate some of the silly artificiality, let them wear their grown-up pants around for a while and encourage everyone to make better decisions.

There, I feel a little better.

There are many schools that do have deferred rush. NPC doesn't advocate it, and neither do many of the local chapters with large houses as it would make housing contracts a mess (from what I gather, at most of these schools you need to decide your next year's housing at the end of the first semester).

Your daughter happens to have been born in a time where sorority enrollment is increasing, partly because of the birth rate, and partly because of other factors. Also, Panhellenic regulations are much stricter than they used to be. No more looking the other way at dirty rushing or chapters that are taking way more women than they should. Those were most likely going on when you went through rush.

I'm sorry your daughter was unlucky, but so were many other young women. Did she not sign a bid card after pref, or did she sign a bid card and not get a bid?

The moral of the story is, if Greek life is that important to you, realize what the Greek system is like when you're picking a college. Don't assume that you can make it bend to fit what you would like it to be. If you're looking at a college that has everything you want BUT the Greek system is unhoused/too competitive/locals only/insert other thing that would put you off, you have to either realize that Greek life may not be part of your college life or may not be what you thought it would be, or else look for another college that suits you.

Many of us on here would not be Greek if we had gone to different kinds of colleges than we did.

I am sorry your daughter couldn't see herself in the chapter which so obviously wanted her - if she was invited to pref, they wanted her. Perhaps she can find a home through informal recruitment.

I do think it bears mentioning that while we hear a great deal from moms of pnms who don't get bids, the vast majority of pnms FIND A HOME. Recruitment may not have worked out for your daughter (although if she had at least 2 pref chapters, I would argue that it worked pretty well up to that point) but especially with the new rfm programs we are seeing MORE women finding homes in MORE chapters. Overall, it works. It works better NOW than it did back-in-the-day. Record-breaking numbers of women are becoming sorority members. Campuses are expanding. Numbers don't lie, and the numbers say the system works, probably as well as it can. Deferred recruitment has its own problems, and those campuses are not the ones we see succeeding in the ways conventional campuses are.Having recruitment during classes is a major head-ache, and distracts from what should be a freshman's main focus - getting off to a good start academically. Chapters are always going to be more likely to pledge women they know (hometown or schools) or who have recs from trusted actives and alumnae. But even SEC chapters pledged large numbers of out of state girls. My Texas girls (drawl-free) did well at SEC schools- 100 % of my recs who went to Alabama (one of the, if not THE, toughest recruitments) received bids. BUT - they were all encouraged to have open minds. From your description, your daughter decided from the get-go that she would not consider one of the chapters. That, in this day and age, is a recipe for disaster. If she truly could not imagine being in that chapter than of course she made the right choice. But it is ludicrous to try and blame the entire system, which works so well for so many, for her negative result.

I wouldn't say that. Maybe "conventional" campuses are placing more women through formal rush, but how many of those women initiate or stay active for all 4 years?

Sorority enrollment is up EVERYWHERE, deferred, non-deferred, private, public etc.

Your argument about out of state status is false. We have run studies (actual numbers) and the number of oos girls getting bids EXCEEDS in state girls. That is for 2 big SEC schools where the common thinking matched yours. And the oos status didn't mean yeah they weren't from Alabama, but they WERE all from Texas. Or whichever state. It was remarkably diverse geographically.

Yes, recruitment is crazy competitive on these campuses and some are trying to expand, but that has to be done gently or both the new and existing chapters will suffer. In my (utterly without scientific basis) opinion, even the most overcrowded, overly competitive school shouldn't expand more than once every 3 years. And that's a long time if you're a freshman at a school where sophomores have an even tougher go of it than freshmen.

And for the umpteenth time, your daughter failed the system, not the reverse. She had a choice and she declined it. The problem isn't the system; it's your daughter. You're looking for the magical answer that makes your daughter have a better outcome. Ask the (how many on this campus, 100? 200?) girls who legitimately did get cut from every single chapter if they think your daughter got screwed by the system.

