Quota, Limit, and the Single Bid System

[PSK480]

Could someone knowledgeable in this subject please explain to me exactly that quota and limit are. I'm sure I am not as knowledgable about it as others and get some things wrong.

Also, why do sororities go with a single bid system. I think that some of the problems that I've seen in the sororities around here with sisters totally dispising others sisters and hating them from the date of their induction could be ended if the sororities would go to a two bid system like most of the fraternities have. Please discuss this freely, my feelings are not hurt easily and I don't get insulted easily either.

[FuzzieAlum]

Do a search.

[valkyrie]

Originally posted by FuzzieAlum
Do a search.

Rrrrrrrrooooowwwwwrrrrrr.

Maybe pointing out a link to where this has been discussed before would be more helpful.

[33girl]

Here is a good post from aephialum that explains it quickly:

Total is a cap on membership that is applied to all sororities on a given campus, not just one. It's set by the campus Panhellenic, and reevaluated as necessary. (So if there are a lot of women interested in joining a sorority over a couple of years, Panhel may raise total, or may invite a new sorority to colonize.)

Total isn't used during formal rush. Instead, quota is used (# women attending pref parties / # of sororities, typically). This is why sororities can be over total - if total is 80 and quota is usually around 30, you could potentially have a chapter with 120 members.

Total becomes important during informal/COB rush. A chapter at or over total can't hold informal rush. A chapter below total can hold rush, but can only extend bids until they reach total. This allows smaller chapters to grow.

In neither case are bid lists sorted alphabetically, so Ms. W. wouldn't be left out in the cold simply because of her name.

Clarion's total (limit) is 60.

I will put in my 2.5 cents that we need to reduce total by at least 5 to 55, and 50 would be even better. Nationals pressure the groups to be at total, even if total isn't realistic, so they end up taking people they'd probably rather not. I mean Pitt's total is the same as ours - last I checked, Clarion has a few less students than Pitt.

[FuzzieAlum]

Cranky? You bet! In another thread, he posted:

Quota, limit, and a single bid system are assinine. But, that a personal rant for another thread.

If I felt he was sincerely looking for information for any other reason than to just rip into the system, I would have been more helpful. I'm getting sick of men complaining about our system, especially ones who haven't bothered to take the time to understand it first.

[sugar and spice]

Both of these topics have been discussed to death in the rush forum . . . check it out and see what you find.

As for the quota/single bid system, most sorority women agree that it works better for us than IFC rush would work, and it isn't going to change anytime soon. Men and women don't function the same way and the way men rush wouldn't work for women. But find one of the posts already about this subject, pull it back up and post there if you want to discuss it again.


Here are some places to start:

http://forums.greekchat.com/gcforums...ht=quota+total

http://forums.greekchat.com/gcforums...ht=quota+total

I think I finally understand it now. Yay!

[aopinthesky]

>>>I'm getting sick of men complaining about our system, especially ones who haven't bothered to take the time to understand it first.<<<

Amen, and thankyou Fuzzie.

[33girl]

In Ziggy's defense, rush is pretty @#$%ed up at our school, and for years we had an advisor who didn't know what she was doing (and her screwups helped the larger groups, not the smaller ones). So from his vantage point, it does look like a mess.

[madmax]

Originally posted by FuzzieAlum
Cranky? You bet! In another thread, he posted:



If I felt he was sincerely looking for information for any other reason than to just rip into the system, I would have been more helpful. I'm getting sick of men complaining about our system, especially ones who haven't bothered to take the time to understand it first.

Why so cranky? About 98% of the 2000 posts on total/quota are from women who understand and don't understand total/quota.

Nobody answered PSK's first question. "Also, why do sororities go with a single bid system. " What is the purpose of only 1 bid?

I am sure I will get the standard answer that if you have more than 1 bid and did away with total and quota, then the big sororities will get bigger and the small sororities will get smaller and die out. I dont buy it because it's already that way. Most sororities go under because of numbers, while fraternities go under because of risk management issues. I think there is a thread titled "small chapter syndrome" or something like that, that talks about how there is such an emphasis on totol, but PNMs won't pledge a small chapter that isn't at total, so things backfire.

Look at what happens when PNMs dont get matched with their first choice. Some of them drop out of rush. If sororities changed total, quota, bid matching then the PNMs woudn't be as prone to drop out. Some of the PNMs will pledge the bigger sororities but some of them will pledge the smaller sororities. Both will benefit.

