In Kappa, NMs are matched with a Key Sis (big sis) and a Kore on or before their pledging. (Note: pledging does not necessarily take place on bid day; it can wait 'til the first chapter meeting after bid day.) It's the VP Standards and New Member Chair's job to match bigs and littles. They could be done randomly. I know that in my chapter, we go out to dinner before bid night officially begins and argue over littles. It's so cute to see people fighting for their rush crushes. There is an order of precedence (i.e. seniors who don't have littles get first pick, then juniors, and so on), but if someone who's lower on the totem pole really REALLY wants a woman as her little, we usually let it happen like that. For example, my big just happened to be first in line to get a little, but she's the entire reason that I went Kappa in the first place, so they would have given me to her even if she'd been second or third in line because she really wanted me. The Kore is a group of 4-6 women, most of the time a family line. The entire Kore is respobsible for the NM during her NM period. We still do revelations, both for Key Sis and Kore. We just do them earlier.
This is all part of Kappa's newly redesigned NM Program. Its entire goal is to eliminate the alcoholic nature of the old big/little relationship and to provide a large support network for NMs. It's been the experience of most Kappa chapters that best friends are going to be best friends regardless of whether they're matched, and that randomly matched Key Sisses have about the same success rate as mutually selected ones. The bigs pick the littles on a "Ooh, I met her, I'd like to get to know her better" basis. There's a lot of "Hey, Rebecca, you and Karina would get along well" that goes on. I'll say it again, the point here is to provide a large support network for NMs. If the big turns out to be a dud, the NM has an entire Kore to turn to for support.
Ok, I'm rambling now... I just want to say that I was totally against the so-called random matching system at the beginning, but after going to Convention and talking to our travelling consultants and the New Member Director and other chapters, I'm very in favour of it now. If you have some bizzare, masochistic desire to read even more of my ramblings on the subject of bigs, littles, and Kappa's NMP, you can do so
here.
KKC