Quote:
Originally posted by Adelphean
You know, I think it's great to be Panhellenically minded. I also think we should support other Greeks and all that jazz/. However, at the end of the day, I'm still and ADPi and you or that person is still an xyz. First and foremost I support my organization, and SECOND, the greek system as a whole. It's important to remember that PNMs are dropped for a reason. If someone winds up bidless, I'm sorry, but that is life. I think it's wrong to "place" or "ask" (read: beg) a house to reconsider, just so girl can get a bid. If quota is 20, I'm going to give bids to the top 20 on my list. If all those girls accept their bid then number 21 on my list is out of luck. It's mutual selection, I have to want her and I want her to want me. All this talk about "everyone should get a bid" makes ABSOLUTELY no sense to me. If everyone could join whatever house they wanted what would be the point in bids or even Recruitment for that matter?
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What many don't understand is that for some greek systems, being Panhellenically minded is the only thing that will save them. I have seen this many places. At my initiating chapter our system lost 3 chapters in 5 years, our recruitment numbers went from 1600 to 600 and a couple chapters have been on the brink of closing for sevaral years.
WHY???
Because we had one of the "toughest" recruitemnts. Recruitment was so cut-throat that women would go to other colleges, pledge a chapter that we had and then transfer in after they were inititated. Everyone was thinking only about themselves and what happened? The whole system was weakened and is only now starting to recover after about 10 years. Numbers have still not gotten back to 1000 and this is the largest public school in the nation.
A system that I'm working with right now can't understand why they are dying. No one is at total - which was recently lowered, they have no support from the University and soon they won't be able to fill their houses b/c they all sleep more than total. They have fewer and fewer women signing up for recruitment. Of course since it's just as easy (or maybe easier) to get a COB, why go through recruitment. Only one chapter will not be able to COB after recruitment. Why is this, because they don't play nice in the sandbox. They don't show any unity, they don't do any positive PR as a group, they can't figure out that if they don't help each other many of them won't be around much longer.
So, being Panhellenicly minded can truly help your system. Now, I'm not saying you have to be so to the extent that you hurt your own chapter. I don't think thats the spirit of it. But, really, there are some things that stronger chapters could do that would help weaker chapters. They just don't want to. Why, who knows for sure. Could be b/c they don't want to break "tradition" or be the one that makes change.
Think about the new release figure method (FRM). All chapters that do formal recruitment are required to use it by 2006. Its aim is to help all chapters, help more women get bids, make our chapters and systems bigger, even the playing field, break fewer hearts (ours and theirs). Why wouldn't you want to try it???? Because it's a change. I've found that my 85 year old grandmother is more receptive to change than some 19 year old chapter members. Because things have "always" been done a certain way they don't want to change things - I would imagine this is why NPC is REQUIRING everyone switch to this by next year.
I think being Panehllenically minded is more about being open to new ideas and actually THINKING about the greek system as a whole.
I now jump down off my soap box.