U. of Florida: Change in Bid Day "Tradition"
 

They're modifying a sorority Bid Day "tradition." Apparently the change will, among other things, give more privacy to women who are disappointed.
See article in the Alligator for July 6 '06:

http://www.alligator.org/pt2/060706bids.php

(I put "tradition" in quotes because the paper says the practice they're modifying has been going on since 2002.)

Women participating in recruitment this August will receive their bid cards inside classrooms in Norman Hall. Upon receipt of their bids, only those who want to leave the classroom will be escorted to Norman Field.
....

After receiving their bids, disappointed girls can remain inside Norman Hall, where Pi Chis and a team of five UF counselors will be on hand to provide guidance.

This is what we did-- everyone got their bids in classrooms, met in a gymnasium for some speeches, etc., and then were dismissed by sorority to run home with their reaffiliated recruitment counselors.

I understand the excitement of 100s of women standing in UF's Norman Field with their bids held high over their heads until given the go-ahead to open them.... But I hope not too many PNMs will be disappointed that this tradition is changing... then again, they've really only been doing it that way for the last 3 years...

ETA: I think it is a good idea to have counselors on-hand. It can be a very emotional day for some women and the pressure builds up throughout the week-- hopefully they will be receptive. I think more schools should consider having a counselor around on Bid Day for the girls who don't get their #1 choice. The recruitment counselors really can only console so much-- some girls may need to talk to a professional. I know for those who haven't experienced it, it sounds trite, but for some of these women, not getting their 1st choice bid (at age 17-20) is often the most devastating thing to have happened to them and they have a hard time coping.

Thank heaven. This business of opening your bid card in front of everyone in the world sounds absolutely barbaric to me. Granted, I'm sure there were some people who didn't like the way we used to do it (the sorority knocked on your dorm door - you didn't know who it was till you opened it) and were disappointed, but at least then you only had to cry in front of 3-5 sorority members, not the whole Greek community.

Even the classrooms sound like too much to me. Can't they be delivered somewhere where the girls can open them completely in private?

I think at smaller schools, they could accomodate this, but the logistics involved with individually delivering 700-1000+ bids/having private rooms to open/scheduling girls to come into a set of rooms one at a time at a school like UF makes it next to impossible.

Girls who haven't been matched do receive a phone call ahead of time. At my school, this was often accompanied with snap bid offers that they could accept and attend Bid Day. Regardless, those phone calls are never easy. A recruitment counselor can only do so much through the week to counsel, comfort and console-- and encourage the girls to keep an open mind and remember to take seriously the signing of their preference card and those selections-- any of the sororities they list on their preference cards could be the sorority that greets them on Bid Day.

But if there are however many Rho Chis, couldn't they each take a dorm and put the bids in their mailboxes? Or have the sorority members each take a bunch and put them in?

I know it's hard logistically, but I just can't imagine how hideous it must be to have to open your bid and be disappointed in front of a bunch of people you don't know - most of whom are experiencing emotions the complete opposite of yours.

yah i saw this in our paper today.

It was amazing to see girls cry when they dont get into the organization they want.

This is the right thing to do. When I was at UF in the 1980s, we received our bids in our (then called) Rho Chi groups, separated in classrooms. There was no big show for the world to watch us celebrate or cry.

We did it that way too, except you knew who was coming because they were singing at the top of their lungs. I suppose if you didn't want that group, you didn't have to answer your door. I have to admit that's one of my best memories of college.. when I heard those Alpha Gams singing our 14 pearls song and they were clearly stopped in front of MY door :)

That said, I was from a small greek school and with only 4 sororities and having gone through Winter Rush (we had two formal rush periods back then), it was small. It's hard to imagine one of those huge recruitments for me.

most(if not all) panhellenics would make every effort to contact a pnm so that they are spared the embarrasment of showing up to find they have rec'd no invitations or did not receive a bid(although, if a pnm makes it to pref round it is rare that she would not receive a bid),

i am glad that uf panhellenic is changing the way the bids are distributed. it sounds like a good thing.

They DO call the girls who haven't received bids. They aren't there. What's being referred to is the girls who are disappointed with the bid that they DO get.

