Tent Talk & "Bottom-Tier" Houses
 

Tent talk and "bottom" houses during recruitment are inevitable. There's no way to stop it, little way to control it. I mean, you can't control freedom of speech and you can't stop girls from forming opinions.

But it still really gets to me.

Mostly because tent talk is a form of group-think, and usually results in certain chapters hurting from an unfair, sensationalized reputation. It also results in certain chapters getting "dogpiled" with girls that want them, resulting in even more hurt feelings.

I'm basically just venting here, because I've seen a lot of things at my large, competitive Greek university that are quite difficult to watch. (I know similar things happen at less competitive, smaller schools as well). And it makes me wonder if there are ways to alleviate these problems.

At my school (which I will keep private for now to protect everyone's identity), chapter A, B and C are considered the "top tier" houses. During recruitment it often seems they're the ones that every girl has her heart set on, and they get talked up quite a bit. Now these chapters are, like the rest of the ones at my school, excellent and full of amazing women I am proud to call friends. They work their butts off to pull off an awesome recruitment and deserve to be popular. But I can't help but feeling uncomfortable when...

The "bottom tier" chapters suffer. It's not necessarily directly related to the popularity of A, B and C, but at the end of it I think it all has something to do with tent talk and group-think.

I'm not in a so-called "bottom tier" chapter (I really hate that term, but it's a term that is often used), but I have close friends in all of them. In my opinion they are unfairly stigmatized just because they aren't quite as "shiny" as the most popular houses on the surface. Like the rest of the sororities, they work hard, are super involved on campus and are full of beautiful, fun and friendly women.

I was a recruitment counselor last fall and witnessed some truly horrible things said. I was far from shocked or even surprised, but I couldn't help being miffed. Several PNMs in my group started bragging about getting invited back to A, B and/or C, and conversely putting down D, E and F (the "bottom" tiers), going as to far to criticize the sisters themselves and make fun of them. Despite my efforts to try and correct them gently, it continued and resulted in several grief-stricken PNMs confiding in me that they felt really bad about not getting the "houses they really wanted" and might drop out altogether.

What was strange was that before the houses became so stigmatized, these same girls in my group seemed to genuinely like (as far as I could tell...I could be mistaken) D, E and F, and I'd watched them come out of said chapters with huge smiles on their faces. I'd also heard them praising the so-called "bottom tier" chapters...but as soon as the real tent talk began and the "top groups" started getting formed, suddenly PNMs' opinions took an odd and sudden turn for the worse. And as a result, potential sisters for the "bottom chapters" with less girls would start to drop. At the same time, I witnessed some of the bragging PNMs getting cut from their top picks and dropping out as well.

Now I realize that maybe these PNMs weren't right for Greek life, as some of my friends have suggested...I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps the competitive recruitment process causes girls act out of character or feel like they're not themselves due to all the pressure. But regardless, I can't help feeling like tent talk and behind-the-scenes rankings are detrimental to Greek life in general.

Sorry for the essay! I just wanted to share my experiences and hear everyone's thoughts. :)

Ugh, that's rough. It makes sense though.

This happens at every school to some extent. Nothing anyone can do about it but choose to ignore it and concentrate on their own business.

It's also not hard to figure out your school. Before you start talking all over Greek Chat about how competitive your school is you probably should do a lot more reading about what that truly means in sorority recruitment.

Actually something can be done about, Local PHC and the Chapters can be genuinely and publicly positive about the Greek System. Lip service won't do. Of course it won't actually fix tent talk, but it can help balance out the messages that are received by PNMs. Saying nothing can be done is like saying we will never land on the moon.

How about a code of conduct for the PNM's? And if they are witnessed slandering people or groups, they get bounced from recruitment.

To some, that may seem a little heavy handed...but, I think if the girls knew there would be consequences for their negative words it might deter some of the tent talk.

Some schools try that but realistically, you know that most girls will go behind closed doors to discuss their opinions, especially if they fear punishment. It's like bullying, it just moves underground.

Good point.

There will always be some type of tent talk going on in various situations throughout a person's life. Just let it be, and it will separate out the girls who are sensible and mature about things. In the end that would make better members and contributors to the Greek community.

