This was one for the books and I had to share it with all of you. I received a call from a alum who was absolutely livid! She was calling on behalf of her distraught friend/pledge sister and the mother of a legacy who had been released. To add insult to injury, the active recruiting the PNM didn't even know this girl was a legacy and so didn't treat her with the courtesy she was entitled to.
I track all the legacies going through the Recruitment process and this name didn't ring a bell. My initial reaction was what went wrong? Sure legacies aren't guaranteed a bid, but we do make all of our actives aware of the legacies during our Rec Reviews in workshop week. Needless to say I apologized and promised to investigate.
So I pull out our Legacy Intro/Rec books. Nothing there. Did we misfile her info? That might explain it. I checked the non-legacy Rec books, nothing. YIKES! Please don't tell me it got lost! I check the PNM's Panhellenic application -- she left the entire section blank. No mention of being a legacy at all.
The alum had given me her name and address as well as mom's. I checked on our Inat'l database. Sure enough there they were, initiated at this Chapter. Why is this important? It obviously wasn't a case of being from a school where they didn't know any better. It also means they are receiving their Inat'l magazine at the correct address. Every summer it includes the Legacy Intro and Rec forms along with the addresses of where to send them for every school.
I called the alum back and asked (politely of course
) if she had sent in a Rec. No. Had mom sent a Rec or a Legacy Intro? No. I see. No explanation was offered as to why, but apparently we should have just known. Seems we didn't do our homework to know who the PNM and her mom was.
(I didn't say this but I certainly thought it.) You're kidding me right? We had 1410 PNM's signed up and it's our responsibility to investigate all of them to see if they are/aren't legacies? We did at least investigate those who claimed on their app's to be legacies but we didn't receive any paperwork on. You never know if Grandma passed away or is infirmed. But this PNM didn't even identify
herself as a legacy when she signed up for Recruitment.
*sigh* Yeah, it must be all our fault.
