Joining a Different NPC?
 

I've been a member here for 15 years and one of the most frequent questions we seem to get is "I was initiated into AB. Can I join CD?"

Some people ask because they transferred to a new school without their sorority. Some are dissatisfied with their Greek experience. Some know the national rule that this is not allowed but they ask anyway because they think their case is different.

What's your input?

If your first NPC experience didn't work out for you, another one is not the answer.

Find a different experience to try. Join an active honor society or community service organization or professional organization. Try other activities at your school. Join a club. Look around. Spread your wings.

Rules are rules. Dissatisfied or transferred members need to follow them.

I am floored by the number of posters who affirm that they know there's a national rule that says you can't but want to know if there's a loophole especially for them.

Sadly, carnation, I am not floored. Too many experiences with special snowflakes (both adults AND young women) who blithely act w/o regard to rules. They're Special, you know.

IMO the ridiculously short, truncated four to six week new member programs (w/ the exception of Chi Omega, to my knowledge) are one of the factors. Have you sat in on any of those new member meetings, especially in the mega-sized new member classes? It's very illuminating.

Let these new members have a good 18 weeks to learn about the sorority, membership, finances, etc. And make their grades (oh, yeah, there's that). That's plenty of time to make a decision about initiating FOR LIFE MEMBERSHIP.

Still don't see any evidence-based rationale (or data) for shortening the new member period.

Wasn't it supposedly done to avoid hazing? However, the NPCs are not known for that. I am all for changing the new member period back to a semester and I'd love to know how Chi O stood their ground and refused to shorten theirs!

I think that, everyone once in a while, the organization really has done it's NM's wrong, and it sucks that there's no exception in that case.

I agree on asking very young women to join an organization forever after 4 weeks and a test. It's a lot of pressure.

How long is Chi O's NM period?

SO MUCH THIS! I hate the shortened NM period. As a former CAB member, I know that the new members did not really learn the history, did not really assimilate/learn the values, creed, songs and philanthropy background---did not know all or even most of the actives, nor did the actives know them when they were initiated. I do not understand the value of the extremely truncated pledging/new member period. I don't think it helps to produce dedicated and committed new members. At the time we were having first degree ceremony in my chapter, today's chapters are preparing to initiate. Hats off to Chi Omega for standing firm. If they can do it, why can't other groups?

Although Chi Omega has stood strong in their organization's policies about NM programs and lengths, I know of at least two school where they have chapters where all New Member periods must be completed with a certain amount of time (one school is 7 weeks, the other is 8 weeks from Bid Day). In these cases they follow the rules of the campus.


ps - SK is currently on a 10 week promise program where NMs are initiated in week 7, but have 2 weeks of meetings and such immediately following initiation for the new initiates.

I completely agree with AZTheta and Katmandu. Unfortunately, I think a lot of universities were pressuring for this, too. I hate the fast initiation. I think it has harmed GLOs tremendously. It has has a huge impact on the bonds of sisterhood that we hold dear.

I am thankful that we are not moving to the policy of SAE, which has imposed initiation within what... 3-5 DAYS of accepting a bid?

But in those 2 cases, (if they were fall new member classes) did the Chi Omega chapter wait until the following semester to initiate?

No, they did not. They had to initiate within the stated time frame. In nine case they actually initiated before the SK chapter on campus.

That's so sad. The ladies should have been given a choice.

Chi Omega's NM period is the entire 1st semester or quarter, with initiation in the first few weeks of the 2nd semester/quarter (with exception at schools where the Panhellenic mandates all groups initiate within a certain timeframe). The reason is so all NMs make grades. If you don't make the minimum GPA, you are not initiated and held over for another semester/quarter.

ChioLu, thanks for letting us know! I fully agree- it makes the most sense. Give ladies time to settle in to the organisation and to university in general. It doesn't surprise me that newer members don't take their vows very seriously- they are pushed into saying yes IMMEDIATELY by the system.

So for deferred recruitment schools, women are held over the summer?

Grades are already established so most chapters wait till the end of that semester or quarter for initiation

Maybe everyone should wait until the beginning of 2nd semester to hold formal recruitment. That way, all the freshmen get a chance to get used to college life and have a starting GPA already set. And then they could initiate at the end of the semester, just before summer, so they get to know the chapters they are pledging and get used to greek life & see if it's what they want before they initiate.

^^^ Total disaster for the big Southern schools.

It would be a disaster for one year until the housing overlap got figured out and then everyone would learn how to deal. I'm sure when Arkansas changed lfrom being a bed rush school they said that was a disaster... I'm sure when Ole Miss delayed their rush that was a disaster... They still have huge pledge classes there. You figure out your housing so that you don't bankrupt yourself and/or don't have to force freshman to rush before they are ready. I don't know how we can say we're about academics, and then urge women to pledge before they are even acclimated to school or have taken even one class.

My pledge program was 6 weeks and that was fine... We also had five pledges and thirty-five sisters at the time. I can't imagine doing that with even a chapter of 75, let alone those in the hundreds

I think that the deferred recruitment would actually be way more of a disaster for smaller schools. At schools with <4,000 undergrads, the PNMs and the active women should have the opportunity to meet with a clean slate rather than after a semester of dirty rushing has the chance to happen.

We had weekly meetings the entire semester that I was a pledge, which averaged about 1 hour. We had tests on the material we learned in the meetings. We really learned our national and chapter history. We should go back to semester-long pledge ships.

We knew every initiated members full name, their hometowns and majors. We didn't attend chapter meetings- that was only for initiated members. We polished the chapter's silver. We were encouraged to offer to take an "active's" plate to the kitchen after they were finished with lunch. This would be considered hazing now.