Here's the thing "Slightly Larger" never seems to realize - bashing "Smallest" doesn't make "Slightly Larger" any better. In fact, they only come across as catty witches, and it can make P-PNMs think that all sorority girls are mean girls and witches. That only makes PNMs more likely to drop out of recruitment
if they don't get dream chapter (who - of course - couldn't be witches.)

Yeah, that bothers me. Maybe better relations between houses (making more of an effort to stay off nasty sites like Greekrank and having sorority/sorority mixers and events) would help, but if recruitment is competitive, I guess insecurities and jealousies are bound to play into it.

Our sorority has had events with other sororities, little getting-to-know you things, and I think it's increased our sense of Greek community. Too often we stay inside our own cliquey bubbles within Greek life and forget we all should be working together!

And putting it into practice. Saying "I have friends in all the sororities" kind of falls flat when PNMs see ABC sisters giving the death looks to XYZ sisters at parties.

It's pretty simple. If sorority members act catty, immature and mean, they will attract catty, immature and mean PNMs.

Other things that can be done to relieve tent talk: REVISE A TOO HIGH TOTAL. For the love of all that's holy. If your total is 150 and no one has been over 110 in 5 years, of course that's going to contribute to a bunch of worried and stressed out girls - and stress coming out in non-Panhellenic ways. Thankfully NPC has been more on the ball about this in recent years.

Get rid of (really in practice, not just in theory) the practice of taking little sisters or brothers (that is, women from sororities taking guys from the fraternities and vice versa). I've never heard of this making a Greek system stronger, just making the drama stronger.

Is this really still widespread? I always felt it was more a case of getting a girlfriend involved in the pledge experience (in the case of Big Sisters to fraternity Pledges)

From postings on here, unfortunately, it seems it is.

It's pretty simple. If sorority members act catty, immature and mean, they will attract catty, immature and mean PNMs.

Get rid of (really in practice, not just in theory) the practice of taking little sisters or brothers (that is, women from sororities taking guys from the fraternities and vice versa). I've never heard of this making a Greek system stronger, just making the drama stronger.[/QUOTE]

1. (with the catty, immature and mean sisters): Unfortunately, those types of girls can put on a good face during recruitment, then "turn" nice girls once they are new members. I think we have all seen that.

2. Full disclosure: Back in the day, I was a Little Sister. On the positive side, I got to be friends with a number of girls from other houses via the Little Sister group, and a number of independant girls who chose not to go the sorority route. Our group was very laid back (...reflected the fraternity) and it really wasn't a "girlfriend's club." HOWEVER, particularly during my last two years, I saw how negative it could be, especially the competition to be named a Little Sister to the most elite fraternities on campus. One fraternity, in particular, was particularly cruel in the their process (i.e. announcing the new Little Sisters with all the girls competing for spots present at a dance...so they had to hang around for the rest of the night when they didn't get it in.)

We used to have a few weeknight "exchanges" just with other sororities (...no boys allowed) each semester that were very informal ("Hat Party with the DG's!" "Pizza Night wit ADPi") where everyone sat around and just chatted. Because they counted for participation points, we got good turn out, and because there was free food, the out of house girls (...including me my senior year) tended to swing by.

What I'm talking about is not what you're talking about - not the organized Little Sister groups. I'm talking about where Freddy Fraternity asks Patti Pledge to be his "little sister." Freddy's fraternity and Patti's sorority have nothing really to do with it - it doesn't align them in any way. Freddy's brothers may have "little sisters" from totally different sororities.

When negativity abounds, good people have to call it out or the negativity will grow. It's very much like political campaigning, you either get in the mud with the pigs or choose to stay out of the sty. Even with choosing to avoid getting in the mud, whenever mud is slung some sticks on the target. I would rather see astroturf pro-Panhellenic positivity than none at all because the alternative is far worse.

When you have gigantic house totals that just keep going up, then ALL of the houses have catty, immature, mean members to some extent. Staying on message, and a positive message, is the only way to combat that either internally or externally and stay true to our principles and values.

I think that since one of the more personal college gossip websites has gone offline the tent talk and maliciousness will calm down a bit and hopefully girls will have more of an open mind about all the chapters

This is the funniest thing that I've heard in a long time. Tent talk and less than open minds about all of the chapters have been in existence well before the advent of the internet.

