Attitude of Students @ Your School Toward Sorority Rush

[KSUViolet06]

Question, what attitude do students @ your school have toward sorority recruitment?

Example: At ABC University, being Greek is like being a celebrity. When young women pledge, they are told to always put their best face on b/c all the other young women are watching them and looking up to them as goddesses of all that is cool. Women clammor over themselves to speak to Greeks in their classes and spend all summer preparing for the Super Bowl that is fall recruitment.

OR

At XYZ College- Greeks are the scum of the Earth. Other young women wouldn't rush if their lives depended on it b/c being Greek basically= being the stereotypical, pretty, snotty, spoiled brat. Students would feel a whole lot better if Greeks were eradicated from campus.

Which attitude do the students on your campus mostly have? Is it a mixture of both? I hope this makes sense

[KSUViolet06]

Guess I'll post my answer to the question. If you poll 10 women on their perception of greek women and how they feel about rush here @ Kent, I think you'll get a 50/50. Half of them think it's just the dumbest thing they've ever heard in life.

The other half really admire us and what we do. Alot of these women are afraid to rush b/c "they might not get picked". They aren't really familiar with how laid back rush really is here and I wish they were. Here, everyone has a good shot @ being Greek b/c of numerous COB activities and low formal rush #'s.

[Sister Havana]

Rush at IU, at least sorority rush, is huge and hypercompetitive. Around 1800 girls go through every year and less than half of those get bids.

[Glitter650]

Originally posted by Sister Havana
Rush at IU, at least sorority rush, is huge and hypercompetitive. Around 1800 girls go through every year and less than half of those get bids.

Seems like it's time for expansion, yes ?? that's really sad only half get bid... are people dropping themselves after certain houses drop them or are they not matching ?


My school it's pretty much the "you're paying for your friends, you do nothing but party, I'm going to get hazed" attitude. Tables are set up in the quad at the beginning of every semester and we hand out flyers about open house and take sign ups for rush... and half the girls that walk by give us dirty looks, some one actually said F^*( no I'm not taking your flyer" to a girl the other day, but much more typical response is "I'm not interested" or "Ummm, no" with a look of disdain.

[Tom Earp]

Glitter, that still is the same old statement from many of the Not So Greek Campi. Buying your Friends. How sad that these people have no idea what being a Member of a GLO is really like.:

If that is true, then I am doing something wrong for 40 years(

Greeks seem to go through periods of ups and downs especially at Mid and small size Schools. A lot has to do with the atmosphere of the College itself.

It seems like more Schools are having a reversal in theory from Shorter College in Rome Ga. all locals, to promoting Nationals. Many larger schools building Greek Housing.

We can only hope I gues!

[IvySpice]

My school is a sub-variant of the second group. Sororities are unrecognized and unhoused, so many students are only dimly aware that they exist. If a Greek's affiliation comes up in conversation with a non-Greek, she'll almost apoligize for it ("Yeah, I'm in Delta Gamma -- it's not really like a sorority though, we mostly do charity fundraisers and stuff.") Most women wouldn't rush if their lives depended on it because sororities are seen as anti-feminist, absurdly backwards, and generally counter to what the university is about. The culture of the school is that in your free time you ought to be writing speeches for Hillary Clinton or composing symphonies or starting up a dot-com, not (shocked, contemptuous stare) rushing a sorority.

[aephi alum]

It runs the gamut. Some women really admire the sororities - they're usually the ones who end up rushing, naturally. Others could take it or leave it - they'll go to charity fundraisers etc., but aren't interested in joining a sorority themselves because they're more interested in other clubs and activities. A few are bitterly anti-sorority... one year a few people stationed themselves at a point where the recruitment groups had to walk by, and they stood there and went "moooo... moooo..."

[aephi alum]

Originally posted by Glitter650
Seems like it's time for expansion, yes ?? that's really sad only half get bid... are people dropping themselves after certain houses drop them or are they not matching ?

I think the story with IU is that they are on a November-January recruitment schedule. When the PNMs go through round 1 in November, the freshmen have no grades and no GPA yet. They finish the semester and get their grades, and then the sororities will cut anyone who doesn't meet their GPA requirements. If a PNM's GPA is very low, she will be dropped from recruitment entirely. At most schools, where recruitment takes place during a period of a few days, PNMs will know their GPA going in, and if it's too low they just won't register in the first place.

