Defered Recruitment: Pros and Cons
 

For all the chapters out there who participate in defered recruitment, what do you see as the pros and cons of waiting until later in the year to recruit?

Pros:
*gives freshmen a chance to see what college life is like and adjust
*less of chance of girls joining just to make friends and losing interest once they've made friends outside of the sorority
*gives the sororities all of first semester to prepare for recruitment

Cons:
*gives girls the opportunity to fall into gossip about each of the sororities
*creates the possibility for dirty rushing or bid promising

Another con is the "recruitment semester." You have to bust your butts all semester long to win girls over instead of having it done in a week. You spend the whole semester getting ready for one recruitment week, which sometimes gets hard on your schedule when trying to balance recruitment prep with classes and other activities.

The "pro" of that is that it gives girls a whole semester to see what the different chapters are like, make friends in those chapters before rush, and get a better idea of what sororities are like. Sure, there are rumors that can be harder to buck after this, but luckily, the smart ones seem to see through the BS in those.

Also, it gives chapters a chance to make sure that PNM's are going to do well in college academically and gives PNM's a chance to make sure they're actually going to stay at the college/university they're at for more than a semester...

Where I was an undergrad, you couldn't rush until you were a sophomore and these cons were very real. Almost every PNM I talked to had her views on each sorority and almost every PNM had the same opinions. Dirty rushing was rampant. Also, many sororities had their bid list already made out with a few alternates in case they lost any of their first list.

You heard a lot of not, "I want to pledge AB," but rather, "I am pledging AB.":eek: And they usually got what they said they would because the deal had been done under the table before rush.

I transferred to Auburn my junior year. Due to the fact that AU rush is a week long and that there are so many parties at first (2 days of ice water teas and so on), it would be next to impossible to try to pull it off while classes are going on.

Con:
For PNMs attending private colleges with competitive Greek systems, it is very stressful to be "on camera" for an entire semester. They have to look their best at all times as well as constantly have a sunny disposition. Even though the formal recruitment isn't officially until January, these girls are basically rushing all fall under the scrutiny of the actives.

Pro:
The shortened pledge periods of 6 weeks or so that were set by NPC doesn't provide enough opportunity to get 1st semester grades when conducting fall rush. January recruitment ensures that these grades are available.

I've got to agree with alum on these. I'd forgotten how stressful it was to be "on camera" all year. On the other hand, getting January grades would really help with choosing a pledge class....a lot of kids get great grades in high school only because their schools handed out A's like candy or forced the teachers to give extra credit for ridiculous things (getting 5 extra points added to their final average for bringing in 20 cans of food for a drive, don't get me going on that).

Even when kids are genuinely the best and brightest in hs, college is a different playing field. At many private colleges/unis and in the Honors Colleges at the public universities, the freshman classes read like a roster of Nobel Prize winners, Olympic athletes, and Mother Theresas. For the first time in their academic careers, these students competing against classmates who are equally intelligent if not smarter. The majority of kids at certain schools scored above 700 on each section, were AP/IB Diploma recipients and saved the world in their spare time.

So in that respect, waiting for grades is not a bad thing.

A point about bias, at colleges that have a national ranking and draw their students from all over the country rather than a local region, it is more likely that the pre-judgement of the GLOs isn't going to be made before school but acquired during the 1st semester.

The CHAPTERS are also being scrutinized. By the time these girls get into a rush party, they've probably seen on campus at some point an ABC looking like crap when she's sick or an XYZ having a fight with one of her sisters. Their first impression isn't perfect hair, perfect makeup, perfect personas. For good or bad, I think it makes for a more educated rushee, as well as a more educated chapter.

Anyway, pros and cons IMO:

Pros:
See above.
Don't end up pledging/initiating women who get homesick after a semester and drop out (taking your secrets and ritual with them).
Can see college grades instead of often-inflated high school grades.
Rushees can get to know sorority members in a normal day to day setting instead of the "show" of rush.
Less chance of burnout by junior/senior year.
The rushees make friends on their own who in the future could become sorority members.

Cons:
None.

At some campuses, the ABCs and XYZs could look like poop half the time and still get their prize pledge class due to rep--and the DEFs could look their best every day and still end up with half of quota. Really.

Formal Rush was second trimester at my school. As both the PMN and an active, the hardest rule to follow was strict silence. This caused the most problems between the chapters as well.

As a PNM I was on the dance squad with 8 sorority women. The team was about 11 people with 2 rushing, 1 non-sorority girl in addition to the other 8. Let me tell you that practice was difficult. We went from a group of women who would laugh and joke all first trimester to stone silence, all business at the beginning of second semester.

As an active and a Rho Chi (I can't remember what it is called now) It was difficult to watch the PNMs when their friends could not talk with them.

