Spring 03 COB
 

Well, here at my campus it's COB time...

We have:
2 soroities close to or at total (80 ish)
3 medium sized (40-50 ish)
and 2 small (30 & below)

Since I'm writing this post you can probably guess which one mine falls into. Right now we're at 23....BUT we just lost our President (she had other issues) and several other girls have resigned postions (mostly for academics). Our VP of Recruitment is still here so we are still fighting.

Does anyone have any ideas for getting women to COB? We've tried chalking and fliers all fall semester and we got 3 girls from one party and the rest no one even showed up at. Also, right now we're covered in about 3 in of snow so even if chalking worked for us, it's not an option right now...How do you all get the word out?:confused:

Have all the sisters talk to their friends and people they know, and have those people talk up the event. Sometimes the best way to get people to events is word of mouth advertising, combined with fliers as backup and re-inforcement. If any sister knows someone who they thing might be a good addition, do the personal rush towards them.

I agree - talk it up. Tell each sister to invite at least one unaffiliated woman. Posters often get ignored, but a verbal invitation from a friend/roommate/suitemate/study partner will be remembered. Look at all classes, not just freshmen.

Talk to guys too - you never know who may have a friend or girlfriend who's thinking about rushing.

Since there are so many sororities eligible for COB, it might be worthwhile for all of you to combine your efforts in advertising COB rush in general. Perhaps you could have an information session where women can meet members of each sorority and pick up schedules, then each sorority does its own thing after that.

Sometimes the low-key approach works too. A lot of women are turned off by formal rush... if there's someone you're interested in, have a few sisters take her out to dinner or something.

At my campus we don't have a formal rush because the other sorority declined to participate. The event that has helped us the most has been our recruitment banquets. We have one next week with a fraternity. It is a semi-formal banquet and you invite by invitation anyone you think might be interested in joining, and during the banquet we have speakers on what activities we do and the financial and other obligations to the sorority. This is also a nice event for school administration to learn about the greek system. We have had the best response to this event because it's specifically focused to give them all the infomation without other distractions that we have experienced with other events we have tried.

astbunny
Alpha Sigma Tau Sorority

I have to agree with what everyone said here & reiterate.....the best way to get women to pledge is to get your non-Greek friends interested! My chapter received some of our best sisters this way. Also, befriending a group of independent girls is another good idea. Get one interested....tell her to bring her friends....they'll (naturally!) fall in love with your chapter and pledge as a group.

A note on advertising.....yes, mucho fliers/chalk is kind of desperate looking. Rock your letters around campus and just make everyone aware that you are an XYZ. The best advertisement is you! :D

What types of events do you have planned so far?

Good luck!!!!!!!

As far as I know, we don't have any events yet...because of some things that happened over winter break, we didn't have chapter this week (which is really going to hurt because we can't start recruitment till we have our 1st meeting). We're going to try to have chapter this week but with it being a day off (we have chapter on Mondays) we can't make it mandatory, so I don't know how many will show up. Plus we have an Alumna getting married out of town this weekend, so many girls are going to that. It looks like the first time we'll have a real chapter meeting is the 27th....and that means we've already lost 1/4 of our recruitment time!

Talk to your Greek Life office for the names of women who went through recruitment but did not receive bids in the Fall. Also, get a listing from Residence Life of freshmen women who aren't in sororities. Do small paper flyers and put them under the doors of those women or in their mailboxes.

While I agree the low-key approach can work for a chapter closer to total, for a group who has fallen so far below, you have to be willing to go out and find as many women as possible who are the quality you want to join.

Trust me, we've all been there, one time or another. Good luck!

I didn't mean to imply that AlphaFrog's chapter should -only- use the low-key approach. It probably won't get you more than a handful of women. But it can be used in conjunction with informal rush parties... I can think of a couple of women from my chapter who would have run screaming if we'd called them and said "Hey, we're having a rush party" but who were open to the idea of going out to dinner with a few sisters.

Good luck :)

If you are under total, you can give bids ANY time during the year. Plus, I think with Advantage they can start pledging at any time...if not, signed bids can be held for one year unless the campus prevents it. This isn't something national or panhel is really crazy about doing, but it is permitted in the Green Book.

