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My institution is looking at establishing Greek life for the first-time ever. However, the administration has agreed to do so with the following condition:

All those who go through Recruitment must be accepted.

Can this be done? Does anyone else do this?

HELP!!! Any info that you can provide would be most beneficial!

Recruitment is a two way street. There is no way for GLO's to guarantee that everyone gets a bid to the place they want. Just because a girl gets a bid, doesn't mean she accepts it.

There is a something some schools do called guaranteed placement. Use the search feature to see if there are specific threads on it.

That being said, guaranteed placement also has some rules that the women must follow and it would not actually place each and every woman that goes through recruitment. If all chapters released a woman then there would be no way to place her through that formal recruitment period. She would be eligible for COB but she would not just be placed with a chapter.

So, my thought is that the University needs to be more specific on what they mean by "all those who go through Recruitment must be accepted". Does this mean if they are invited and maximize their options all the way through to signing of the preference card (basically what guaranteed placement requires), then no problem. If they say that once you sign up for recruitment, you will be placed in a chapter, the NO WAY. I can't think of any GLO that would go for that.

There's usually two votes

1 - to offer a bid to become a "pledge"

2 - to initiate, following a period of learning and testing

It's unlikely any of the national fraternity-sorority groups would establish a chapter on your campus unless both votes were allowed.

You could allow "local" chapters to start and exist, and have any rules you want (assuming yours is a private school). Locals, though, lack the officers' manuals, training conf., traditions, and leadership that national affiliation allows.

There are several schools which only allow locals, and one campus website I stumbled across had local fraternity pages showing hazing - which would have gotten any national affiliated chapter suspended.

When I went through rush at the University of Alberta, in Canada. The way that it was stated is that every girl who rushed was offered a bid to one of the three fraternities. We still had preference and the chapter voted. It didn't mean that each girl ended up with their choice and it was up to them if they accepted. It did not go against the panhel rules if they decided not to go anywhere. I am not sure what they did in the situation if a girl is dropped by all of the fraternities but I am pretty sure that they have rules to guard against it, because I do not know of anyone who was not offered a bid. Please take into account that this was the early 90's and now there are 4 women's fraternities on campus but I am pretty sure that the rules are the same. I would assume that these are the types of rules that your school would like. To tell you the truth, I was much older than I was in university before I realized that not everone got in and there was a lot of competition. That's what I get for living in Canada I guess! I think that the rules partially exist due to low numbers, my pledge class was 22 and that was about 1/3 of the girls who rushed, out of a school of over 30,000.

You don't want a "No one can be excluded" rule. Trust me. The former locals at the college where I teach did this for awhile and it was disastrous.

We, as private organizations, have the right to determine who we choose to extend membership to and who we do not choose as members. No university has the right to tell who and who not we should allow as members. There is a court ruling on the issue. I will have to do more research to find the specific one. You cannot force a chapter to take on a girl that doesn't meet their standards only because she needs placement.... That is lame and screams not only bad news for your chapter but the ideals you were founded on.

There are some bad apples that go through rush.

I think the schools that have guarantee placement have all sorts of rules the women have to follow in order to be placed . Such as: they must attend ALL parties they are invited to during the entire rush process. If they do that up until bid day, they'll be offered a bid SOMEWHERE. So there isn't much of a chance for a PNM to cut a group...only for a group to cut a PNM. I'm not sure what happens if all groups release a woman though. Maybe someone from a school like this can chime in?

Exactly. I've never heard of a guarantee that states that everyone who participates gets a bid- only those who make it all the way to Bid Day with X, Y, and Z stipulations will be guaranteed a bid. So any of the "bad apples" :o would surely be dropped by all chapters before they got to that point.

This is what happens when you're forced to take bad apples: they create scenes in sorority meetings or cause drama or their behavior in public--in letters--humiliates sisters and the good people quit. Think of the worst people you read about in the thread "Weird Rush Stories" and then imagine being sisters with those girls. Um, no.

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Y'all are wonderful!

I appreciate your help tremendously. Any insight on court rulings that state that a University may not impose a policy that all students must be placed would be super helpful.

Each of you has given me such insight. Thank you!

check with UT. they have the "guarantee" with the stipluations that if you go all the way through and maximize your options (listing as many groups as possible for pref) you get a bid. contact them for all the details.

as for my own opinion: the school should not expect a chapter to accept any ol' woman who signs up. basic expectations need to be established and the membership expectations of each chapter need to be respected by the campus. also, remember that according to the NPC MOI or Green Book, a college panhellenic is not supposed to set a GPA requirement to go through recruitment. i know most do. those that don't still ask for the gpa and then are sure to let all know what the minimum gpa requirement is for each chapter.

Bama has a similar "guarantee" with the following provisions.

- PNM must be invited to and accept invitations to 3 GLOs on Pref Night (the max number).

- PNM must attend all 3 parties on Pref Night.

- PNM must rank all 3 GLOs on her pref card, void if she lists only 1 or 2.

- PNM will then be guaranteed a bid to one of those 3 GLOs. Should each Chapter already be at quota, she will be a quota addition.

There is no control over a PNM being dropped prior or only invited by 1 or 2 GLOs to Pref Night . There is also no way anyone could control a PNM dropping out of Recruitment by her own choice.

When I went through at A&M, there was a GPA requirement of like a 2.5 to go through rush. I asked someone about that, and they said that they can't tell someone that they CAN'T go through rush because of a lower GPA, but that it would make it MUCH more difficult rush experience, and they would not be very likely to recieve a bid from a chapter.

Judging by this, I think that the GPA requirement was put in place possibly to kid of weed out some of the girls who most likely wouldn't get placed because of her grades anyway.

Edit: I am also very curious about how this "guaranteed bid" program works for a girl who is dropped by everyone. It seems to me that if ALL the chapters drop you, you shouldn't just be put with some chapter to keep up the "everyone gets a bid" policy. I can see that causing nothing but problems. Has anyone been able to find out about that?