The NPC Manual of Information is over 150 pages long. Of these 150 pages the only rules that NPC groups must follow are the UNANIMOUS AGREEMENTS. There are 11 pages of these agreements. The entire rest of the book has suggestions on how to run panhellenic or details on the unanimous agreements. Most of the agreements do not pertain to recruitment in the ways you think. The big ones I can think of are (I'm giving the abbreviated version so to speak so don't freak on me if I forget a little detail):
Men are not to be involved in recruitment - makes sense to me - the women should join because of the members of the chapter not because of the guys they know.
Alcohol is not allowed at recruitment function. As probably 90% of women going through recruitment are minors this one makes sense as well. And of course we all know you don't have to drink to have a good time and to make people want to get to know you.
Every group has the right to take members (this is the just of the agreement). In other words other groups on panhellenic council can't get together and decide to penalize another group by not letting them take members.
Ethical conduct will be maintained by all greek women not only during recruitment but at all times. Groups should not talk about each other. You don't now what goes on in my group and I don't know what goes on in yours.
Preferencial Bidding System must be used.
All the other panhellenic rules are made by the college panhellenic. Food, no food, balloons, no balloons, the number of alumnae that can be on the "recruitment floor" are all rules made by the college panhellenic. They can be as lax or complex as the group wants. Usually rules are added or changed because of something that occured during the last recruitment. Most are in an effort to make recruitment better for everyone involved, but on occassion nit-picky things are put in them.
I think is silly to think that having a schedule or making women pay a minimal fee to participate in recruitment is bad. Schools that have 1000+ women who want to pledge a sorority couldn't do it with out the scheduling. Most of the fees are minimual and designed to make sure that the women are interested and to help fund the process.
One of the schools that I advise has no minimum fee and lets women sign up until the day recuitment starts. They have 300 women sign up and 150 show up. The school puts out money, the chapters put out money and half the women show up. On this campus the allow women to miss as many days and/or parties as they wish up until preference night. No one ever knows who is going to show up when or if. The panhellenic women then have to call everyone who showed up for even one event to find out if they are in or out. This is CRAZY! Charge $5 and people will think about it before they sign up. If you don't want to do it - fine, I understand - but don't waste everyones time and resources.
I've worked with a lot of chapters - some were there are only 80 women going through, others were there are 1200. In my experience the best recruitment rule for any size panhellenic recruitment is to use release figures. This is one of the "suggested" things in the NPC manual This is the best rule and I wish it would become a unanimous agreement. It evens the playing field for all the panhellenic groups and is kinder to the potenial new members as it lets them know their options in the earlier rounds.
Sorry for the long post. It's also late so I am not responsible for any typos, bad spelling or bad grammar.