Dirty rushing also happens at schools that recruit primarily pre-freshmen in August recruitment. Timing doesn't stop it, especially nowadays when you can look at the chapters online in a variety of social media and spend hours on gossip websites. If it's going to happen anyway, we might as well know that the women we're spending time rushing and educating about our groups have shown themselves to be academically and otherwise a good fit for college.

A lot of thoughts here:

What is the percentage of NPC-Initiated young women dropping-out of school due to poor grades before graduating?

Are there corresponding figures regarding only newly-initiated NPC members who drop out of school due to grades before beginning their second year at university?

Might NPC thus have an interest in making a change over a period of 6-10 years, initiating and keeping quality women within their ranks?

I would suspect cold Northern schools might object to snowy recruitments, but as I and others believe Change Is Good.

Quota/total numbers may become more manageable (IE may lower) under a 2nd semester recruitment requirement.

Referring to bolded/quoted above, the percentage of women allowed to rush after 1st semester grades are given would not excessively drop due to bad grades as women understand the goal: Study To Rush.

Amen!

33, you can go on about that until you're blue in the face but *the way we do it is the way that works for us*. The sororities' GPAs are significantly above the universities' women's averages and study hours have a lot to do with that--thank God for study hours that teach new members how to study and get them in a routine!

Plus our schools tend to go back right after New Year and trying to conduct a rush that wouldn't have women missing classes? No way! It would be about 4 months long to try to fit in all the parties as well.

The only disaster about Arkansas dropping their bed rush/sophomore rush was according to some Arkansas women, "Now we can't be as exclusive anymore.":eek: There was massive cheating as far as contact with freshmen. Sorority members were required to have "Coke dates" with a certain number of rushees over the summer and believe me, that got screwed up.

Most of my daughters pledged as freshmen and we're glad they did. They had groups to belong to right off to orient them to campus and give them a sense of belonging

Yet the overwhelming majority of deferred recruitments are in colder places...

I am about to commit heresy: I wish IU would move to summer/pre-semester recruitment. Now that strides are being made to move away from bed rush, which was the real reason IU had deferred recruitment, the campus no longer needs to wait until January. The women who struggle in grades for first semester would have someone checking up on them, older members to ask for help and older members to mentor and tutor them.

With 22 chapters (soon to be 23), it only makes sense to make the move to summer recruitment. The dorms already open a week early for "Welcome Week", open two days earlier and the entire process could be done and over by the time classes start. Chapters who have girls drop or transfer at semester break could participate in a winter unstructured or structured COB.

Anyway, back to the topic... I think the "lifetime membership" piece of joining an NPC group falls on deaf ears too often. Some of these young women act like they are joining a health club and want to change to another one after a few weeks!

Then if it is so "impossible" I agree completely with bringing back the option for chapters to pick the length of pledge period that works for them. I'd rather see a girl drop after 9 weeks and before initiating if she realizes the school or the chapter is not for her. Heck, I agree with that if no one can rush till they're a junior.

If you give someone something instantly it's no wonder they think they can jettison it just as quickly.

irishpipes, you beat me to it.

While I agree that the lifelong membership is not emphasized enough throughout the NPC, I think some of the dissatisfaction we see on this site about women wanting to change NPC affiliation is a selection effect. Women who are happy about their membership and wouldn't change it for the world or are even somewhat satisfied don't come on here to complain about it and tell us, so we only hear from those who are unhappy and want to do something about it.

I think it's also frustrating that IFC fraternity members can, in some cases, drop their old affiliation and join a new chapter. Women might see that happen and think, why can't we do that? I don't think it's right that fraternity members can do this, but it doesn't set the greatest precedent for maintaining Greek membership across the board.

I've said it on here before, but my chapter was part of a 10-week pilot new member period in ADPi and I was miserable. There wasn't enough planned for us in each meeting so we would watch a brief PowerPoint and that was pretty much it. I don't know if this is the fault of the person leading the meetings or ADPi nationals but I would have much rather done six weeks, been initiated, and then had more meetings afterwards than wait 10 and be done entirely.

We had full meetings back in the day and I would imagine some of the leadership in all the NPC sororities had a similar experience to mine and could lean on that experience to plan longer pledgeships. You would think that the older pledge programs would be archieved.

I cannot believe that with pledge classes as large as yours that there weren't ice breakers or get to know you activities planned during each meeting. Or that each of the other classes (sophomores, juniors, seniors) didn't come to different meetings so you could get to know them. We did that way back when I was in school. At one meeting the seniors would plan a get to know you activity with the pledges, then another week it would be the juniors, etc.

My older sister was initiated in my chapter's last pledge class, and I was initiated in the first NM class. She had a semester pledgeship, and I had a six week period. She told me that in her opinion I missed nothing by being initiated earlier. In her opinion, most of the NM meetings after the first few were pretty worthless.

If you would have been doing sister interviews or at the very least icebreakers with the classes as Indiana SigKap described I don't think you would have been bored. Power points would have me snoozing after two weeks lol.

This is another problem with the standardized pledge programs nowadays. Some membership directors can turn them into something awesome but many cannot and they aren't given permission to teach in a way that would better fit them and the chapter. There's a feeling of ownership lacking.

I don't think that applies to all groups, 33. Ours has a lot of latitude as long as the material is covered.

That's EXTREMELY good to hear. Some are crazy rigid.

This is part of a much larger issue...young women wouldn't treat it like a health club if there wasn't a precedent for that. The active NPC alumnae here on GC are really the exception and not the rule.

What can we do to encourage the understanding that membership is a lifetime commitment? We see far too many women say, "well, I was an ABC in college." What can we learn from other organizations and councils?