They don't always just cry because they didn't receive a bid at all...there was a girl at my school who cried and was disappointed because she didn't get her top choice. I know that her PX probably should have told her that if she was going to be THAT disappointed that she would cry to suicide, but they REALLY encouraged not doing that (unless you were a legacy, then they didn't say anything).

I don't know how they do it now but when I rushed at IU, your rush counselor would knock on your dorm door and deliver the envelope, same as she did when she was handing out invite lists. Then buses would stop at the dorms and pick the new pledges up and drop them off at their new homes.

I definitely agree that girls should have privacy, so I think the change in policy is good. As for handing out individual bids door to door though, as someone said, at larger schools, the logistics of that could get very complicated (ie: a campus without distinct freshman dorms, dorms that are locked, people not being home or even new members who don't live on campus. Now I'm interested on how it's done at my school hmmm...

Let's put it this way, I don't remember seeing her at the first all PHC new member event.:rolleyes:

I think that it is an excellent idea to have counselors. There would be some distraught girls that will be scared for days, weeks, even months. If you look at it, there are some girls that have never been rejected for anything in their lives. I also think that there should be some counselors during recruitment, because the girls that are cut before pref night are just as devestated at the girls that didn't make it on Bid Day.

here's a link to a thread discussing just that....

http://www.greekchat.com/gcforums/sh...ing+on+bid+day

at larger schools it is near impossible, not to say impractical for recruitment counselors to hand out invitations for each day to each of the pnms,in their group, wherever they are residing. . most often, when the group meets for the first time, they decide on a place where they will meet at the designated time each day of recruitment-they continue to meet there thru out the week and the recruitment counselor will hand out the invitations to the next round of parties. they share their cell phone #'s and the panhellenic office phone #, so that they can be reached anytime, and the pnm gives them their cell #, their dorm room # or address off campus, their class schedule , etc. so that should the recruitment counselor need to track them down, she is able to. the do try their best to find any pnm who needs finding-they will even go to the dorm room or stand outside her classroom if need be.

Me, too. How humiliating. And how cruel to force the disappointed girls to watch others hugging and shouting "We're ABC's!"

Many non-Greek groups on my campus (including arts ensembles, publications, etc.) have a rush-like selection process. After the final selection deliberations, they wake up their new members in the middle of the night to celebrate. This usually involves waking up the whole dorm with songs, cheers, etc., and everyone on the hall comes out in their pajamas to congratulate their neighbor. One year a pair of freshman roommates made it to the final round, but the group took one guy and not his roommate. Rather than force the roommate to listen to a celebration that wasn't for him, they called the new member and told him to meet them out of earshot. The tradition of surprising him in person and celebrating with the whole hall was a lot less important than not torturing his roommate -- who was in a tough position no matter what.

I like this change in tradition. Where I went to school, if you had received a bid, a Panhel member knocked on your door and you ran up the hill to Central Hall and opened your bid with all the other PNMs who had received a bid. If you didn't get a knock, you just sat in your dorm room all night. I'm assuming with no one to talk to, since we didn't have recruitment counselors. It would be nice if the girls with no bids or the dissapointed girls had a private place to discuss the situation with someone.

At my school, where there are also about 800-1000 PNMs, we deliver bids individually. Each Greek Life Guide (Rho Chi) has a group of girls that live in the same dorm. The GLG delivers each bid to each girl individually in her own dorm room.

I don't think it's done the same way now, but when I went through Recruitment, those who didn't receive bids were called prior to 4pm on Bid Day. If you did receive a bid, you stood in line at the Greek Life Office, and were given your bid individually by the Greek Advisor. You opened the envelope, and the Greek Advisor & Panhel President would ask if you were okay with it. You were to keep a straight face as you left.

It was hard for me, because I had made some good friends during Recruitment, and I saw two of them with the same, large envelope, trimmed in blue as they left. I was given a smaller envelope, not trimmed in blue, and was crushed - until I saw it was for my first choice!

My understanding is that this is now done similarly, but by Rho Chi group.

I guess it just depends on the campus culture. What's normal to some strikes others as bizarre.

this is off topic, but I think I like that (GLG) better than any of the other replacement names I've heard for Rho Chi. It's catchy and easy to remember.