[sugar and spice]

Nobody answered his question because it's been discussed ad nauseum in the rush forum. Try the first thread that I linked above, for starters.

If you want, though, I'll give it a shot. This is a rather simplistic example:

Let's say there's a campus with two sororities. One has 75 girls, the other has 50 girls. The larger is invariably looked on as the "better sorority." Let's say that quota is at 20, and there are forty girls rushing. About thirty of them are seen as "desirable." With the quota system, the larger sorority will probably get 20 desirable girls and the smaller will get 10 desirable girls and 10 "leftovers." Of course, some will drop out because they didn't get their first choice, but the majority will stay because they want to be a part of the Greek system and their pledge class isn't completely hopeless. Things are more even between the two sororities and the smaller group has hope that they can turn things around. Without the quota system, the larger sorority will get 30 desirable girls and the smaller will get 10 "leftovers." Most of those ten will drop out because they don't want to be a part of a sorority that only gets the girls that the first sorority can't get. If this happens year after year, the smaller group will eventually die out.

Of course that doesn't take into account a lot of details, such as the fact that not every sorority wants the exact same type of girl. But you get the point.

Yes, the smaller groups do die out as it is . . . but it takes a lot longer than it would if there was no quota system. With quota, it takes years for a sorority to die off. Without quota, it could happen in as few as two or three years. And usually the extra years given in the quota system provides the sorority with a chance to turn itself around and work its numbers back up. This happens more often than you'd think. If we didn't have quota, that would be infinitely harder.

Furthermore, sororities ONLY use the single bid system during formal rush. They don't use it during informal rush . . . and informal rush has its own set of problems. Switching to a multiple-bid system will not fix them.

And I fail to see how "sororities with sisters totally despising others sisters and hating them from the date of their induction" relates to the single-bid system -- that sounds like a problem within individual sororities, not a result of the single-bid system. There are plenty of campuses that use the single-bid system where this is not a problem.

[sugar and spice]

Oh, and as for your point that most fraternities go under because of risk management violations while most sororities go under for numbers -- that's because the numbers game is played in an infinitely different way with sororities than it is with fraternities. We have fraternities on my campus that have less than ten members and they're still operating as fraternities. But if a sorority here went under 50 girls, that would be grounds for nationals to pull its charter.

You can't compare the two because they are based on two different systems.

[MSKKG]

It seems to me that the women's groups kind of do offer more than one bid. If a PNM goes to 2 or 3 pref parties and they all put her at the top of their bid list, she basically got 2 or 3 bids (granted, she only knows about 1 of them the next day!). The ball is in the PNM's court after the parties--she ranks her choices. It's enough to boggle one's mind to see how this system works, but for the most part, it does.

[Peaches-n-Cream]

Originally posted by MSKKG
It seems to me that the women's groups kind of do offer more than one bid. If a PNM goes to 2 or 3 pref parties and they all put her at the top of their bid list, she basically got 2 or 3 bids (granted, she only knows about 1 of them the next day!). The ball is in the PNM's court after the parties--she ranks her choices. It's enough to boggle one's mind to see how this system works, but for the most part, it does.

This is a good point. There were always quite a few young women who were on multiple first lists. These women had their choice of sorority.

[FuzzieAlum]

Take a look at the thread "normal women represent." Would guys ever have a thread like that? "Man, I'm so sick of seeing buff guys in magazines. I want those of us with beer guts to stand up loud and proud! I'm tired of being told I'm overweight." "Hey, there's nothing wrong with being buff, as long as you're not an exercuse bulimic." "Dude, I work hard to be buff. Don't bring me down." "I've seen pics of you, and you are not overweight. Be proud of your body!"

The point is that men and women, in general, think pretty differently. Women are more concerned with meeting some "standard" that is pretty hard to reach in reality. We have to be ultra-skinny, and we have to be in the "right" sorority. Lots of women on here have said, "I wasn't sure about my bid from XYZ, because they weren't a top house on campus." How many men say that? Are there a lot of men crying on bid day because Beta didn't give them a bid?

What the quota system believes is that if the women's system were run like the men's system, the imbalances in chapter size would be much, much larger than they are on the IFC side. And they would grow worse over time instead of remaining relatively constant. You'd have a 300-woman house and a 10-woman house. Of course, there's no way to test that theory short of actually changing the system.

That's not to say I don't have any criticisms of the system myself, but it's not so ludicrous as some people think it to be.