Our school was small and by second term, you had already already been "placed" into a sorority based upon who you were seen with regardless of the reasons you were seen with them (educational or social) The actives on the dance squad were all Tri Delts. The other chapter on campus definitely assumed that was who I was favoring and I was left alone at their rush parties regardless of how I tried to make conversation. We all had to attend both preference parties and by this time no one was even trying.

Okay, that is my little rant. Not sure if things would have been different had we had rush fall trimester. But I am definitely where I belong :D

With all due respect, I have to disagree here. I went to a school with deferred rush, and dirty rushing and rumors were rampant. At the end of first semester, sororities would always try to have parties or dessert socials for freshman girls to get them to remember them in recruitment. Some would also start looking for a spring pledge class in the fall. With regard to rumors, it deferring recruitment gives pnm's a chance to learn more, even if it's not voluntarily. I had one of the fraternity guys at my school im'ing me most of first semester telling me rumors about each of the sororities to get me to try to not rush. My sophomore year, we had a girl telling all of her friends not to go KLP or XYZ (name withheld for obvious reasons) because "all KLP's are fat and all XYZ's are ugly." (The joke was on her because we got two of her best friends!)

i would think that one disadvantage to deferred recruitment could be that recruitment would take place while homework and studying should be going on-in other words, not only would the pnm(and sisters) have the stress that comes with formal recruitment, but the stress of classwork, too.

i only experienced recruitment held before school began until i became an advisor for the chapter at fgcu-they hold recruitment about 3 weeks into the fall semester. there are lots of night classes on that campus, and girls are stressing about class work, studying,tests and papers. the stress level seems to be elevated, and recruitment, in and of itself is stressful enough.

So did I. We got all the same rumors. So did the other sororities. That way, when we got our pledges, we knew they had heard all that stupid stuff (and some real stuff, too) and wanted to be there ANYWAY. Unlike some of the posters we've had on here who joined before they even took a college class, and then came on and said "OMG this sorority is NOTHING like they were in rush and they never have mixers what should I do?!?!??!??"

FSUZeta, I've heard of schools having deferred rush before second semester starts. For really huge schools/rushes that would be an option. But honestly, I've never rushed NOT during classes. We did, however, spread it out over 2 weeks. I think squeezing rush into a school weekend plus a day is nuts.

at fgcu, they start recruitment on a wednesday or thursday night-first party is around 9:30, after night classes have been dismissed. first round of parties last year there were 4 rush groups for the two sororities-we did not get out of there until after midnite-there was no voting or discussion-all pnms were coming back to both chapters the next day. there were 4 days of recruitment. there will be more rush groups coming thru this year-panhellenic has actually advertised recruitment during orientation this year -i hope that they change the party schedule.

i have suggested that they begin recruitment on friday evening-that way the first two nights of recruitment(when there will be the most parties) would not as greatly impact the girls and their classwork. sunday night would be the first night of invitations, monday prefs. and tuesday bid day. hope they will consider this!!

deferred rush
 

At my undergrad, one must be a sophomore, and it is held in the fall. So yes, PNMs have had a year to hear rumors, be annoyed by sorority cheers, date/hook up with the "wrong" guy (ie an ABC's Boyfriend), or even gain "bad" reputations.
AND they also have a year to meet friends who are in sororities, get good grades, find their "niche," and explore the rumors themselves, only to change their minds about sororities and decide to rush in the fall. I didn't even think about them until the spring before, and researched over the summer...
I have seen some dirty rushing, evidenced by freshmen at the bars (grrr) but you keep that in mind for the fall and there are PLENTY of women who sign up on a whim the next year too.

I really think that deferred rush promotes what higher education is all about, learning and growing as an individual. The women have time to figure themselves out and adjust to college life. Though rush is held during classes in the fall, it is spread over 1.5 weeks, since it usually will start in the evenings. Also there are four sororities total at my alma mater, 3 NPC and 1 local. I guess that makes it a bit easier to get done during the school year.

When I found out that a lot of large schools do recruitment BEFORE school started, I was shocked! There was a lot I didn't know-some of your schools really don't mess around! :D

I've seen both, and I have to admit that I prefer the idea of rushing prior to the academic term. Especially in a small sorority, many of the sorority women experience a drop in grades when they are preparing for rush party after rush party.

Our rush was about a month into school - not really deferred that much, but by then, MANY of the fraternity guys would ask you which houses you were rushing, and which of those they'd chose. That goes a long way with a freshman.

On the other hand, a sorority could bid someone who had it all - including the roundest heels on campus! So, it's not just a negative that the PNM may find out reputations of the different GLOs; the reverse is also true.

The bottom line is, I'll be all for any rush that doesn't allow cheesecake!

Why did the article keep referring to the NPC groups as Pan-Hellenic?