Ditto to what 33girl said! We have "GLC's" (Greek Life Consultants) at my school for fraternity recruitment, and I never understood why they didn't call the women recruitment counselors the same-- or is it that the women just need to attach Greek letters to EVERYTHING (as if the new PNMs are not confused enough as it is!)

This thread brings up a topic that I have been talking about on our campus for a few years now - women who are disappointed on Bid Day and decline their bids. I believe that some campuses don't do a good enough job educating the PNMs on what a signed Membership Recruitment Acceptance card/form really means. By listing a chapter on the MRA and signing it, the PNM is saying that she will accept a bid from any chapter on it. Which should then translate to - NO DECLINING OF BIDS. I can certainly understand some disappointment when discovering that one did not receive her first - or sometimes even second - choice. But why are women crying when they signed a card the day before saying they would accept a bid to that chapter?

I don't believe in any way that the fault lies with the PNMs. After all, as we all know, it is drilled down their throats that they better list as many chapters as possible. Yes, this increases their chances at receiving a bid, but does that really matter that she received a bid from a chapter she hated so much it made her cry hysterically? It seems that many Panhellenics are more concerned with their higher rates of matching than the actual feelings and desires of the women they are working to place.

Not only does this hurt a woman on Bid Day to receive a bid from a chapter she does not care for, but when she declines it, she becomes ineligible for COR. Then when her first choice chapter is recruiting later in the year, she can't participate until a calendar year after Bid Day. When if she had only listed the chapter(s) that she WOULD join, yet did not receive an invitation, she is a mismatch and is therefore eligible for COR immediately and throughout the year to other chapters. Therefore maximizing her options.

Then when you look at it from the chapter's standpoint.... When chapters are giving bids to women who ranked them 3rd, 4th, 5th, and lower, they are thinking that the spot is filled. So they plan for tshirts, gifts, food, etc. on Bid Day, then the PNM declines. If they thought the spot was open, they could have been working on snap bids. Or even worse - the PNM accepts, goes through pledge ceremony that day, then quits the next morning. Then the chapter can't replace her in their Quota.

I've just never seen the problem with ISP (suiciding). If you KNOW you would decline, why bother taking up the spot in the chapter's Quota? Why make them think they have you when they don't? It comes down to the PNM having to make a decision between whether it is more important to be Greek or to be an ABC. It shouldn't be done without proper counseling to make sure she is aware of what she is doing, but if she is 100% for sure, she's an adult. Let her make that decision and deal with the consequences - whatever they may be. But when we FORCE them to list more, we are really hurting them by taking them out of the COB pool for an entire year. At least with COB, they have more control over which invitations to accept or not. And nothing is binding until she signs a COB acceptance.

Sorry for the long post. I've seen this happen to a chapter on my campus. Every year they wind up with close to quota on Bid Day. But many of those are people who ranked them third or fourth and wind up declining. So the chapter members get all excited about a large class, then are let down when only half of them actually attend the picnic. I have great hope and faith that the new release figures will help alleviate some of this problem, but again, I think proper education of what an MRA actually is would help too.

Am I just way off base here? I have only the experience of one campus to go from here.... We had the Pi Rho Chis do a little more education last year on the MRA, and as a result had more women only listing one or two, but only had ONE decline her bid. And she had received a bid to her first choice, but her BFF didn't - and she felt bad being a part of it when her friend couldn't.

Good idea at Florida though! It works great where we are!

No, I think your whole post is 100% spot on.

Apparently the problem comes when the PNMs are told they can list only the places where they attended parties, even if they only went to those parties under duress and were told if they didn't they wouldn't be eligible for bids. If you get to that last day of pref, have given the other groups a chance and still HATE them, don't put them down, no matter what the rush counselor says. Write down the group that dropped you in first round who you don't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting into - anything other than getting stuck w/ a bid you don't want.

I think sometimes the insistence on this is out of a misguided effort to try and build up the smaller chapters, but I don't know how those chapters could feel any better about the fact that women were basically forced into pledging them - "well, if it's Xi Xi or nothing, I guess I'll take Xi Xi." In other words, it's detrimental to the chapters as well.

