how many votes to cut
 

how many votes does your chapter take to cut a rushee? related question: how many to cut a pledge?

for rushees, our national constitution gives us a choice between two systems: either it takes a unanimous vote to give out a bid (so, one vote cuts), or we can elect a committee of five that gives out all the bids. we use the committee system.

for pledges, it takes 1/3 of the active chapter, present and voting, to cut. that's also a national rule.

I don't know how many it takes to cut a pledge.

We do a one man blackball rush, so it has to be unanimous to give a bid. So with that system any one person can walk a rushee out on his own as well.

When I was an active we were pretty informal about the bid process. At Texas there are typically rush weekends (called State Parties) in all the major cities throughout the summer, and bids given out at that early stage are usually to top guys- so the chapter trusts the rush chair, rush captains for that city and also any actives attending to make a good decision.

Guys we were more on the fence about would, if they made the grade, gets bids closer to the end of summer when there were more events at the house, or during formal rush. At this time most of the chapter would be around and if one respected active had a specific problem with a rushee- we would go with his feelings usually and not give a bid. Lacking some specific incident/problem, it would just take 3-4 respected actives for the whole chapter to not bid someone.

I use the term "respected active" since that is what really drove our rush decisions. If a guy highly regarded by the chapter was very pro- or anti- a rushee, that is what made the real difference.

As for balling pledges- we have a formal procedure for that based on rules that apply to all our chapters. I won't get specific, but it takes more than a majority of active members to vote a pledge be black-balled.

Pretty similar for my chapter - rush chairs get a lot of leeway to make the decision to card a guy...perhaps too much in some occasions.

Don't remember the specifics for removing a pledge, but it has to be a significant number beyond a simple majority voting in favor of retaining him. It has happened before where a pledge was removed despite having a simple majority in his favor. Not sure, if this is a General Fraternity regulation.

To initiate, pledge needs 85% of the vote in his favor during our final vote. Likewise not sure if this is a GF regulation.