New Social Media Requirements
 

Hey everyone! It's been a while. I don't know if this has been overdiscussed on is forum, but I thought I would bring up social media during recruitment, for chapters.
As a collegiate member social media can be how pnm's form opinions about the chapters at their school. Whether it's good as bad. Websites like Total Frat Move highlight pretty women and perpetuate the idea of"top tier's", not giving an accurate picture of what sorority life really is. My panhellenic has mandated that from work week until the end of recruitment every woman must privatize or take down anything that links us to our chapter. Much like a rho gam or pi Chi. What do y'all think about this? I think it can be beneficial, but at the same time I think it's a little overboard.

In other news, I'm getting SO EXCITED to experience the other side of recruitment and to meet all the potential new members!:D

First off, your page should be private anyway (all a non friend can see is name and profile pic). That's basic safety for college age girls.

If you're at a small school, social media regulations are basically pointless. I guess I don't understand what this has to do with tfm??

Thanks for your advice. What I was trying to say was that TFM has been putting a spotlight in chapters that have beautiful members displayed on a chapters' tumble page, which is a form of social media. Now these pages are popping up from colleges all over the country, which isn't a bad thing. I think they can be great PR. However it might be to get attention from TFM and men in general.

Are you actually posting to promote T**? It seems that way since you have mentioned it numerous times in your thread.

When is "work week" at your school? I seem to recall it being the week before rush and by then it's too late.

No? They are a part of undergraduate train of thought though. I have mentioned them 3 times on this website. One on a thread entirely to do about that culture. I think you're jumping to conclusions..I wanted to chat about social media and the place it has during recruitment.

Socalgirl, my President just sent out an Email saying that PanHellenic was starting to monitor everyone. So I think my info was wrong. It's starting now.

That.

And I just really don't get why Panhellenic at your school really wants to have that much control and responsibility over individuals' social media accounts. What groups should be doing is focusing on helping members understand how to use social media responsibly, not dispose of it entirely.

Social media can help lead to a job or other great opportunities.

Our panhellenic mandates that as chapter members, our social media must be private. I don't mind my profile needing to be private, I like it that way anyway, but I disagree with panhellenic making you take down anything relating to your chapter.

Our panhellenic council goes through and checks everyone's facebook to make sure it's private, to their guidelines, or the chapter gets fined and they pass the fine to the individual. In recent years, the guidelines have become a little ridiculously strict but, facebook is constantly changing.

We are also not allowed to have any public pictures with Pi Chis/Rho Chis/Rho Gams, but that's obvious, so their affiliation isn't incidentally revealed.

As far as social media goes for the chapters as a whole, by the time summer classes start, chapter facebook pages (i.e. XYZ at State University) have to be taken down, as do chapter twitter and instagrams. They're reactivated in the week following Bid Day. And my campus hasn't really gotten into the Tumblr phenom, but I would assume those would fall under the same rules.

I get it's so that PNMs don't have preconceived notions about the chapters but I'm not sure how much it really helps, especially with the prevalence of other sites and information out there. Plus, especially in regards to summer freshmen, they meet girls and kind of form their own opinion anyway.

Here's the thing, there's probably a population of women who are curious about sororities and search the sites for info. Finding nothing, they do not sign up for recruitment.

The focus needs to be on positive representation, year round, and not about pulling or locking sites leading up to recruitment.

This^^. I teach high school students and their philosophy is "If I can't find it on social media/internet, it doesn't exist." A group of girls is going to the same college sat in my class one day and looked up the social media sites of each chapter on the campus they will be attending in the fall. Let's say some of these chapters dropped the ball. I, also, find it disturbing that a college Panhellenic feels it has the authority to "make" a group of women change their social media privacy settings. If women are communications/media majors, they need to display their social media as it goes hand in hand with their studies.

Yeah, I agree that is has become somewhat of overkill. The official chapter websites are still up and are up to date however.

And the lack of information available about chapters because social media has been deactivated becomes somewhat of a problem when a PNM wants a chapter that's really academically focused and quiet and ends up in the party chapter.

How on this planet of the gods can anyone (or any committee) check facebook pages (including multiple pages) for every chapter AND every member, when there are over 200 people per chapter, and 15 or more chapters at some schools?

Social media is an excellent tool when used appropriately. Chapter sites where there is 100% control of the image being put "out there" comes in very handy for PNM's. Our individual chapter pages are set to private (but we monitor those too ourselves) but we do a lot of promoting our chapter and the girls via social media.

Exactly, and as I said, if the system is small enough that they can actually do this, it's pointless anyway.