OP, I'm glad you recognized that you're venting, because that's really all you ARE doing. We are well aware that the system isn't perfect and would have worked more in your snowflake's favor if this, that, and the other. But she played the cards she was given and lost - well, folded actually. Time to find a new game.

This thought often pops into my head when I read these stories: Is your daughter really heartbroken/devastated/end of the world depressed over an unsuccessful recruitment. Or, are the moms only hearing about it and not seeing that after they get off the phone with daughter, she goes to lunch with a friend or an event with her roomate and is completely fine and happy?

When I went through recruitment I only called my mom to cry about the sororities that cut me, that it was "the end of the world" if I didn't get to pref XYZ. In reality, I was really fine. Yes, I was a little shaken and disappointed, but I was making friends and doing things and my mom still thought I was sitting alone in my room crying about me thinking that a whole group of people didn't like me.

Eventually in a conversation with my mom, she either caught on that I was only being miserable to her because I could be or she was tired of my wallowing in my own self pity. She told me basically to put my big girl panties on, get over it, move on or that she was coming down to withdraw me from school because clearly I was depressed. This was a wake up call to me to stop emotionally dumping on my mother because it was not fair to her at all because it was not reality.

I ended up not preffing the sorority that I thought I "belonged" on or the one that even dirty rushed me. I ended up preffing one sorority that in my 18 year old brain I was too good for and one that I thought was a just "ok" and ended up being very very happy in the organization I received a bid from.

So what I am saying is before moms come here and start complaining about a system that has gotten increasingly better, find out if your daughter is really ok and moving on with her life or is severely depressed. If she is depressed, there are other issues going on. Greek life is not the end all be all of anyones college career.

I am so sorry for the way things turned out. If, as you say, your daughter is so unhappy and ungrounded.....perhaps she should go and talk to someone at student health? Moms want to make everything all better. Sometimes we just can't.....an understanding professional ear might be a good thing.

Maggie, my sister dealt with the same issue with her daughter. First, they talk to each other WAY too much, but daughter would call, even between classes and vent about every little cross-eyed look she got from someone and my sister thought her daughter was MISERABLE, only to find out that daughter vented to mom and moved on, without telling mom that the problem had been solved, dissipated normally or whatever. Of course everyone tried to tell her to cut the cord, but we'd been saying that since the kid was 2, so you can assume it's pointless when the daughter is 20.

24/7 communication is not your friend. If daughter had to wait until Sunday evening to make a 5 minute long distance phone call, we'd be getting a lot fewer of these sob stories.

My point is that having deferred recruitment does NOT translate into more successful (if we judge success by pnms placed in chapters) recruitment than those who do not defer; in fact, the opposite seems to be the case. The op posited that because of her daughter's recruitment failure recruitment should go to a deferred model. I do not think that would have the result the op thinks it would.

As to retention, I don't think there is a big difference between deferred/non-deferred campuses but don't know where to access the data. I think I can confidently state that retention isn't a major problem at the SEC campuses I referenced - a problem, perhaps, but look at those chapter numbers.

Yes. This. And This. And This.

LGN1212, I'm with you. As GLO members, we often preach great virtues like integrity and scholarship and honor and ... but some make snap judgments based on a few letters of recommendation and less than four hours of person-to-person contact. It's for that reason that I showed by daughter the rush booklet that came to the house for her, said "are you interested" and took her "no" at face value. Other young ladies are interested, and are willing to go through the big southern school variation of the system. There are those who believe "this is the system we're stuck with" because they can't see any other way; there are those who honestly believe this is the best possible system; there are those who think as you do. Who's right? Who knows? We all think we are, of course.

Now, is she adrift amongst happy strangers because she accepted a bid and still doesn't fit in, or did she not accept a bid? Mind you, I'm of the (GC-minority, apparently) mindset that declining a bid beats taking one you don't want, but your post wasn't clear on that point.