I hope you're right, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Yes. I think when most of the chapters on campus are under total, the Panhellenic environment becomes very competitive year-round as chapters are vying for PNMs via COB. It's easier for chapters to be nice to each other when they each feel secure in their individual situations.

However, I think members of the non-Greek and fraternity community are contributing to tent talk just as much, if not more, than the sororities themselves. From my collegiate experience, the most blatant examples of PNMs being told "these chapters suck, and these chapters are the only ones you should consider" came from fraternity men talking to freshman over the summer or in their first days on campus.

I think it's natural for PNMs who don't know any better to ask what chapters are good to join - after all, they just went through the college selection process where they took into account prestige of university, tuition costs, "Fit", etc.

Things that I think help:
1) Holding recruitment right when PNMs get to campus, so they have minimal time to absorb tent talk
2) Discouraging talking, texting, etc. between recruitment parties (tricky though it is)
3) Coordinating with IFC to encourage an "All Greek Together" policy - I don't know if this would mean a carrot or stick approach, or maybe both. I'm sure plenty of fraternities would like the sorority women to keep their mouths shut about reputation, too.
4) Better "expectations" programming during the orientation process. There was another thread about adjusting PNMs expectations, and maybe it could help.
5) Perhaps the Greek Advisor could make a concerted effort to subtly "talk up" the chapters that typically perform less well during recruitment to the PNMs. Or maybe present a little information about each chapter that shows each group in an amazing light - highlighting awards, involvement in on campus activities, fundraising totals, etc.

I agree with a lot of what you've said.

I don't think most people would know about this, but a few months before I started at USC, a girl posted on our College Confidential page asking about what the sororities were like, and a former, non-Greek SC student (female, and proud to admit that she's completely anti-Greek) posted reputations and generalizations about each and every Greek house, including a tier structure. Nothing good to say about any house.

I feel like, in the internet age, the tent talk happens the moment a girl chooses to go Greek and go NPC. I remember discovering GC and deciding that I wanted to rush. I was leaving on a family vacation the next day, and I remember googling "USC sororities" at some point on the trip. After the USC pages, up came a bunch of CC pages where people ranked the groups; GreekRank (please do not let this degenerate into another GR talk; I've had enough of them lately); and, finally, GC.

Now I really get concerned because my younger sister announced not too long ago that she'd consider rushing in college and she began researching Greek Life at the schools she's going to apply to this fall. Where did she land? GreekRank. It comes up too fast on search results.

It doesn't help that there are a lot of misconceptions about recruitment in general. I remember having a discussion with two girls at orientation. One asked the other, "which houses are you rushing?" To which the first replied with the "top tier" (gah I hate that) sororities at our school. The other said, "oh, same, but also ["upper middle tier" group--hate that, too]." When I said "I think I'm going to go through recruitment as well!" I kind of got that weird look when someone says they're going to do something that seems crazy to others and they dropped the subject. I wanted to say, "no, you're rushing ALL of them." *eyeroll*

This is getting long, so I'll sum it up fast: having gone through recruitment this fall, there was very little "tent talk," because we'd pretty much all heard it from Google before we even showed up on campus.

And you've hit the nail right on the head!

And for some schools like Texas or Alabama local/regional PNMs may already have grown up through high school (or even earlier) with the tent talk firmly in place 'knowing' what the house reputations are however inaccurate they may be. :ong before they even know where they are going for college.

A school I am familiar with currently has less then ten NPC groups. Over 45 years, campus fluctuated between 7-12 NPC houses. Not all current NPC groups make quota, which continues a long trend. All groups have/had housing. A few groups have disbanded, then recolonized.

It seemed when one group would leave, every other group and the PNMs knew who the next-lesser (for lack of better term) group was; that group was more-than-usually next to leave campus (and this was during a mini-boom in campus sorority membership #s). PNMs just wanted to join the 4-6 popular houses, which meant the other 3-6 didn't make quota and had to COB.

The problem of having half the houses popular/half the houses not-so-popular continues. Is this due to tent talk? Sure. Should rush be held earlier/for a longer time stretch? Yes. But I see reluctance to change on the part of campus fraternal leaders, since their system of choice has 'worked' for decades.

