There's one big difference between job hiring and Panhellenic recruitment. In job hiring, a company does not care at all about what happens to rival companies, and it does not care at all about what happens to the applicants it doesn't hire.
Campus Panhellenics claim to care about both of those things, and they should. The goal is supposed to be to place as many quality women as possible in as many chapters as possible. If that's the goal, then you have the priorities backwards if you say, "Women have the responsibility to figure this out for themselves." It should be the system's responsibility to ONLY give out accurate information; that is, no Rho Chi or publication or adviser should EVER say "Recs aren't necessary" when they really are, even if the PNM could theoretically find out the truth elsewhere. At most, they should say, "While recs are not technically required, they are extremely important, and this is how you should go about getting them."
Yes, some systems are doing a great job of making this clear. But others seem to be sending mixed messages, and there's just no reason to do that. Even if you suppose that women who don't do their own research wouldn't make good NPC members (which I don't believe), giving out ANY misleading info creates resentful non-Greeks and very bad PR for the system.
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Art On The Hill Condo Prathumnak