God help these young women when they go to get a job - when you will have only your resume and far less than 4 hours of person to person contact to impress your possible employer, who will apparently make a "snap" judgment. I'm not sure where their mothers will go to vent about their amazing daughters who are devastated - BuisnessChat?


eta - And am I the only one to catch the irony of DGTess complaining about GLOs making snap judgments when her daughter decided sorority membership was not for her based solely on the recruitment booklet?

I cannot speak to what other chapters do, but I am fairly confident that they, as did the chapter I advised, do far more than just get together and pass "snap judgments". The chapter I advised had a Fortune 500 company trainer use a variation of the Meyers/Briggs personality scale to learn how to evaluate those going through recruitment, and also how to meet the needs of that personality type when discussing the chapter. Massive amounts of time, effort and energy are put into helping chapters make educated, substative choices. That's as far into membership selection as I am willing to go.

It would be courteous of you to tell the complete story & explain whether your daughter actually completed the recruitment process or not. Did she go to Pref, maximize the number of chapters on her pref card and then not receive a bid? or did she suicide a single chapter? or did she get a bid & refuse it? Every scenario is different....

24/7 communication is not your friend. If daughter had to wait until Sunday evening to make a 5 minute long distance phone call, we'd be getting a lot fewer of these sob stories.


So true!

I prefer the pre-school rush. First, it doesn't get in the way of classes and studying. Second, girl does not get bid and the next set of arrivals do not care.

The two of you are talking about a completely different set of demographics. The campi where deferred recruitment would really improve retention rates are the opposite of the campi where hell would freeze, melt, and freeze again before they would even consider deferred recruitment.

Do you know of a campus where they went to deferred and it improved retention rates? And since you obviously have a campus (or campi) in mind - where do you think deferred WOULD improve retention?

SEC was the topic in the op, so that is where I've focused my comments. I would be interested in knowing if and where deferred recruitment works/would work better than standard recruitment. I am most familiar with SMU, and I don't know that I would say it works for them based on what I know about what happens during the fall.

I went to SMU, and I liked deferred recruitment. It allowed us to get our feet underneath us before rushing. Despite not talking about rush ;), we did meet and talk to plenty of girls in houses and definitely had an opportunity to make good impressions (or bad depending on the situation).

As an active, it gave us the whole fall to prepare for rush, we held workshops and really got to know girls going through by the recs and inside info we had access to.

I think it opens up eyes from both sides. Just my opinion.

Edit to add - as to the housing situation, you didn't get to live in the house until your senior year (or junior if you were lucky or an officer) so there was no issue with housing contracts.

And, I think it helped academically (which is the REAL reason we all went to college, right?) to have that semester to learn how to handle the work load without the extra load of pledgeship.

It also allowed friendships to develop among the freshman before they were split into groups, which I think helped keep lines of friendship and communication open after we all went to different houses.

Okay, that's all :)

SMU
 

Thanks srmom - that pretty much lines up with what I've heard. Your ";)" confirms what can be good/can be bad - basically, fall is one giant recruitment - rules are broken quite often, and that can work to your advantage as a pnm or not. I've known girls who felt they weren't able to "work" the fall and had a disappointing recruitment, and others who, like you apparently, felt they had a chance to really get to know the houses. I'd like to see the ";)" taken out of it - just schedule fall events, or regulate the reality instead of pretending that the pnms are somehow going to spend an entire semester on campus without interacting with the sororities.

Yes, it is ludicrous to think that you can be on campus and spend the whole semester in panhellenic silence! LOL

Many a girl's recruitment is ruined by bad fall behavior, and many a girls is advanced because she shined all fall.

But, honestly I've seen the same thing at UT with girls going to Round Up in the spring and hanging out in Austin on weekends and tagging along to parties or going to fraternity formals, etc. There is plenty of rushing going on at those events too. I'm sure that UT is not the Lone Ranger when it comes to "pre-rush-recruitment".

Don't know how to fix it, just making observations.

