HUGE pledge classes
 

So I was perusing the Barbie girl thread (fascinating...) and I was looking at some of the websites from Ole Miss sororities and some others and noticed the crazy large new member classes...I forget which chapter had 91!!! WHAT?
I am so uneducated in the ways of the super large chapters (at my school, the largest sorority has probably been around 70 sisters...thats a guess...) I was New Member educator this past semester and I was almost overwhelmed with a 14 member spring class (spring is usually an average of about 5 or so!)

Can someone from a super large chapter go into a little detail about how you run things with so many sisters? How do you have meetings? How do you know so many people?? Is it possible to see a sister from your chapter and not realize she's in the chapter at first?? I'm very curious. Any kinds of info would be very appreciated!

I would like to hear this too as we have not yet mastered new member groups of 40-50!!!

I know a bit about this, since my chapter has around 140 women. Yes, we're huge, but we're also non-residential. While that may make it seem even less likely that we know eachother very well, I'd have to say that I don't really think it works that way. We spend a lot of time together, and I can honestly say that I know ALMOST everyone in my chapter. The ALMOST comes from our second semester recruitment (so last Jan's new member class is still a little vague in my mind) and from sisters who go abroad for part of or the whole year. Clearly if they're abroad I can't meet them until they get back.

As far as meetings, we have ours in a big on-campus meeting room. I don't know how meetings work in smaller chapters, but ours are relatively straightforward. At times (after breaks, etc) we can be a little hard to quiet down, but generally we just go through the agenda (led by the president) and do announcements and whatnot.

One thing we do for bonding purposes is a lot of pledge class events so that you get to know your class really well really fast. From there we do events with two of the classes (like soph-senior events, etc) so that we don't always have all 140 of us there at once.

Hi! The pledge classes at my school have been between 70-80 the past few years. The way we handle our pledge class is have the new girls have seperate meetings. We also have "turtle captains" where an active is assigned about 8 girls and we go out for ice cream and fun things like that. At the beginning it was SO hard to learn everyone's name, but after new member retreat and things we do as a group everyone eventually met. I wish at times it would be smaller just so we would get to know everyone on a 'personal' level, but it's nice to be big at the same time.

My pledge class is made up of 50 girls. We would usually have our "new member meetings" right after chapter on monday nights, just to get it all done in one night that people had left open anyways for chapter. To meet everyone in our pledge class, we had walkout (new member retreat) one weekend from sat-sun at a senior's house (like family home, not house on campus). We were there all Saturday and then Saturday night, all the seniors (who weren't studying abroad, etc) came to walk out and we got to know them better. Then we also have key families which are made up of 2 seniors, 2 juniors, 2 sophomores and 2 new members. Once a month or so, you do something with your key family...go for ice cream, eat dinner together, something like that...:D

At Grand Chapter -- the biannual national Sigma Nu convention, we were discussing something about legacies and our policies/procedures involving those guys.. Someone from our Ole Miss Chapter said his pledge class was around 77 guys.

There are 2 guys left from the group I joined our colony with (including myself). I guess you could call that a small pledge class :D

I'm the Chapter Adviser for AOII here at Ole Miss. And yes last year all 9 NPCs had HUGE pledge class between 86-95 New Members. This year Panhellenic is expecting 1000 girls to go through recruitment, so bigger NM Classes. Anyway, it is not hard, it is really all the chapters here know. When I was a collegiate member from 1996-2000 the pledge classes averaged about 65-75 members. It just doesn't seem that big to us. I know that at AOII the members play lots of name games and have lots of sisterhood events to get to know everyone. I know the other chapters do that here as well. Also, all of the chapters here basically get to know their "tip-top" Potential New Members before recruitment so it is like the chapter already knows them before they even pledge. Also, most of the University is comprised of Mississippians (although large populations from LA, TX, TN, AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, MO, IL) and most girls tend to pledge where they know someone. I think it just works here since most students don't go home that much because there is tons of stuff to do here.

I remember when my chapter took in a class of 30! We didn't know WHAT to do with ourselves for a while there. Especially since that pledge class made up almost half the house. I can't even fathom a class of over that.

Are there intense problems with factions in a chapter that large? like, girls who basically form their own sorority within the sorority? And how hard is it to do elections and stuff?!

I think is the whole set of challenges that come with having a really large chapter. Membership retention is such a challenge. Formal Recruitment preparation serves the added purpose of really helping chapter members get to know each other much better. Logistics is also an issue if you don't have the ideal amount of space for chapter meetings, initiation, etc. Chapters at Ole Miss likely don't have that issue. Where we are at, there isn't traditional housing and our chapters reside in normal residential housing with only 10 women or so living in. This makes it really hard to keep the group banded together. The great side is that the challenges lead to some pretty creative programming and social ideas. The women really seem to know how to put together great events that keep people coming back for more.

We have (from what I take it) pretty average new member class sizes...

Each year quota is set at 35-45 women (depending on the year)

What my chapter stresses the MOST is interaction BETWEEN the actives and the new members. The new members have their weekly informational meetings, but we also schedule a myriad of events on the weekends, so everyone has an opportunity to get to know each other... for example, we host the annual family bbq- where sisters, new members, alumni, & families all mingle, the active/alumni/new member mixer which is usually held at a sisters house- where we all get to tan by the pool while participating in team building activities & such, lil/big sis revelation, the new member retreat- where the focus is on getting to know everyone WITHIN their new member class, the family tree kickball tournament/field day, a chapter wide service event, homecoming week activities…

Everyone knows nothing is mandatory, but since there are so many women to meet, everyone makes the effort to attend as many events as they can... we made sure to schedule enough events in order to give everyone an opportunity to make it.

At their first meeting, we also assign each new member a “Designated Delta” or in other words, an alumni “big sister”. The only thing they have to do is either call, write, or email their Designated Delta once a week.. it’s an easy way to bridge the gap

A “bulletin board” is also set up at each new member meeting where sisters post notes for the new members and then it is returned to the actives meeting the following week with notes/responses from the new members…

We also assign “Angels” which are secret sisters for each new member… the “Angel” just leaves encouraging notes & gifts for the new member and reveals herself after initiation.

My apologies for rambling… hope this helps!

Any questions just PM me =)