"Lil" Selection
 

What are the pros and cons of handpicking your lils vs. randomly assigning your lils?

we do more of a mutual selection process. we kind of pick each other. I only know of one glo on my campus that matched them randomly. about 3 weeks into the new member period, and after the new girls have gotten to know everyone a little. the lil's list 5 possible bigs they would like to have in order, and the bigs do the same for the lil's. so then the new member mom's match them up. but i think this works the most bc most of our classes are usually the same sizes. occassionaly someone will take two lil's.
i think this is a good idea bc you can match people up who already get along, share something in common, and want each other in their families.
honestly, my big and i were only close in the begining of my sisterhood, we just started to hang out in different circles, but we have always been friendly. But i am very close to my lil' and my grandlil'!

our new member educator chooses our littles.. i think it works well that way because each tree has similarties.. mine are the leaders.. SO PROUD OF MY TREE! :)

In our chapter, the littles write their top three choices for bigs down and they almost always get their first choice. I honestly wish the actives had more say in it, because "little hunting" gets ridiculous. Having a little turns into a status symbol, and people end up getting hurt in something that's supposed to be one of the best parts of joining. The girls who refuse to basically bribe someone into picking them risk graduating without ever having a little, the littles get hurt when they see their bigs chasing after the next potential little, and there's the bigs who whine about having to buy sooo many presents because they're on their third little. Granted, most girls end up fairly happy, and I probably just take this stance because my real big is a psychotic *****, but a lot of problems could be avoided if the NM mom/actives were allowed to have some say in the process.

In my perfect big/little process, I'd say do both - have the actives and NMs rank their preferences, but have a neutral party do the actual matching. Yeah, people's preferences should be considered highly, but someone should also be there to pair people up fairly so you don't have people who are upset they never got a little while others have 27.

In Kappa, NMs are matched with a Key Sis (big sis) and a Kore on or before their pledging. (Note: pledging does not necessarily take place on bid day; it can wait 'til the first chapter meeting after bid day.) It's the VP Standards and New Member Chair's job to match bigs and littles. They could be done randomly. I know that in my chapter, we go out to dinner before bid night officially begins and argue over littles. It's so cute to see people fighting for their rush crushes. There is an order of precedence (i.e. seniors who don't have littles get first pick, then juniors, and so on), but if someone who's lower on the totem pole really REALLY wants a woman as her little, we usually let it happen like that. For example, my big just happened to be first in line to get a little, but she's the entire reason that I went Kappa in the first place, so they would have given me to her even if she'd been second or third in line because she really wanted me. The Kore is a group of 4-6 women, most of the time a family line. The entire Kore is respobsible for the NM during her NM period. We still do revelations, both for Key Sis and Kore. We just do them earlier.

This is all part of Kappa's newly redesigned NM Program. Its entire goal is to eliminate the alcoholic nature of the old big/little relationship and to provide a large support network for NMs. It's been the experience of most Kappa chapters that best friends are going to be best friends regardless of whether they're matched, and that randomly matched Key Sisses have about the same success rate as mutually selected ones. The bigs pick the littles on a "Ooh, I met her, I'd like to get to know her better" basis. There's a lot of "Hey, Rebecca, you and Karina would get along well" that goes on. I'll say it again, the point here is to provide a large support network for NMs. If the big turns out to be a dud, the NM has an entire Kore to turn to for support.

Ok, I'm rambling now... I just want to say that I was totally against the so-called random matching system at the beginning, but after going to Convention and talking to our travelling consultants and the New Member Director and other chapters, I'm very in favour of it now. If you have some bizzare, masochistic desire to read even more of my ramblings on the subject of bigs, littles, and Kappa's NMP, you can do so here.

KKC

Dart board and magic 8ball.

huh??
 

Something must be sailing over my head...what on earth do you mean the "alcoholic nature"? I don't think any of our big/little pairings had anything to do with picking the person you most wanted to go out drinking with. Mine definitely didn't.

When I was a pledge, bigs chose littles in the second week. It was by seniority of who hadn't yet had a little. This worked well at the time because we were small enough that everyone knew who got along well together...there were some buzzkills, but not a lot. My junior year we went to the mutual selection because we got very big (for us) pledge classes. It was like bid matching, the people who wanted to take littles put 3 names down and the pledges put 3 names down.

As far as support system, I was as close to my 2 big and 3 big as I was to my big, not to mention their roommates. I know I got very, very lucky.

I think if we had randomly assigned, it would have been a nightmare - we had so many VERY different personalities in our chapter, and while I liked all the sisters, there are some that if I had been told "this is your mentor and the person who is supposed to be most special to you" I would not have had the experience I had.

oh, and my A Phi O big was my boyfriend at the time. we were an incestuous little group. :p

I guess my situation is a little more complicated. If recruitment turns out the way we expected, we would have at least two littles and at most 4 littles. If we would to have only one little, I think it is best we hand pick. However, IMO if you have several littles, I can see these "groups"
getting TOO close, causing a division within a chapter. We don't need that, nothing will destroy a chapter more, we already have a very small chapter.

If we pick our littles randomly, we will get acquinted with people who we normally wouldn't.
However that can cause tension if the personalities and backgrounds are too different, as 33girl said.

So I guess the mutual selection process would be best. But, we don't know how to do that exactly.

I in no way meant to imply that big/little matches were no more than drinking buddy pairings. It is interesting to note, however, that many of the more "high profile" Greek alcohol poisoning deaths in the past few years have involved someone drinking with his/her big. Kappa simply sought to change the nomenclature from Big Sis to Key Sis in the hopes that it would make us forget about any alcohol that may or may not be involved. IMHO, it was more of a PR move than anything else.

Nor am I advocating random matching. What my chapter does is not random matching. The bigs select the littles. We merely do it earlier.

Hope that clears some things up.

Another issue I have with handpicking our littles. What if everyone wants a one little and no one wants another little? This has happened. Someone is going to end up dissatisfied.

When I pledged my local, on bid day we were asked to rank the top 3 sisters whom we wanted as our big. (There were only 7 sisters, so everyone knew everyone by the time rush was over.) Then the sisters argued over who got whom.

After we went AEPhi, we started the following tradition:

- As soon as we got the list of people we were extending bids to (for formal rush) or as soon as a woman accepted a bid (for informal), each NM was paired with an Alpha sister, often the woman who'd preffed her or gotten her to come to rush. Usually the rush chair and new member educator collaborated in doing the matching. The Alpha sister would take the NM out for coffee or dinner, and give her a little welcome gift or decorate her dorm-room door.

- One week later, each new member was paired with an Epsilon sister. This was someone the new member didn't know as well, to mix things up and ensure the NM met more sisters. The new member educator did the matching. The Epsilon sister would also take the NM to coffee or dinner and give her a gift.

- One week after that, each new member was matched with a Phi sister, or pearl sister, or big sister. The new member educator did the matching, giving the most importance to the NM's preferences, some importance to the sisters' preferences, and some importance to whether a particular sister had ever had a little (we tried to give all interested sisters the chance to have a little at least once).