[bets]

We do everything we can to extoll our virtues, like leadership and awards, but no one wants to join a chapter that everyone thinks is struggling.

EXACTLY! I just wish girls would understand that just because you are small, does not mean that you are struggling. That is why I started this thread. I am trying to find the best way to explain that to our PNM's. I know how to tell someone one on one, but like I said before, I want to shout it from the roof top to all of the PNMs.

Also, because we're so small, many recruitment guests have not had contact with us to know what type of people we are (I got some really crazy questions/comments ranging from "I heard that all of you have boyfriends, and I don't. Does that make a difference?" to "I heard that you guys do nothing but study.") What kinds of things do you tell recruitment guests that have a preconceived opinion about your chapter?

That is one of the biggest problems we have faced in the past, because of our normal social contact rules. My chapter of 30 cannot possibly know as many PNM's as a chapter of 100. Nor can we GET to know all of our PNMs during the summer. (even though we aren't supposed to contact them, many larger sororities know the girls coming through before our summer recruitment rules begin, allowing them to have normal social contact with them in the summer.) So by the time we get to meet them at summer panhellenic events, or sometimes even during rush, they already have formed opinions about us, which they have learned (most of the time) through other Greeks (Greek unity is good, but not THAT good on our campus.)

What does that leave us? 30 minutes (at the MOST) during Recruitment events talking to 3 or 4 girls at a time trying to convince them that we are cool, intelligent, respectful women. Sometimes it's like deprogramming a bug. Which is, obviously, something that is hard to do.