Yes! I have a friend at Texas who said that she felt so underprepared for recruitment because so many of her fellow rushees literally knew everyone and everything LONG before she even realized she'd be going to Texas. Or probably before she even decided to apply to Texas.

At our school, though, and many others, it's definitely internet.

Depending on the status/popularity of the GA, this could be great or be beyond epic fail. Our GA was so bad that it got to a point where the only thing that all the sororities agreed on was that they hated her guts.

I also don't think holding rush before freshman year/immediately upon campus arrival helps to curb tent talk AT ALL. If it did, then every school who does it would have every chapter at the same amount and no chapters would ever close. If anything, I think tent talk in this situation is 10x worse. You're new to the campus, maybe away from home on your own for the first time and unless you have family or intimate friends at the school, you have NO clue and are apt to take everyone's advice on the same level. I mean, if you hear a cute man from ABC fraternity saying that JKL sorority is full of fat bitches, you may believe it. Whereas if you don't rush until your second semester, and have maybe had a chance to interact with the ABC fraternity and realize that although they're cute they are total douchebags...you're not going to take everything they say as gospel.

I think a lot of the disappointed PNMs are the ones who do join chapters that maybe weren't as popular as they thought, or as they made themselves appear in rush. If they've had a semester at the least to observe, they're not going to get as much of a jolt.

Hrm, maybe this varies from campus to campus, but I felt like enough women went through recruitment at my school with little knowledge of the ranks specifically because recruitment happened right at the beginning of the term (usually started a few days before classes started). Granted, UCLA is a campus where a good portion of women sign up for recruitment in the few days between when they move in to their dorms and Round 1 (easily 20%-30% of PNMs). I could also be over-estimating this population in general.

I used to think the idea of deferred recruitment was absolutely terribly for struggling chapters, but the older I get, the more I understand your exact point. I also understand the great benefit of having time to assess PNMs, both in the social scene and their grades.

Yeah we have quite a large out of state population so the internet definitely is a huge influence in tent talk. I get the feeling that the girls at SC who know about the house reps from high school (or earlier) are the ones who have an advantage any way since they have older siblings, cousins or friends they went to school/church/club/tennis/etc with, that are already in houses.

Yes, and that also influences tent talk, just a different kind. I'm local, though, and I only found out about how Greek Life works by using the internet. Sorority life wasn't that big a deal around here when my mom was at UCLA in the 70's, and my dad went to SC, but he knew nothing about Greek Life. The most my family knew about sororities was that my uncle went as a date to a Pi Phi formal in the late 60's or early 70's. And that my mom was part of an unsuccessful attempt to colonize my sorority at some point. I also didn't have any relatives who were interested in helping, so it was me making my connections through the internet. I tried to find reliable sources (and I succeeded), but I bet there are a lot of girls who can't/don't care to (which is stupid, not going to deny it, but still).

Your first instinct was right. Spring recruitment = 4 whole months of tent talk. Plus then the boys get into it too. You can put silence rules on the sorority girls, but can't stop the boys from talking. Most deferred recruitment schools have some kind of rule where sorority girls can't talk to PNMs that they don't already know. That puts you right back with the PNM that is the best connected going in to recruitment has a significant advantage. It also leads to dirty rushing.

amen to both points. IMO, if AZ had deferred recruitment, a sizeable percentage of the PNMs wouldn't be eligible to go through recruitment at all, due to either low GPA first semester, or to their behavior (you can fill in the blanks here). It would help reduce the numbers in the new member classes (campus total is 200, quota was 83 last August). We wouldn't have to sort through 1200+ PNMs in the dreaded heat and thunderstorms of August. I'm all for it, but doubt it will ever happen.

Part of the problem, though, is that PNM's need something, anything, on which to base their decisions. If you go through rush with more than, say, 10 chapters, how do you rank the first night? If you've just gotten to campus, and you don't really know much about the groups, you are ranking based on a 25-minute meeting, probably only 15 minutes of which is actually conversation. Tent talk is stupid. So is ranking based on prettiest colors or how much you like the snacks or anything else, but a 15-minute chat just doesn't leave the PNM's much to go on.

I agree that the pnm's are really looking for information to make a wise choice. I think a strong Panhellenic that has detailed web pages about recruitment with links to the chapters web pages helps give them facts and not opinions. Also early rush before or during the first week of school is important.

