[shadokat]

To add my own .02 (or .03 depending how long winded I get).

Right now on my campus, we are having this issue. We have not had formal recruitment in 2 years, and what has happened is that smaller sororities get shafted in the process.

Our Greek Advisor thinks that the NPC formal recruitment process hurts their system by making women go to sororities they wouldn't want to go to normally. She also believes that the formal process takes too much time away from the PNMs. So, she set up this system:

Day 1: Information Night
Day 2: President Speeches and Sorority Sing
Day 3: Pig Roast for all greeks and PNMs
Day 4 & 5: Informal parties (PNMs go to 5, but there are 10 sororities)
Day 6 & 7: Pref parties (PNMs go to 3)
Day 8: Bid day

This system is so ridiculous, I can't even begin to tell you, but this recruitment thing takes the cake. As of right now (they are on Day 6), some sororities already have no women. Some chapters have all 70 coming back to their preference parties. Others fall somewhere in the middle.

Now you may say, well, the bigger sororities are doing the right thing and the smaller ones aren't, so they don't deserve to get girls back. WRONG! The system does not encourage ANY PNM to get to know sororities. She can go to whatever she chooses, without being introduced to 4 very good, yet smaller sisterhoods. The other 6 groups are between 35 - 42 members. But even 2 of those groups do not have as many women returning.

This system doesn't help the Greek system at all. It will leave many women bidless come Bid Day, because while some of these women will be invited back to three preference parties, they have NO shot at getting a bid. The sororities are inviting back 70 women to parties where they can only extend 18 bids! How nice to break 52 women's hearts.

I know that men think this is the nature of the beast in Greek Life, but it is not how NPC intended recruitment to be conducted. While the system may sometimes screw PNMs over with cross-cutting and dirty rushing and a plethora of other things, when the system is in place and working properly, it works! It may not provide the most ideal outcomes, but at least the process is fair to all chapters involved. This free for all process only guarantees 2 things...broken hearted PNMs who can't get bids where they think they want to go, and broken hearted sisters who can't understand why women aren't attending their sorority events.

If I had to decide, I'd do NPC recruitment. It works, despite it's flaws, and that's what is important.

Two notes of interest: #1, the Greek Advisor says she won't lower total because it's not fair to the larger groups to not be able to take as many women as they can; and #2, there are 5 NPC sororities on campus.