Oh, no, I totally realize that aephi :) I just sometimes think that when you get down lower on the sorority ladder, you don't have the luxury of being "quiet". You have to shout your letters in order to be heard, so to speak :)

I don't agree that the amount of advertising put out by XYZ makes them look desperate. It makes them look more open and inviting to girls they don't already know. They may appear that way to some other chapters, but they're not trying to attract members from the other chapters, right? Speaking as a (newly) independent here, I think they've done a great job with the amount of advertising, and know of several girls who will be attending because they saw a flier or chalk.

Holiday meetings will definitely not work for every chapter; many GLO bylaws forbid the scheduling of mandatory meetings during breaks. (Not to mention girls who live far from school may not be able to shell out the bucks for a plane ticket!)

When you are a small chapter, getting your friends to rush does not often work, especially if you've been in for more than a semester. Hey, if they were interested in Greek life, they would have rushed already. And they know you - they know your chapter; it takes a bid from a big, impressive chapter to make them decide Greek life is for them. From their perspective, what is the benefit of joining? They're not sold on the Greek aspect, and they already have your friendship.

A better bet are your acquaintances. There's a cute, smart girl in your class ... an outgoing girl down the hall. Talk to them, get to know them a little better, and start introducing them to your sisterhood. Unlike your friends, they probably haven't already considered and rejected your org. And unlike your friends, if they join they have a whole other circle of friends to bring in.

I do have to agree with what some other folks have said; what works for a large chapter with simply a few slots open does emphatically NOT work for a chapter that's struggling to increase its numbers to campus average. If you're subtle, no one will know you're there.

I disagree strongly, but I think it depends on the campus.

If you are at a small school where most students, even independents, know the reputations of the chapters, it can look really bad to look desperate.

My chapter is under total--we are the smallest chapter on campus. However, we are not way way way under, but we would love to improve our numbers as we typically have a less than perfect formal rush. But, this year we have been aggressively pursuing COB--maybe too aggressively. We got lists of all the PNMs who were not placed in formal rush. Many of them have already come to COB events. But now we are hearing word that "the XYZs keep asking me to things... don't they see that I'm not interested?" (answer: NO, because you keep accepting invitations, doofus) and that "well, ABC has a better reputation and they had girls depledge last year and then they COB'ed people, so I'll just wait til that happens" (explanation: ABC hazes, and guess what? they cut you during formal--why would you get a bid now?":rolleyes: ). So I think you can be too aggressive in COB. On a larger campus where people legitimately don't know your chapter--yes, go all out. For example, with us a few years ago there were a lot of members who didn't particularly like to party and go out. Now those people have mostly graduated--but everyone knows that we are not "the party house" and we "study all the time" (hey, I thought a high GPA was a GOOD thing)--if we pressure these girls who are mostly really upset that they didn't get the houses they originally wanted, they are just going to be that much more bitter. We are having better luck with the girls who didn't go through rush at all at this point.

I guess my basic advice is to be balanced and cool. Don't pressure people, but make sure they know about you.

We're doing informal recruitment currently, but don't have a panhell so we're always doing it on our own. It's hard, but this semester our recruitment chair and the rest of the chapter really got down to business and we had 15 girls at our last party. For us, this is huge, as traditionally winter recruitment is a lot smaller than fall. Our avg is usually 6 PNM.

Here's what we did this year:

Put flyers up off campus in the mall parking lot (yes, we only have one small mall) and in local businesses frequented by undergrads

Printed and distributed business cards with our name, chapter email address and recruitment chair phone number

Painted the snow. Yes, we did! It totally worked, the words really stood out. Traditionally we paint a cannon on campus, which serves as our message board. This time we did it and the surrounding snow. Whatever works!

Chalked classroom chalkboards

Put classified ads in the student newspaper. Pretty cheap, but effective since many people post ads for a variety of events there

Somehow, this all worked together to bring out a great group of PNMs. I'm excited to see how things turn out!

Hope this sparks some ideas for you...

Are you allowed to dorm storm? We have been trying that and it seems to work. We just knock on doors and say "Hi, I'm so and so from ABC. I'm just passing out fliers about our recruitment. If yuo're interested, you can call the number on the flier." We don't try to pressure them or anything. Most of the time, they'll talk to us for a bit about our org and recruitment in general. If they're not interested, we thank them and move on. As long as the girls don't feel pressured into coming, it seems to work well.

