[luv n tpa]

Just throwing in my two cents coming from a campus that treated informal recruitment like formal, with a few exceptions.

We had a structured week of parties, registration, rho chis, etc. There was no disaffiliation, members could speak to PNMs outside of parties, no MRABA, and PNMs could receive bids to both pref parties they attended (same amount of parties as formal). Not once did I come across any additional chapters offering bids to PNMs that did not attend a pref party. As a deferred recruitment, informal was held in the fall and specifically meant for upperclassmen.

Despite no MRABA, if PNMs accepted a bid during informal, they could not participate in recruitment again for a calendar year. On this type of campus, it was "equal" because there was very little difference to the PNMs during which type of recruitment they participated in. This was the only way COB was conducted - additional new members were distributed bids as a COB only prior to any new member education began. The option was there for us to extend bids year-round, but none of the chapters participated in doing so.

CPH has been doing incredibly well the past few years - at least one or two chapters (out of 5) during informal are at total and do not participate. It will be interesting to see if they move away from a structured informal recruitment, but I believe they will still hold the bylaw of accepting a bid = bound for one year.