As someone who was an older rushee, I wish I'd have more time to spend with my sorority! If rush is deferred till sophomore year, NMs are losing out on a whole year of fun activities and sisterhood. Plus, it is SO HARD as a junior pledge. My classes are 10X harder than freshmen's. I like the idea of rushing before school starts freshman year, I just wish that the school had advertised greek life and deadlines a little more (so many girls just don't know about greek life if their parents/sisters weren't greek).
What I don't like about the way that my school does rush is that it only happens once a year. If you miss out on fall rush, there is no spring rush to go to. Most of my guy friends waited freshman year to rush in the spring so that they knew the guys more in each fraternity. There are soo many fraternities (high 20s) that if you don't know which to go to during rush, you'd be lost.

Just as a journalism side-note:: AP stylebooks don't say anything about how to write about sorority/fraternity affairs, so most schools and newspapers are left up to their own devices to create a house style. This may be a case of house style, however incorrect. For example, to write about GLO's on our campus, we write out letters and then parenthesize their nickname (example: Sigma Delta Phi (Sphinx) will be holding a bake sale this week.) We never abbreviate the letters, unless it is a direct quote (IE. Tau Delta president Jane Jones said "I love being a TD, my sisters rock!"). But it took a while to develop that style and those rules and to teach them to our staff writers, usually bitty little freshmen. Usually, a well worded quick note to the editor does the trick. It may be a case of simply unaware, inexperienced or missed copyediting, but we always appreciate things that help us from making the same mistake twice. :):)

Done.

I've wondered this as well. Do any campuses do this - a fall and spring recruitment? Other than COB/COR that is.

Why not have some sort of formal spring recruitment? Basically scaled down and perhaps less structured. All NPC rules and regulations would apply. Girls would still have to sign up and there would be quotas etc. If Polly Pledge signed her fall bid card and drops, she still has to wait a calendar year until the fall to rush again.

Basically, the women that want to rush (join) in the fall can do so and the women that want to wait until the spring to rush can do so.

I think most of the other campuses have both spring and fall, just spring is more informal. My campus gets enough girls in the fall class that most of the chapters don't need to do spring.

Millikin University in Decatur does a structured informal rush for sophomores and up in the fall and formal rush in the spring. Freshmen must wait til spring. I don't think many chapters want to go through the stress of formal recruitment twice a year.

My chapter COB'd every year and it was fine. One year we did more of an invitational informal (reserved a room in a restaurant, that sort of thing) but our COBing went better if it was just... informal.

UGH!
 

I am recruitment advisor at a school that decided to move recruitment this year from August to NOVEMBER OVER FALL BREAK. It is a huge mess! Dirty rushing is rampant. The women in my chapter are drowning between the school work (mid terms) and trying to prepare for Recruitment. I think it has been bad for chapter morale (no time spent bonding at the beginning of the semester over Recruitment prep like usual and no new pledge class (other than a small COB group of upperclassmen) to get excited about. Every fall we have a Greek event around the beginning of basketball season that includes skits put on by the new members. The skits for the sororities were cancelled this year because we don't have new member classes yet. We can't get midterm grades (not all professors provide them) so we could end up taking a whole class of women who are failing out of college despite the fact that they did well in high school.

It's also terribly hard on advisors like myself who have children in school. I'm trying to juggle work, advising, family life, soccer practice, homework, etc.

Say a prayer or just think positive thoughts for us. Recruitment starts Saturday morning and runs for 4 straight days - with Preference AND Bid Day on the last day.

I need a drink...

My school does a deferred formal recruitment that starts the weekend after spring classes start. It's not too hard to juggle the work, because classes just started, so you're not too bogged down. Every chapter does informal recruitment in the fall. The only way a freshman can join in the fall is if she has 12 credits (usually AP credits). I guess the reasoning is that a freshman who has earned AP credits is more likely to not fail out of school than a random freshman who wants to pledge. I can't say that there's too much dirty rushing, at least not with the chapters that we "compete" with. Deferred recruitment is not without its downsides, but I think the pros outweigh the cons.

Now see, this is stupid.

If you're going to have rush while classes are going on, it should be spread out - over a week AT LEAST.

Not to mention that judging by your post, they just made this decision like 2.5 seconds before the fact and the sororities didn't have time to reschedule or plan properly.

This is the kind of thing that pisses me off because it makes deferred rush look so terrible!! If it's done right, it's NOT this horrid.

But as far as worrying about getting a pledge class filled with "women failing out of college despite the fact they did well in high school" - couldn't that happen just as easily, if not more easily, when you pledge women who haven't even had a college class yet? At least this way, you might avoid bidding someone who's realized that either her major or the college isn't for her and she needs to transfer or make other changes, academic wise.