Total and COBing

[KDMafia]

I wanted to start a topic just to get some feedback on how total relates to the prevalence of COB on a campus. This is consistently an issue on the campus I advise where they have gradually moved from an unstructured fall recruitment(formal is deferred) to a simple Open Bidding style for the fall semester.

The issue that seems to occur is concerns about formal numbers being influenced by Freshman women feeling that they can just go through in the fall and bid where they want (very untrue as generally only 1-2 sororities can take more than 2-3 women in the fall). Just recently the issue of lowering total has been discussed as a way to eliminate the need for COBing. Some chapters are resistant, especially those who struggle during formal and utilize cob but also those who are more successful and would rather focus on pumping up numbers of freshman involved, than lowering total.

I was just wondering where the line is for when it's time to lower total and also how realistic is it to expect now COBing on a campus where recruitment is fairly uncompetitive.