Just a random bid day/card signing question... (I went through spring recruitment, only went to ADPi, so therefore only received a bid from them, which I wanted, and signed it)


So let's say I went through formal. I went to ABC, DEF, GHI. I didn't really fit in with DEF, but I could see myself a sister of ABC, GHI. So couldn't I feasibly only but ABC & GHI on my MRA? And putting the house I liked the best first?


I definately agree that "education" on the MRA is the key. I'm not sure if PNM's fully understand that if you put down all 3 (or however many houses are visited) that you could receive a bid from any of those three. I get that PX's (or whatever the school calls them) don't encourage suiciding, now I am on the outside looking in, but it seems that if I were a PX, I would be telling the PNM "where can you see yourself as a sister? If you think it's only ABC, DEF then put them down". I've never been a PX, so I'm just guessing.

This is just confusing to me because I never went through formal. So anyone who can clarify for me, that would be great!

the number of bidless rushees at my school is, in a word, extremely small. While none of our sororities are NPC, our pref card rules are very similar. However, there is no penalty for SIP (suicide...which we still call it). As a PX, I explained to my girls the best I could about what suiciding could mean, but it doesn't stop girls from doing it, and for the most part, they end up getting what they wanted. Some had only 1 invite to final round, and assume that means that they can ONLY sign that one. Others decide to SIP as a group...a one-for-all and all for one thing...which only ends in a LARGE chunk of girls getting their second choice, "Independent".

We've also had a hard time explaining that if you sign indy as your first choice, you are automatically independent. Period. It took the better part of 20 minutes to explain that you could NOT sign Independent, and the XYZ. A lot of girls thought that, "I'll sign independent, but if XYZ wants me, then I'll accept". Umm..no, reverse that order on the cards. Because DESPITE what I know you want, your card will be read in the context of "INDEPENDENT", not as an SIP to XYZ. I constantly worry that I "forced" girls to sign XYZ rather than independent, but I didnt know how else to explain it to them.

Out of a possible 4 invitations, accept or accept w/ regret only 2. If you are ACCEPTING this invitation, this is a strong message that you would be interested in joining the sisterhood. You do NOT have to accept any, but you are encouraged to accept and finish recruitment. If you are dropped before final (as I was), you must still sign a preference card, even if you are just signing "independent". Girls are allowed to fill their bid card in any order, even listing houses they didn't recieve invites to. However, most only fill in the 2 houses they attended during final round (why? I have no idea). I know that of my pledge class of 9, 6 I believe SIP'd Tau Delta. In my instance, I filled in my pref card before pref day, alone in the GL office. I simply filled my card, ranking the 6 sororities in my pref order...pretty silly in retrospect, but I didn't want to be independent and I sort of knew that the bottom 3 were really NEVER going to bid me, but I took a chance. I got my "no match" call. No big deal But the next morning, I was snapped by my number 1. And this, this is why I desperately encouraged my girls to ATTEND their parties, clear schedules, and for chrissake, fill your card honestly, and DO NOT, and I repeat, DO NOT suicide as a group.

I bet some of y'all remember that 5 years ago, a PNM here told us that at her school on Bid Day, all the PNMs joined hands and stood in a circle with their eyes shut. Then the Rho Chis would come and tap the shoulders of those who didn't get bids and they had to leave the circle. When you were told to open your eyes, only the people remaining had bids.:eek:

I know they don't do it that way now, one of my daughter goes there, but I was just slack-jawed with shock when I heard it.

What do you mean by writing "independent" on the pref card?

When I rushed at IU, each rush counselor was assigned to one dorm floor/living unit. (a couple dorms didn't have the traditional "floor" arrangements) This was the rush counselor who handed out invites, bids, etc. and this person was who we considered "our" rush counselor. The groups we'd go to the different houses with, at least in the initial round, were organized alphabetically, and they were led by two rush counselors. The two who led my group were different than my floor counselor.

I had forgotten about that - how completely barbaric!

Just when you think that the cruelty that Bid Day can be to those who go without, someone comes up with another way to make it nasty. :(

If a girl goes through and decides for whatever reason that Greek life isn't for her, she can sign her preference card as Independent, meaning she does not wish to receive a bid from any sorority. Which, after the final round, can be really heartbreaking to a sorority who had been actively courting her, but such is mutual selection. Being local, we run a mashed up sort of modified NPC type of recruitment with some peculiarities, this is one of them.