No cut policy?
 

I noticed in one of Carnation's post, she mentioned a "no cut" policy so girls won't be cut from all the houses at once. Does anyone else do this? How does it work? Don't you feel that that leads girls on?

I don't understand. So everyone goes to the first round of parties and no one gets cut? That would seem more like an information session than a recruitment event.

Carnation- how does that work?

I know that some houses at my school only cut for grades on the first night. This is so they can get to know the girls better. Of course, there are some exceptions.... if there is a girl coming through that has a bad reputation or if *several* people feel strongly that she does not belong in the house, she may get cut the first night.

My school didn't have a no-cut policy, but if at any point during rush a girl got cut from all five houses, the Greek life advisor would call up some of the houses (the ones that were inviting back fewer girls than they were entitled to) and try to badger them into taking her. Of course, that just mean the smaller/weaker sororities ended up with this crazy weird girl at the next round of parties, and the other rushees thought, "Ew, they invited HER back? No one else did. Cross XYZ off my list."

I don't know exactly how this works, but I think when a GLO has just come on as a colony, they don't have to cut people for their first 3 years. I know at Elon,according to our panhellinic rules, we had a certain number of girls we HAD TO CUT each night. So, not really sure on everyone being a "no cut" group.

I know Tufts University has a "generally assured bidding" policy where if I women does all the things she is supposed to do in rush (like goes to all the parties and stuff) but is cut by all 3 houses then she automatically gets invited back to all 3.

For pref if she got cut again she would get invited back to all 3 and choose the 2 she wants for pref.

If she still doesn't match the advisors sit around at bid matching and discuss (ok argue) about where she will be placed. A lot of time the sorority that released her last (ie if two house cut her after open house but one kept her) gets her.

It is a univeristy imposed rule and there is no way to change it

Okay, here's what they did at Auburn. At the time, there were 14 sororities and 14 rushee groups.Each sorority was assigned a rushee group and just for the second round, they couldn't cut anyone in that group. There were 4 more rounds after that and they were free to cut her at any time.

On the one hand, it saved the feelings of some girls, I guess, but if you were the sorority that had to keep a very weird or crazy girl an extra day (see my post on Weird Rush Stories), it was horrible because as you said, the rushees were looking at you like they wanted to cross you off for asking the weird one back.

Supposedly, the rushees didn't know about the policy.

On one of my campuses we have a policy that if you do not receive three parties on six party round you are randomly assigned to three parties. The rushees are not aware of this policy but it has caused the number of women who are cut completely from rush to drop from 30 to 1 over the past two years. This same university would like to institute a no cute policy but the chapters are against it. Instead we also have a policy that if you play by the rules you cannot be cross-cut at pref. We always match over quota to accomodate these women.

We did not do it that way at all. If you were cut, you were cut end of story. I guess I see the point, but what if the chapters she prefed put her last, then someone has to take her? That doesn't seem fair to the chapter.

Its not entirely unfair to the chapter. If she was on their pref list, they saw something in her.

Its unfair if she's been assigned to them throughout rush when they kept cutting her.

That's what I meant, if they were assigned this woman and then were forced pref her they shouldn't be forced to take her. That's what I think is unfair.

Don't even GET CutiePie2000 on this topic - she had a terrible experience with being forced to go to/sign bid cards on groups she did not want to be in - this is just not fair to PNM nor groups.

As for women being cut and being sent back, this is not fair to chapters where this PNM may not have met their GLO International/National membership criteria. This in itself does violate NPC Agreements (and if you want to get picky, Title IX rights). As well, we are not doing any favors to these women (a la "you go where you were meant to be " thread) - they might be better to get to know them through COB ....

You got that right, NeonPi!
 

Indeed, this did happen to me. Thankfully 11 years later, it all worked itself out.

How about when someone isn't even on your bid list, and they don't get a bid anywhere, and the Greek Life advisor calls you and begs you to take her, since you were the last chapter to cut her - and so she gets a bid even though the chapter voted NO? This happened to us! Granted, our VP Membership was brand-new, and the girl actually ended up being an OK member, but STILL.

