[ASTalumna06]

But these schools that you're using as examples also have formal recruitment. We don't. There's no signing up, there's no "i have a general interest in going Greek." How can you have a formal recruitment when, for the most part, the only people who are going Greek are those people who already know sisters?

And the one event that we have resembling formal recruitment has generated, at the most, 10 names (obviously to be split among 3 different chapters)

Alphagam said that there was one chapter on her campus that she knew of that only had 7 members. But all three sorority chapters on my campus have pretty much been close to that in the past 5 years. We're not one chapter struggling... we're all struggling.

33girl, you give Bucknell as an example. How many GLOs does that school have? Compared to our 3 sororities and 3 fraternities (one of which doesn't really participate in anything, and another one that's rebuilding itself with 6 members)?

And we can't just change from informal recruitment straight to formal overnight. It's not going to happen.

As for having deferred recruitment... it sucks. It just plain sucks. I'm not going to explain it any further than that. Some schools have it, some schools don't. And we'd probably be better if we didn't. Now.. if we did away with deferred recruitment for a little while, I think we'd be able to gain more members, and in turn, maybe make a change over to formal recruitment when we're more prominent on campus. At that time, we might consider re-instating deferred again if it seems to be beneficial.

But I just talked to our chapter advisor the other night, and she said that they used to have formal recruitment. But as the chapters got smaller, and interest in Greek life dwindled, they switched to informal because no one was signing up for recruitment.

Besides all of that, the girls know the importance of not taking pledge classes that they can't handle. With 12 current members, and a possible 8 coming in this semester, that would be 20 (more than I've ever seen the chapter at). So even if they took in 10 more the next semester (which is a likely possibility as long as they keep girls around), then they'll be in VERY good shape next year, with only 2 girls graduating in the spring.

But either way, I'm not going to attempt to argue this point, because I've been on my campus for too long to not know how things work. Deferred recruitment might work on some campuses, but I don't think it's working here right now, and neither does anyone else.