Multiple formal recruitments per year
 

Hello,

I attend a school where a significant minority of freshmen do not start until spring semester. A disproportionately high number of the women who end up joining sororities come from this group of spring students. Under our current recruitment policy, these women must wait until their sophomore Fall to rush. This has created a situation where some PNMs experience deferred recruitment and some do not. our panhell would like to make recruirtment a more uniform process. We are considering two options:

1. Defer all recruitment to sophomore fall.
Opponents of this plan say it would disadvantage the spring students, who would not be as well known and would not have had as much time to achieve leadership positions on campus, and have suggested:

2. Holding two formal recruitments per year, one in the fall and one in the spring. Is this allowed? Can a sorority that is over Total take two Quotas per year?

If anyone has any thoughts I would greatly appreciate it.

Yes, this is allowed, but I only know of one school that does it (Maryland?). How many women are we talking about, here? You could also do some sort of less-structured recruitment, but allow the groups who are over total to take a quota. Two FR's is a lot of energy and money for chapters to spend.

Not arguing with energy/time factor, but our Panhellenic limits each chapter's recruitment budget to $200. If there are two FR, Panhellenic could always set lower budgets for both (to take into account having to do everything twice).

Clarification please. If one begins in January as a freshman, she would still be a freshman that fall unless she went somewhere else the previous fall and some do not. Both Florida State and UGA admit a large freshman group in January. Chapters that have vacancies in total or quota have COB spring semester. At FSU all the chapters participate in an open forum in January so that PNMs can meet all the groups and decide to do COB or wait for FR in the fall.

These are good points and something that we should definitely discuss before we make a decision, thank you both!


One other issue that has come up: some Panhell members are concerned that if we do two formal recruitments a year, Fall admit girls will overuse Intentionally Single Preference in the Fall, with the intention of re-rushing with the group in the spring if they do not get their first choice. They would like to ban girls who have ISP'd from rushing for an entire year--in this case until their sophomore fall.

ISP is very common on our campus and something our Panhell discusses frequently, but from my understanding, so long as a girl has not declined a bid, she should be permitted to participate in the next formal recruitment. However, having two formal recruitment per year is a bit anomalous so I'm not sure how it would shake out in this situation.

So in summary, my followup question is: If a campus holds formal recruitment in both the fall and in the spring, can a girl who ISP'd in the fall and was left bidless participate in formal recruitment the spring? Is Panhell permitted to prohibit such girls from participating in spring recruitment? Thanks again!

Oh, this is a very interesting wrinkle. Under the normal rules, a woman who ISP's is indeed eligible for COB, even in the same semester. I do not know if you can pass a campus rule preventing that, nor if you'd even want to.

What do your fall recruitment numbers look like? How many women rush, how many ISP, how many drop out? How many chapters make quota?

Also, do you have housing, and when are contracts typically signed? I'm wondering why moving FR to spring is not under consideration.

Oops, I think I started replying before I saw your post.

Spring admits are students who have advanced standing from AP credits or similar and have applied to defer their admission in order to take some "gap time" in between high school and college. Many students do philanthropic work or travel. One can either defer admission for a year or for half a year, with half a year being the much more popular option. One cannot apply to defer admission for half a year unless one has enough credits to come in as a second semester freshman in January.

In summary: these spring admit women have equivalent academic standing to the fall admits, they just aren't on campus until January. Anyone think this matters? Thanks again!

If this is something the school wants to do, I think they can change the rules to whatever they want. I could see doing this, as long as all the chapters are interested. If the numbers get to be too crazy, then maybe it's time to expand. You could also do a formal in January and a structured informal in the fall, or vice versa. But I don't think there's a rule anywhere that says you can only have quota and/or total modified just once a year. However, I would strongly suggest keeping a tight rein on total, modifying it after EACH formal recruitment period so that the chapters don't end up having to COB year round in order to keep up with the strongest recruiting chapters. And if at your campus your chapters haven't achieved parity, I wouldn't suggest this because if you've got one chapter who is getting half of quota every time and the strongest chapter is getting quota+ every time, you're going to end up losing one or more chapters, and nobody wants that.

Oh, and if you don't have an upper classman quota, now would be the time to do that. Then the girls who are new'ish to the school but are sophomores aren't going to be penalized.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but can't you set total wherever you want? So after formal, the average chapter size is 100, but everyone wants to do a spring rush, so make total 110. That allows for the strongest chapters to take 2 or 3 girls and the weakest chapters to take 15 or 20, presuming that nobody is terribly far off of chapter total.

Yes, you can do it, but it presents the problem she described above, where women ISP thinking they can just join in the spring. No amount of explaining that spots are limited will fix this. I'm trying to think of a way to do this that doesn't hurt the weakest chapters a lot during FR.

So, I've spent a couple of years reading RFM and total/quota posts with the idea of understanding, but "ain't there yet." If a woman suicides, she HAS signed an MRABA, right? Isn't it the signature on the MRABA that binds her for a year? I must be missing something. Can she COB, but not rush formally for a year? I didn't think so, but I'm certainly not the expert.

You are not bound if you don't get a bid. If you sign the MRABA without maximizing your options, and go bidless, you are not bound to anything. You are not eligible to be a quota addition, but you are eligible for COB at any time.

NPC suggest doing Ave (Mean), Median or Max chapter size as total every year.

Formal recruitment currently occurs in the Fall?

Is there informal spring recruitment?

Fall freshmen are allowed to participate in formal recruitment in the fall?

Spring freshmen must wait until the following fall to rush?

I think there are several of us who are really intrigued by this scenario. Are there any issues with sharing with us what school so we can understand what we're dealing with? I'm imagining a variety of best practice answers, depending on what type of school, # of potential rushees, chapter sizes, number of chapters, etc. Obviously we don't want this to turn into an opportunity to bash the little guy, but if there isn't an obvious loser as a result of sharing details, we might be able to weigh in with some interesting alternatives.

I'm probably in the minority here, but I don't see the problem with having just one formal recruitment in the fall. I went to a big state school my freshmen year. I transferred to the school (from community college) in January. UA didn't have a structured (per say) informal recruitment in the spring. I kind of went to what ever houses I was interested in. As I wanted to go Greek, I willingly went with it. I could have waited until the fall and done formal recruitment, but I didn't want too. I'm not sure how many new freshmen UA got that spring, but my feeling is you either do the informal in the spring or wait until formal in the fall.
Having been a recruitment advisor (albeit for a school that ADPi is the only NPC on campus right now) formal recruitment is incredibly stressful. The amount of time and energy that goes into it, unless the chapters are "doing" the same thing in spring and fall, I personally think having two formal recruitments puts a lot of stress on the chapters. Some chapters aren't strong at formal recruitment but excel at informal.

Have you guys thought about keeping the formal fall and having a semi-structured informal spring?