That's forced pledging, and most national sororities have a rule against it. Aphigal, I'm surprised the sororities at Tufts have put up with that policy (the nationals that is).

I feel torn on this subject - on one hand I think it is cruel to send a girl to a party where the sisters didn't vote for her to be there, but on another hand there are some times when if girls get a second chance, the sisters end up really liking them. I can see it for the first night back if you have 3 or 4 invite nights, but after that, NO WAY.

I think if it doesn't count against quota it could be good. Especially if the girl in question missed the vote by just a little bit. Plus, you might have a sleeper on your hands! And you would hate to pass that up. :)

I think at my school, the 1st night, no one is cut unless you absolutely can't stand her. At the 2nd night, the chapter is told how many they can invite back the next night..probably has something to do with quota, 3rd and 4th nights the same thing.

Sometimes a chapter KNOWS that they will not be able to pledge a rushee because she doesn't meet the their specific policy, like grades too low., but ususally, chapters don't cut heavy the first night because sometimes it happens that if they cut heavy due to whatever reason and additional rushees cut them...so they may have "cut their own throats".

I agree that it is not fair when a university says that every person will receive a bid. Isn't there something about people having the right to select their own members?? After all, if that were the case, there would be alot more Dallas Cheerleaders and professional baseball/basketball/football players.

Maybe it should depend on what kind of campus you're on. My school had a very non-competitive Greek system (we had to sell to the rushees, not vice-versa), so if a girl was cut from everywhere there was usually a very good reason - like one girl who wore jeans to every party and announced that she was not going to dress up as a rushee or a member. Or girls with serious alcohol/boy problems. It wasn't just that the rushee was from a small town or was shy or something.

There are people who just are not good for ANY chapter - and I don't think chapters should be forced to take them just because they rushed! Now, if you're just not sure she's perfect for you, that's a different story.

Any kind of "no-cut" policy has big problems. Sororities are, by nature, exclusive organizations, and forcing invites is just asking for trouble.

At my school, invites were never forced. If you were invited back, it meant that the sorority inviting you genuinely wanted you to come back, not that "the school authorities said we couldn't cut anyone in your rush group" or "we invited back fewer people than we were allowed to, so we got badgered into asking you back too". So rushees knew up front that they were invited back because they were potential sisters, and for no other reason.

Since my school only has three sororities that participate in rush we don't cut people from round-to-round. All of the rushee's have to go to all of the events every night. The only night girls get cut is on Preference Night. Almost every rushee get a Pref invite because there is one group that gives invites to everyone. We don't give a girl an invite unless we intend on extending her a bid.

Have a nice day :)

I think maybe I can lend some insight to this discussion. All the talk about whether a group or school can cut, has to cut, doesn't have to cut, etc. is all based on a new NPC guideline called "Release Figures." Usually the general membership of the sorority isn't made aware of how this works, not that it is a secret, its just that advisors sometimes feel the chapter shouldn't know that they are required to cut 12 girls that round or else the chapter might feel the need to get cut happy early on just to make it to 12 and then end membership selection and get to bed at a decent hour.

Basically the way it works if your campus has adopted this guideline, is this. Panhellenic keeps statistics on the percentage of returns for each round for each sorority. That means Panhellenic keeps track of how many rushees selected to return to a particular group after a round, regardless of whether she will get an invitation to the next round. So say you had 100 girls at your party in round 1 and that evening 80 rushees selected that they would like to return to your round 2 party. Your group would have 80% returns for that round.

Now once those statistics are known, Panhellenic will use the percentage returns for round 1 to round 2 for the last 3 years of rush, average them and give the group a number. So say your group had 80% return last year, 85% the year prior and 75% the year before that. You have an average of 80% returns for round 1 to round 2. Using that figure there is a mathematical calculation for figuring out how many rushees the group can invite to the next round. Panhellenic estimates quota before it has been set, based on number going through rush, prior year quotas, and history of drop outs. Let's say in round 2 there are 3 parties and let's say quota is 20. In a perfect world your group would want to invite back as many rushees as the members feel meet their criteria so to ensure that quota will be met. But what you do is take estimated quota and multiply it by the number of parties in the next round (20 x 3) = 60. Now you divide that number by the percentage returns average for the last three years, (60 / .80) = 75. The group can invite back 75 people to the next round.

