Here is an interesting article about Legacies (from AOII's To Dragma Magazine)...
http://www.alphaomicronpi.org/PDF%20...ecruitment.pdf
Scroll down to read pages 4-6...
one issue which I felt was very thought provoking was where it talks about how some sorority women worry that their daughter being a "legacy" may work against their daughters in some cases....
An excerpt:
My co-worker had been Chapter President of another NPC group when she was in college. Yet, she encouraged her daughter not to list her sorority affiliation on the recuritment application.
When I asked my friend why she had done this, she told me that she did not want her
daughter to be penalized by her sorority
affiliation. This puzzled me so we discussed
this further. It seems that my friend’s sorority was not one of the "stronger" groups on the campus her daughter chose to attend.
She didn’t want her daughter to feel obligated to join this group if it weren’t her first choice and at the same time she didn’t want the other groups to judge her daughter on her own sorority affiliation. It appears that questions and concerns regarding legacy recruitment are not unique to AOII -- the alumnae of the other groups I am familiar with hold the same discussions.
An interesting and thought provoking article, IMHO.
Also, I am pretty sure that some sororities view step-relatives as legacies, while others do not. I believe the thinking behind this is because people usually grow up in the same house as their moms and sisters (but not their aunts or cousins). They may also have grown up in the same house as their step-relatives...therefore, by living in the same household, the belief is that by virtual of the proximity of living in close quarters with a sorority woman, the girl rushing would have a better understanding of that org., as opposed to if it was her cousin or aunt who is an alumna of that org.