Dirty Rushing and Consequences
 

I was talking to a friend yesterday who told me that on the campus where she advises, there is a huge dirty rushing issues with one of the groups. The group got in trouble last year, had to do a recruitment workshop and pay for it, but again, the group is back to their old ways.

I'm wondering if any of you have experienced this and what other sanctions may have/have not been effective.

Dirty rush isn't a big deal on our campus, as far as I know. It is handled by a small fine.

However, as I posted in the other thread about dirty rushing, a school nearby promised an excessive amount of PNMs a bid and then bid less than half of them. They were restricted to only pledging five NMs a year for [I think] five years, or something crazy like that. Long enough to hurt them. I don't remember exactly how long.

It was crazy.

Panhellenic can limit the number of women a chapter can pledge as punishment? I've never heard of that....!!

Neither have I!!! I'm surprised their National Headquarters didn't throw down about this.

That seems like revenge, not punishment! That could really be a death sentence for a chapter! I thought the point was to deter the behavior in the future and get to the point of why it was happening with education, etc.

NPC actually does not allow you to restrict the numbers (not to say it didn't happen, but it would have been in violation of the greenbook).

We had an incident where a chapter COB'd over total by five women. The following semester, we thought that quota should be reduced by five for them, and that was not allowed.

So of course, the lesson was to bid as many girls as you want, because their dues would be more than any fine your chapter had to pay.

I know of one org., ABC, who accidently handed out a COR bid a day early (there was a specific that needed to pass between recruitment and COR). I believe it was truly an honest mistake, because there was a lot of miscommunication that year. Anyway, XYZ was not too fond of ABC in the first place, so XYZ reported ABC to Panhellenic. ABC's punishment was to not only revoke that bid, but also tell her about XYZ's COR events. Guess what happened? The girl joined XYZ.

Fining isn't always effective. Some chapters at my alma mater would budget the fines into each year's budget because they knew they'd get their list to Panhellenic way too late. I forget what the fine was per hour, but they would hand in their list along with their fine at the same time.

Even at my small school, we've run into problems with certain groups COB'ing over total - fines have not had an effect because those 4 or 5 women's dues make up by far the fines that are handed down. Panhellenic has recently started requiring chapters who have infractions to hold workshops in preparation for recruitment for all of the sororities which review the Green Book rules on recruitment. But it still hasn't helped...

In some cases, it's just not possible to undo the damage you've done to another sorority with merely a fine or a loss of socials. Some groups weigh the loss of socials against being able to demolish another sorority with rumors and plow straight ahead and do the latter, laughing all the way.

I'm thinking af a case at a Georgia school a few years back as told to me by another GCer. During recruitment, one group told PNMs awful and untrue things about their chief rival and the chief rivals made nowhere near quota. The offending group was very happy about the whole thing and apparently held parties off campus since they couldn't hold official parties. The punishment amounted to nothing and it took quite awhile for the other group to recover.

I'm not sure that Panhellenic Councils really have any means by which to punish severe infractions.

What do you think would happen if PHC WAS allowed to limit the number of women taken in the next FR cycle?

In SOME (not all) I think the local Panhel's would be bogged down by accusations and trying to judiciate which claims were true and which were exaggereated.


At a school this fall, there was a sorority who received a huge number of rush infractions that in order to "pay up" for their infractions, the sorority would be on social probation for the next three years. The course of action is now in question, because it is punishing new member classes to and three years from now.

So is that setting a precedent if you are going to committ an infraction, do it big? You will only get the minimal infraction fine afterall...

This happened at a school I won't name last year, leading one group to not make quota for the first time in many years. As there was no GA at the school, there was literally no punishment. The offending sorority said that the other did really bad things like circle the fat, and many pnm's believed it.

Most campuses where I've helped out don't really give out punishments. Sometimes they'll make a big deal out of little things (closing the door at pref when the rho chis are outside talking so loud that the ceremony is being disrupted), while usually when there really are infractions, they could care less because they can't prove anything.

From what my friend told me, the group invited women to a party at an off-campus party at an apartment of a member, and also one of the recruitment counselors lived there. So not only was there the party, but now the RC's affiliation is known. The RC volunteered to resign, because she said she didn't want to cause any problems, and that she didn't know about the party, but Panhel has left her stay as an RC.

Also, she said she felt that no matter what the sanction, this group is basically not going to care. They have alienated all of the other NPCs, they hang out with only the 2 largest fraternities. If they lost social privileges, they'd do unregistered mixers at apartments...fines would just be paid. It just seems there is no win here.