Volunteered with Recruitment...Observations
 

I had an opportunity to volunteer for recruitment this year, and it is certainly an experience! I wanted to thank all of you ladies (and gentlemen) with giving me a lot of great information about the terms/process/etc. I assisted with handing out and organizing MRABA's on Pref Day and helped/observed on Bid Day.

Just a few random observations:

1. I do not envy those who went through formal recruitment. Some of the young ladies looked so drained and stressed! I saw the "maybe I should just take my chances with COB" girls and the "I want to be in a sorority but not THIS sorority," girls. A couple of girls handed their MRABA back and walked smooth out of the room. We had tissues on hand everywhere! One young lady (she was a sweet girl) loved both sororities so much she didn't know which to rank first (that is a good problem to have)! I wanted to hand out hugs!

2. The SRC's were excellent! They were really trying to sell the chapters to the young ladies. There were quite a few ladies who were strongly thinking about dropping (quite a few did actually drop throughout) and the SRC's talked some back into giving the chapter(s) a chance. They were out there for 5 hours helping a collection of emotional women. I didn't envy them either!

3. I know this is an NPHC person talking, but I wish that the first shirts given to the new girls were in the official sorority colors. One chapter did wear shirts in their colors with their letters on the front and a cute saying on the back, but 3 of the other chapters all had shirts in the same colors/styles. From where the PNM's were standing, they couldn't see the letters on the tops, so if a member wasn't holding their letters/signs high it caused confusion! A couple of young ladies started to run "home" in the wrong direction! :p

4. I saw some young ladies wearing shorts that had their Greek letters on their behinds. :eek: A couple of friends that are AKA's were also working and we were...well...totally surprised.

Overall, it was a great experience, and I would love to help again! One thing I will say about the timing of recruitment, was that the PNM's get a month into school and formulate their own opinions. I think tent talk really hurt chapters, especially the weaker recruiting ones. Quite a few PNM's weren't willing to give the chapters a shot which was unfortunate.

Interesting observations all around.
Regarding #3-the problem is they get SOOO many shirts that the girls in the house forget that the first one is more important than any shirt thereafter. Hopefully this will serve as a friendly reminder.

And 4-since our letters are symbols first and foremost, I have never understood sitting on your letters. In my sorority, you are never to place anything above the quill (a different pin, for instance), and yet we can SIT on our letters? Seems pretty rude to me.

Thank you for volunteering your time and for sharing your observations. I agree with you on the stick to your own colors on bid day-a confusing enough day on it's own w/o several groups wearing each other's colors so it goes with their bid day theme. And HATE butt letters!

Butt letters are still a thing? I feel like that was cool (not just letters but any kind of word, team name, etc) when I was a jr in high school, like 10 years ago (DEAR GOD)

You were in high school 10 years ago? PFFFTTT....you're still a baby.

Also, ixnay on the butt letters. Not cool.

I've been noticing from bid day pics from various school, the flower-child look is so in right now! Flowered letters, floral wreaths on heads, and pastel shirts, sometimes tie-dyes. It's cute, but interchangeable. I agree with PersistentDST. It would be great to see more official colors, symbols, mascots, etc- to look at a group of girls and see Red and Yellow and know right away- those are the new Chi Omegas!

I think it's Auburn where every new member gets a stitched letter jersey in their sorority's colors on Bid Day, and I think that's a great way to easily identify who's who.

Also AFAIK some sororities have national policies against butt letters. I think ADPi is one of them, but I could be wrong.

I think it comes out of wanting to give ALL the women something they'll feel comfy in - sorority colors aren't always the most flattering. We had several vehement red haters. ;) I do agree that if everyone is wearing white tank tops it makes things hard.

And these girls need to be reminded that the reason people wore this flower child scheisse the first time around is THEY WERE HIGH!!

And anti-greek life.

LOL.

I don't necessarily think that the chapters all need to be wearing their sorority's colors (although it would definitely help!), but they should identify themselves as ABC sorority somehow. They could hold up their letters, or one of their symbols, or SOMETHING so as to alleviate the issue of girls running to the wrong chapter. Not that it's the worst thing in the world, but I imagine it's slightly embarrassing for the new members who are running and jumping for joy, stopping, and thinking, "Oh crap, I'm running in the wrong direction. Where the heck is ABC?"

Yes, she was at Kent.

I was asked to do the same at John Carroll but was to drained after a week of misadventured business travel. Would have loved to be there to volunteer.

I barely ever wore red before I crossed, but now I have a red and white wardrobe. (There are PLENTY of ways to wear red ;) )I just love to see ladies wear their stitched letter shirts in their official colors. At least one shirt! All of our founders picked their colors for a significant reason, so why not?

Yes I did! :)

I never buy any Alpha Gam paraphernalia that isn't in our colors (at least 2 of the 3). I think the colors are important and stick to them. I'm also not fond of the letters on the butt.

I think it's great that you helped out!

I don't think I wore yellow often back then, but now it's all gold everything!

Sigh, we had butt letters in college, and I was so excited about them at the time. I blame Juicy Couture (and maybe our youth, too).

As long as you don't wear shorts that say "PINK TACO" across the butt! I'm still not recovered from seeing that.

I think shirts in your organisation's colours should be used for bid day, unless it's a white or black t-shirt with the letters in the colours. All of my Alpha Gam clothes are in red, buff, or green, or a neutral garment.

The chapters at Ole Miss seem to use the same traditional new member shirt designs year after year, and they are white shirts with letters in house colors. That's cool.

Our chapter did different colors by pledge class. Some chapters do different colors because they relate to a theme. I think that bid day t-shirt colors are the absolute lowest priority thing we could be criticizing about recruitment.

Since I am not as indoctrinated with NPC culture as many of you are here, I started this thread simply stating observations from my experience, which is what sparked this discussion. I think we all understand the t-shirt thing, I just wanted to understand some peoples/chapters minimizing use of the colors their founders chose. I am hoping to work in higher education as a career, and I want to be able to understand organizations cultures in order to work with them, which is why I volunteered. I understand this isn't "Advanced NPC 101", but it helps people like me.

Thanks to those who have contributed opinions!

And death to "butt letters!" :eek:

Sorry, let me back up and apologize; I didn't mean that to be directed at you. I appreciate you volunteering and I really appreciate you sharing your observations here. I was directing my comment at the fact that the colors of the bid day shirts became the main thrust of this thread, not at your initial note on the topic. We GCers can get into some SERIOUS minutia.

As an old head I will say that I don't think there was NEARLY as much of the going outside your group's colors when getting sweatshirts made and/or finding them was more of a chore. It started changing when you could first find the letter stencils in craft shops and now that you can get pretty much any combo online, people do.

I took photos at Bid Day at San Francisco State this past Monday. There are only 3 NPC houses but I thought it was interesting that they all wore white shirts with designs. I know the difference but someone looking at the images who doesn't know theta from kappa wouldn't know. The rest of campus passing by the festivities made comments ( the usual 'What is this, oh sorority girls' etc.) regarding not being able to tell them apart. All you could see was one white blob of young women (photo nightmare on a sunny day!:mad:) with flowers in their hair.

This!

I took the first photo but not the other two (clink link) but you can see what I'm talking about.
http://www.greekchat.com/gcforums/sh...postcount=3542

A close look shows that these shirts are nothing alike! One is a white crew neck, one is a white V neck and one is a white sleeveless tank..........

<for comic relief.......>