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It's my experience that year-round COB makes it REALLY hard to tell who's a little less than pristine when it comes to what they are and are not saying to PNMs. Dirty rushing pretty much only exists when chapters are guaranteeing bids. But, by generating interest in sororities in general, and saying "stick around for next semester when you're eligible and check out all the houses" they're not guaranteeing bids.
I'm surprised that your campus is thinking of getting rid of deferred recruitment. IMHO, that might hurt you guys, given chapter size.
Hear me out on this. The real reason for deferred recruitment (my campus had it too and I'm sure investigative work on your part would reveal that your campus and mine are really close to one another) is to give incoming freshmen a classic college experience before going greek, allow them to get their schedules and time management sorted out, and allow them to be a little more mature when they join (no offense, first semester freshmen).
By getting rid of deferred recruitment, your chapter could be taking relatively huge pledge classes, of first semester freshmen. Really large classes, especially of younger women with less experience in life in general, tend to take chapters in a 180 direction. On my campus when I was an active there was a chapter that took one class through formal recruitment and one class through COB in the same semester, and the chapter changed drastically in the time of that one semester. So much so, in fact, that almost all of the former exec board members ended up feeling ostracized by their own chapter, and by the girls that they had worked so hard to recruit. One of my best friends was in that situation and she doesn't even talk to her chapter anymore - nor does she like to even talk about her senior year in the chapter because it was so uncomfortable for her.
I would say what you're looking at right now with 8 in the fall, more in the spring, is a great way to do it. You're probably going to want to prorate your class sizes so that no single class can completely take over the chapter and take it in a direction that doesn't work for ALL the members. By the time you guys get to total (there was a chapter who had 7 members when I joined my chapter and now they're at total consistently, 5 years later), that problem will go away.
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