Recruitment: An Unfinished Fairytale.
 

I go to a small midwest LAC with only local sororities, with a delayed rush, so the way we do things is very different. We also do not have houses. I don't think we are permitted to go national.

Anyway, how recruitment works, rush starts right after we get back from winter break, we spend a weekend going to informal's, which are about 1.5 hours a piece. Then come a lot of cuts, and you get formals, which last two weeks, one sorority formal a night. These can be up to three hours. Also this rush story comes to you in all of one post.

So the sororities are

Cinderella
Beauty and the Beast
Rapunzel
Sleeping Beauty
Thumbelina
Snow White

Cinderella: I loved these girls! They were extremely sweet and sophisticated. I enjoyed the conversations I had with them, and the seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say. Being my first group I was surprised to see them cheering us in quite loudly, and I got passed along whenever I mentioned something that they knew another sister was interested in. I felt very welcomed and it completely changed whatever preconceived notions I had about these girls.

Beauty and the Beast: Their rush was very cute, but I felt really out of place with the girls, they just weren't my type of people. They were all very nice, just not for me. This is a smaller chapter at my school, which doesn't really bother me, but the conversations where very forced and awkward to me.

Rapunzel: These girls had a very cute mystery theme, and I enjoyed talking to them and getting to know all the girls. They didn't really click with my personality, but for no particular reason.

Sleeping Beauty: This is the sorority that all the girls in my sport are in, so I already knew a ton of them, I enjoyed their rush and hanging out with them and talking about everything. This also seemed to be the most diverse sorority which was interesting. I also fell walking in when they were all cheering, so that was a great way to start the event.

Thumbelina: I was completely blown away by this sorority! They are all the sort of rough and tumble kind of girls you wouldn't expect to see in a sorority, along with girls who you would. I felt like I could really be myself here and was very comfortable, which was a shock to everybody especially myself because they don't always have the best reputation on campus, but I loved them!

Snow White: This was the day of the Superbowl. They had the game on. I didn't feel like they really paid any attention to us, which was disappointing, since this was the group I was most attracted to going into rush.

We got our formal invites in the mail, and a good chunk of girls got cut. I only got Beauty and the Beast. I went to my Rho Gam to drop out, because I did not feel any connection with the girls in that sorority, and I didn't want to waste their time when I knew I wasn't going to pledge. (For everyone whose saying "give it a shot!" a lot of girls will go to their formal recruitment just to get the food, since it's one of the best catered ones and I did not want to be the one to waste their time or resources. I knew they weren't a great fit and I didn't want to give them the wrong impression.)

Turns out Thumbelina's formal invites got screwy, and I DIDN'T get cut!
I was super excited.

So, as you can see, I only went to the one formal.

Thumbelina: Loved it, had so much fun, got to talk to all the girls, I could see myself just hanging out with these girls. They're very chill. My roommate and I went to this event together and both had a splendid time.

So I suicided on my preferences, only listing Thumbelina.

My Rho Gamma was late to deliver my bid and I'm pretty sure I scared her when I grabbed it out of her hand, opened it, then went jumping up and down screaming to find my roommate.

My roommate went Sleeping Beauty, and I went Thumbelina, PM me if you want the key, since I'm trying to keep this private.

Actually, the connection may be hard to judge.

You really should have given Beauty and the Beast a second chance, as you can always turn down the bid at the end if you truly don't feel the connection. However, there might be some hidden connection that you don't quite immediately see.

In any case, good luck, but you seriously shouldn't have suicided!

:confused: Aren't you out of your lane, giving advice on sorority recruitment? As a general rule, I stay completely out of fraternity recruitment discussions.

Telling someone after the fact that they shouldn't have done something is not at all helpful. And there have been recent comments regarding what to put on a bid card - I refer you to those.

Am I the only one who has no idea what LAC means?

No, you're not.

But I do want to say that, since these are all locals, they are not bound by Panhellenic rules. I don't think any of us are really able to pass advice here, other than to wish the OP good luck.

Lane swerve. Since this school is all locals, does this mean if the OP turned down a bid from a group, she would be able to rush the next semester, rather than wait a whole year?

LAC = Liberal Arts College. That's my guess.

ETA:lucgreek, it would depend on if and how the locals are "governed" or "regulated". They aren't members of the NPC so our agreements wouldn't apply to them.

Or maybe it was a typo and she meant MAC... which is the football league for small schools in Ohio, Michigan and the surrounding area.

My guess was Lutheran Affiliated College, but I'd just been reading the theology thread so I had religion on the brain.

It depends on the school.

I went to an all-local school (but not the one the OP is talking about), and our rules very closely mirrored the NPC rules. For us, if you were offered a bid and pledged, you could not accept another bid for a "rush calendar" year.

We had this situation with a very dear sister who had initiated into another sorority and decided to leave that sisterhood. We were having spring recruitment at the time and we investigated the possibility of bidding her then, but the regulations prohibited it. She was bid, pledged and initiated the following winter quarter with the rest of our pledge class. She was and is a very awesome sister.*

*Like I said, sometime we follow the NPC very closely, sometimes no. While she had to wait a year, there was no restriction on her joining our sorority because she had previously joined another. I can see why this rule exists, but there was, and as far as I am aware, is no campus panhellenic rule prohibiting it and our sorority bylaws did not prohibit it. It is not a frequent occurrence.

LAC is a Liberal Arts College.

And we have to wait a year if we turn down a bid.

I'm glad you popped onto this thread. I was wondering if was your school. :)

That was my first guess too since it is a Liberal Arts college with 6 locals.

Yeah, and trimesters too! I had a bit of a moment...but our recruitment has already happened and our girls are halfway to initiation already. Alas!

^^^ My instinct was the same. I had to FB one of my cousins who went there and was greek to see if their bid day already occurred. Unless the OP just wanted to throw us off. 6 locals at a trimester/quarter school in the midwest with deferred rush... I mean how many can there be really?

But best of luck to the OP.