That is assuming their behavior would be the same for the fall. Anyone can be good for one semester. It would not make the number of PNMs any less. It also makes for more rush crushes and drama

But that happens on the first day of recruitment anyway. Snap judgements have to be made based on a couple of minutes worth of parties. It isn't difficult to see which chapters are smaller or larger, have the best looking women, have the most awkward looking and acting, most fashionably/expensively dressed etc. The PNMs do a mighty fine job of talking amongst themselves based on what they observe even if they had no idea going in. That's been happening long before Al Gore invented the internet.

Ya, to a degree. Some chapters just aren't very good at making their websites user-friendly or informative, and many chapters aren't particularly good at keeping their websites or facebook pages up-to-date. Sometimes it's the chapters who don't have their ish together, sometimes it's perfectly functional chapter who don't really care so much about web presence.

I also agree with this... however... I think the biggest concern with "tent talk" is when it changes the mind of a PNM who otherwise liked a chapter, but then made her daily rankings decisions partly based on gossip she heard. Or, that the reputations tainted her perceptions ahead of time and she never gave certain chapters a fair chance to begin with.

It's hard to quantify how many PNMs are just information starved, and how many genuinely go in search of rankings info from the get-to. If information is even part of the culprit, then directing PNMs to positive information sources over the summer could be helpful: to GC, the NPC website, the Sorority Life website, etc.

If a school is still doing this, they are stupid (and if I'm not mistaken, going against the latest advisories in the Green Book). This ruins one of the main objectives of deferred recruitment...which is for potential rushees to get to know sorority women in normal day to day life, not in a ridiculously structured "party" environment. That way when Freddy Fraternity says that Sorority A is full of snobs, you'll know this is BS, because Andrea A is in a class with you and helped you find the student center when you lost your campus map. If Andrea isn't allowed to speak to you as a fellow human for 4 months, it only enforces any stereotypes.

Plus, most of these dumb rules said that sorority members specifically can't speak to freshmen. This is outright discrimination...it implies that freshmen are the only ones rushing.

And not only that....are these rushees in convent school? Do you honestly think girls rushing at SEC schools (pre-freshman rush) haven't heard as much, if not MORE, from the guys in their orbit as they have from the girls?

First semester freshman rush does not prevent tent talk. PERIOD. The only thing that prevents tent talk is a truly unified Greek community that doesn't permit it to happen. If women come in from HS spouting it, they need to be told, "I know your family/friends/boyfriend/random website said X, and Y, and Z, but we are all part of a Greek family here. We don't talk smack about our family."

We've been over this before....
The girls who have family members who are Greek have been hearing about who is the Best chapter since they were in diapers, BUT odds are they have only heard mostly positive things about being Greek. They haven't heard "that chapter are the rich B**$," and "those are the fat girls" and "that chapter has the party girls." (Unless their mom is a total jerk? )

This idea that girls will get more involved on campus (join a sports team or write for the school paper or start a anime club, etc.) than they would have if they were in a sorority first semester has not held up.

First semester recruitment DOES help smaller chapters. Girls that are new to the system are more willing to take a chance on a group. It also means girls are less likely to drop out of recruitment if they don't get their first choice. First semester recruitment cuts back on drama.

Most importantly, first semester recruitment DOES prevent dirty rushing - as in "if you don't do X - I'll make sure you never pledge ABC or you HAVE to do this everybody does it."

Been there - done that. Have the T-shirt. ;)

I grew up in a Greek family, and my big bro and his friends were like "ABC is the snobby bitches and DEF is the nice-girl losers and all the other chapters aren't Jewish". So yes, I got some negative stereotypes from my bro, but I guess my take-away was more "wow, every chapter has a downside or something negative that people say about them".

Tent talk will never go away, and now with internet websites pnm's go into recruitment with way too many impressions of chapters. I do believe that we human creatures tend to gravitate towards those who are similar to us, and that we tend to attract those who are similar to us. Thus, the ABC chapter that is is overwhelmingly attractive will tend to attract and retain very attractive pnm's. And if XYZ chapter is really athletic and jock-ish, they will likely attract and retain lots of those pnm's. It's a natural selection, I think. The hippie types and the quiet ones will do likewise. It really does work that way.Don't you think?