Question....why are you stepping on other people's toes? Shouldn't your Recruit chair be looking for help, not you. I would be careful, you may be stepping in something sticky, and this may cause a rift between you and the Recruit. chair those things can be hard to close.

As an alum of the Chi-O chapter at WIU, I know that spring rush in Macomb isn't very easy. While Western is a very pretty campus in the spring and fall, it's just plain gloomy in January and February. Getting PNMs out of the dorms is hard, but it can be done. I do know that your VP of Recruitment (DH - who happends to be a very good friend of mine) has some good ideas and spent her Christmas break thinking about rush and picking the brains of the sorority girls she knows.

Here's a few ideas -

1) Try getting a group of sisters to go to dinner in different residence halls. When I pledged, I was one of only 2 Chi-O's who lived in the north quad. My pledge sisters and I would meet for dinner at a different dorm before every meeting to increase visibility.

2) Consider having a recruitment event in the Union. The houses tend to be a bit far from the dorms (and, really, who wants to walk across Q-lot in the winter?!) It's centrally located, and you may attract drop-ins that wouldn't have gone to the house.

3) Wearing letters all the time is a great p.r. device - as long as they are clean. Nothing says "Ick" more than old dirty shirts. Personally, I don't like seeing letters on the rear of sweats, but that's my personal bias.

4) You've got a great resource in your housemom. Ask her about any ideas she may have. WIU hasn't had a ZTA chapter since the late 70's early 80's, so she won't be competing against her sisters.

5) Continue to ask your Panhellenic sisters for help. I think it's great that the Delta Zeta chapter came over for a rush workshop. They have always been great at recruitment, and I think it's nice that they were willing to help out.

6) You've got a great national office. I'm sure they will be willing to help out in any way.

7) Once you guys can get them there, you have a lot of things going for you. ASA was the first sorority at WIU and they have always been involved, classy women.

Good luck with spring rush...



---Sue

Wow... that came across as a little catty...

The original poster said that many members of her group had resigned their e-board/exec positions, though the VP of recruitment was still there. Dunno about you, but if my chapter had 23 women in it, and total was 80, I'd be asking *all* of my sisters for input, and I'd expect *all* of my sisters to be looking for ways to get PNMs interested.

Maybe her VP Recruitment doesn't like to use the Internet, or doesn't have time for GC. Maybe the original poster is part of the COB team. Maybe her chapter doesn't have issues with stepping on toes. There's nothing in her post that suggests that she's stepping on anyone's position.

As an alumna of a now-small chapter, I know that our chapter is looking for ways to get interest, and looking at the pros and cons of each method. Even if *you* may have had issues in your chapter with people stepping on others' toes, a good suggestion is still a good suggestion, and there are many people here on GC who want to hear them.

Okay. 1. Looking for ways to improve recruitment does NOT a bad sister make.

2. By far the best idea on here has been be your own best advertising. Make sure every girl is wearing her letters on specific days -- suddenly, ASA is everywhere, and being Greek is what everybody does.

3. I disagree -- posting does not make you look desperate. It makes you look organized and, depending on how you manage the fliers, like creative, fun girls. Did it not occur to anyone that girls can't come to COB parties if they don't know there's a COB party to go to?


Good luck -- ASA's a great organization. You girls will work it out perfectly. :D

I'm on a campus with 22,000 students. Not what I would consider small.

Thank you for all the input & thanks chitownxo for the personal touch!

As for the stepping on toes...I don't know about everyone else's chapters, but if you can help someone we think it's wonderful...exec board and many other postions are big jobs and it helps to work together. Our VP of Recruitment is one of my favorite sisters and I want to do anything I can to make this a sucsessful rush!

Breathesgelatin has a point about being too aggressive and offending or scaring people away. I have seen this a bunch and it happened to me. When I was cheering, this one group kept calling me to come to events and I kept declining and I guess they thought I was playing hard-to-get because of cheering. Next thing I knew, they came over and offered me a bid and I only knew a few girls in the chapter! I spent the rest of the semester hiding from them.

Definitely play it cool, like she said. Don't reek of desperation.

it sounds like your chapter needs some leadership help. I suggest going to:
Dean of Students
Director of Student Activities
Director of Residential Life
and any other student affiars person you can think of and ask them for names.

Go after class council members, student senators, people who write for the paper, etc.

Good luck!!!