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Originally Posted by carnation
Oh wow, that first sentence really has something to it. Year after year, I've noticed that the stronger groups tend to know how to pick who'll stay in and who'll drop or transfer. Those groups end up with big senior classes.
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Well, like everything though, the stronger groups not only can pick them, they can pledge them and keep them because the strong groups seem more desirable in recruitment and may be more fun once your in.
Think about the difference between a connection a girl feels on bid day to the stronger chapter she placed first vs. the second or third chapter she got because although she wasn't crazy about them, she wanted to maximize her options. Is it entirely fair to attribute the strength of her connection to the groups' ability to pick members with certain innate traits?
I think there's a tendency for folks from strong chapters to assume that the strength of their chapter during their active years was mainly attributable to the merits and talents of that group of members. Who wouldn't want to think that: our chapter of this GLO is strong because we're awesome? But the flip side seems to be "and therefore, that weak group is weak because they don't know how to work hard at recruitment or pick new members."
Certainly the present membership mainly contributes to the reputation of the group and really does well or does poorly, but there's another probably either a third or maybe even as much as half of recruiting strength and reputation that happened before those members arrived on the scene.
Surely people who work at the national or international level of the groups must kind of see this, or it really would be as easy as having a couple of consultants help the chapter for a year picking new members with commitment and showing them how to recruit. How often does that really work on a SEC or competitive recruitment campus?
(And think of individual members you've known: it's weird but I can think of chapters where every single woman that I've known whose joined there is amazing and seemed to belong at an even "better" chapter, and yet the overall reputation stays the same. Weird, huh?)