Yep. I think it was Bama that tried to cut down on spring/summer recruitment events with high school seniors - someone know something?

Oh, yes yes yes.:rolleyes:
DD called me one day, crying and practically screaming about some horrible problem that had no solution (not sorority, class stuff).:eek: I agonized for 24 hours trying to think of a way to help her.
Finally I called to ask her if she was OK, and she said, "Oh yeah, I figured that out." And went on to chat happily about what she and her boyfriend were going to do that night.

Kids. :cool: God bless 'em.

I know that Bama was trying to cut down on these as of a few years ago. But I also know girls who have attended spring/summer teas for various Bama chapters over the past few years, too.

One year while I was an active at UGA, the rumor was that one chapter on campus was going to lose a semester of socials because of illegal summer recruitment events... but I don't think that rumor did anything to cut down on summer events the next year.

At many of these schools, the unspoken rule seems to be "be very quiet and subtle about how you break the rules." Deferred recruitment would only give more time for even more blatant violations.

I know that Bama Panhellenic has made a rule that high school seniors may not stay in the dorms when visiting UA. I totally understand the reasoning behind rule, but the sad part is that these seniors don't get a "full college tour" experience to include staying in the dorms when they're looking at schools.

Does this mean she is a new member in a chapter that she didn't want or is she not Greek? It sounds like the latter, but if it is the former, I'd encourage her to really dive in and take a chance on the women who took a chance on her.

A lot of schools don't offer this. I only stayed overnight at one college I visited (the one I ended up attending), and that was because it was a plane ride away and the older sister of a friend offered to let me stay with her one night.

I should clarify - I didn't mean a program where you stay with a random stranger (eek). At Bama, you couldn't even have stayed with that friend of yours. You can't stay overnight in the dorms with your very bestest friend in the world if she's in a chapter and you're not.

Well that makes sense because before recruitment you're really not supposed to even be communicating with your very bestest friend if she's in a chapter and you're even thinking about going through recruitment. That's how it is at the university I attended, anyway.

Well it's for the PNMs whole senior year of HS - not just before recruitment.
Alabama has a PH Preview Weekend in the spring and that is supposed to suffice for getting to see houses and introduced. The coming down for every football game and staying with your BFF in the house or dorm is not allowed.

As far as venting to the moms, so true. I remember mom & I having a conversation along the lines of "but I thought you hated Kari? You came home complaining about how mean she was to you." "Oh Mom, I was just mad, and anyway that was last week."

The difference is I think I had this conversation when I was 10. By the time I was in HS I wouldn't have dreamed of letting her in on the ins & outs of my friendships. It's nice that kids are more open with their parents nowadays I guess, but the parents have to remember that they are talking to an adolescent, not a peer, and take what is said accordingly.

I had the conversation where mom yelled at me for declining the invite from her legacy house, but I think that was about it.

My mother was/is the total opposite of a helicopter mom. I went through rush (yes it was eons ago) in order to move out of the house early. She tried to manipulate me into dropping out before I started since she wanted me home for another week to further destroy my non-existent self esteem. She reminded me I would not be invited to join any house because 1) I was not pretty enough for her so the girls would not think me pretty, 2) I was not smart enough for her. I have dyslexia and did not have a 4.0 like she did and the girls would not like that, 3) I am Jewish and there was no Jewish based house on my campus and the other houses all hated Jews, and 4) I was the HS geek/nerd/unpopular girl and no one was going to like me so I should be home so she could remind me of this. Of course, I ignored her for the first time in my life and went through rush. After I signed my preference card I called home:

Me: Hi Mom, if KD offers me a bid tomorrow may I break my dorm contract and move into the house?

Her: What???? You are still in rush?????

DaffyKD

Love it. So what did she say when you actually got the bid?

:D So, did you get to move into the house?

Yay for gaining your independence and joining KD! Sorry to hear what you had to go through though. :(

Yes. Lived in the house all 4 years!

DaffyKD

((DaffyKD)) Yes!!