[ISUKappa]

At my school, most Recs were seen as "take a little closer look at this girl, she has some outstanding qualities and could be a very valuable member of your chapter." Of course, some were stronger than others: photo, resume, completed HQ rec form with personal letter--and some were weaker: barely completed HQ rec form. We even had certain times during work week where we would go through the recs to try and get to know the girls' names an faces so we would recognize them during recruitment and find out if they were really good matches for our chapter. Because they were written by alumnae or fellow actives at different schools, some former sisters from my chapter, they were taken very seriously. We would usually only get 1 or 2 recs per girl being recommended, every once in a while we would get 3 or maybe 4 (and you bet your sweet bippy we paid attention to those girls). Also, our Reference chair during Recruitment was also obligated to send a card out to every person who had submitted a Rec informing them which house the girl they recommended received a bid from.

And, in order to extend a bid to a PNM, she did have to have a rec. If she did not, a majority chapter vote would serve as one, and then we had to fill out some paperwork for HQ.

I was completely clueless about Recruitment and didn't even know I had a rec from my sister until my sophomore year.