The calculation allows groups who have lower percentage returns to invite back more rushees because there is the likelihood that 80% of those they invite back won't accept the invitation to return to the next round, putting that group at a deficit. The calculation also forces the groups who have near 100% returns, to release enough rushees to allow them to consider some of the other groups. The groups with 100% returns cannot possibly take all the rushees that want bids from them so it keeps the group from holding out their hopes all the way until preference and then let them down because they are not far up enough on the bid list.

Basically this keeps the big groups from getting bigger and the smaller groups from getting smaller. I believe the release figures began being used around 1990 and I think they are a good idea.

Someone mentioned newly colonized groups that don't have to cut. I'm not sure exactly how that works, but if you figure that a newly colonized group doesn't have return statistics for the last 3 years, that would make sense. Its almost like they have statistics of 0% so can invite back everyone they want. It may not be that drastic, but it probably works something like that.

So if you are in a smaller group that tends not to have as full parties, your chapter might have a "no cut" policy that is self-imposed or imposed by your advisors, basically because Panhellenic release figures are such that you can invite back many more rushees, so many so that you don't have to do any cutting during that round, maybe just for grades, which is done behind the scenes and doesn't require formal membership selection sessions.

I hope that makes some sense to everyone and let me also say I am not an expert on release figures, I just have a general idea of how it works and have advised chapters during Rush but have not been responsible for calculating these figures before.

I forgot to mention. I attended the same school carnation did, Auburn Unversity. I'm not sure if we were there at the same time but I might be able to explain why they operated the way they did. When I was in school I think there were 16 sororities. (1988-1992). There were 5 rounds of rush (ice water teas, light n' lively, colors, theme and pref). With five rounds of rush there was no need for any group to get cut happy in the first round so many groups only cut for grades because they have 3 more rounds to cut a rushee for other reasons before they are invited to pref and are placed on the bid list. No school, campus or Panhellenic organization can impose membership selection rules or criteria on an individual group. Panhellenic officers, advisors, etc. cannot say to ADPi, you cannot cut for anything but grades on the first round. ADPi makes that decision for themselves. Now the Panhellenic Council made up of delegates for each sorority can vote to agree to not cut for anything but grades, but I would be surprised if that has actually happened anywhere. I do know that Panhellenic advisors and officers will make recommendations based on communications from their supervisors (area NPC coordinators - like a Province President for a campus panhellenic council) to the individual chapters, maybe "We strongly recommend that chapters not cut rushees during round 1 for any reason other than grades." Recommendations of this sort are based on history of rush numbers and a variety of other factors on that campus. The individual groups (advisors and Rush chair) then decide whether to follow that recommendation. If the group wants to be agreeable and doesn't have any extenuating circumstances for wanting to cut more women, they will follow the guideline. At Auburn, for example, there are so many more rounds to cut, a chapter can "afford" to invite back potential rushees to the next round they consider to be "questionable" with out risking what I call "lobby hazard" (XYZ is inviting HER back so why would I want to be a part of XYZ).

bump!

there are no cuts untill third round at my school (there are five rounds total). we don't have enough girls go through to really need release figures. I think this has to do with the fact that there are only three sororities at my school, so usually if a girl gets cut from the ONE she thinks she wants then she drops. Not to mention that our parties would be really small if we cut every night untill pref...yeesh, I'm thinking about it now and it would just not work out. I understand cutting more heavily when you have over 1000 pnms to choose from though. (we're talkin' 50 or less here though, last year quota was 10) and cutting one or two girls after nights one and two would be silly. I think our philosophy is why not just give everyone more time to get to know each other and then make your heaviest cuts right before pref (maybe, I've yet to be on the other side yet. Either way, It's defintely a small school luxury, and I love it!