[Tom Earp]

aephi alum, is that a statement for defered rush?

I am used to Fall Recruitment where I have been.

Sometimes I think that would be good, but at others not so sure?

Guess it would depend on the school and the Greek System.

[RUASTgrrl]

RU is a pretty small school, and when I was there the formal recruitment numbers were going down, I think in 2002 only like 180 women even went through. We had 7 orgs and total was somewhere like 60 or 70. For the number of women we had we were also very visible. People wore letters everyday (I must have had about 100 sets when I passed), then I would go next door to VA Tech and no one wore letters unless there was some event.

[ADPiAkron]

Hmmmm....I am not to sure that many girls know about recruitment at The University of Akron. If you refer to ADPiAkron's and Hannahgirl's recruitment thread on recruitment stories you can see that only 60 girls (at a school with 19,000 undergrads) have signed up!

[nauadpi]

Northern Arizona University is a pretty anti-greek campus... about 5% of the women are greek, and the other 95% would never consider going greek... Much of this has to do with stereotypes, and the fact that the university does not greatly back greek life...

[Sister Havana]

Originally posted by aephi alum
I think the story with IU is that they are on a November-January recruitment schedule. When the PNMs go through round 1 in November, the freshmen have no grades and no GPA yet. They finish the semester and get their grades, and then the sororities will cut anyone who doesn't meet their GPA requirements. If a PNM's GPA is very low, she will be dropped from recruitment entirely. At most schools, where recruitment takes place during a period of a few days, PNMs will know their GPA going in, and if it's too low they just won't register in the first place.

That is a big part of it. But there are also a lot of women who drop out because they aren't comfortable with the houses they're left with (that was me) and still others who don't match. Making it to pref night is no guarantee that you'll get a bid, just because of sheer numbers. (especially true if you're a sophomore, and if you're a junior or above, forget it...I think all the houses have at least a 2-3 year live-in rule and I don't think any of them take juniors or above.)

I agree IU desperately needs to expand. There are 19 sororities and quota is generally between 45-50. So there are about 855-950 bids to be given per year. The problem, from what I understand, is that IU will not let a new sorority come to campus without having a plan for a house, and there just isn't much, if any, available land for houses on campus these days. (Someone from IU can tell me if I have this wrong!) There are some vacant houses, since a few chapters have been closed, but those houses are either still owned by the fraternity (with plans to recolonize) or are sold to the University or to other organizations. (The Alpha Sig house was sold recently to a Christian group, the Pike house is being sold...I think to IU but I could be wrong. The old AOPi house was sold to IU and now houses the School of Informatics.)

This doesn't seem to be a problem for the fraternities, though. Several have colonized or recolonized recently and are unhoused.

[aephi alum]

Originally posted by Tom Earp
aephi alum, is that a statement for defered rush?

I am used to Fall Recruitment where I have been.

Nope. I'm used to fall recruitment too, and I prefer it. Back in the day, we had immediate fall formal recruitment in August, and for first-semester freshmen we (all the sororities) based our GPA cuts on the PNMs' high school GPAs.

Good academic performance in high school doesn't necessarily mean good academic performance in college. We addressed this by setting the bar higher for high school GPAs. IU has addressed this by having what is essentially a deferred recruitment, with the difference being that the first round takes place before the PNMs have their grades - so the PNMs can't self-select and say "I don't have the minimum GPA for any of the sororities, so I'm going to skip rush and work on bringing up my GPA."

[aephi alum]

Originally posted by Sister Havana
I agree IU desperately needs to expand. There are 19 sororities and quota is generally between 45-50. So there are about 855-950 bids to be given per year. The problem, from what I understand, is that IU will not let a new sorority come to campus without having a plan for a house, and there just isn't much, if any, available land for houses on campus these days. (Someone from IU can tell me if I have this wrong!) There are some vacant houses, since a few chapters have been closed, but those houses are either still owned by the fraternity (with plans to recolonize) or are sold to the University or to other organizations.

Ah... got it.

Is it possible for a colonizing sorority to arrange to rent a house? e.g. It's 2004 and sorority ABC wants to colonize. Fraternity XYZ has a closed chapter, owns that chapter's house, and is planning to recolonize, but not until 2007. ABC rents the house for 3 years while looking for their own house to buy and saving up for a down payment. By 2007 ABC has found a house and they move in, and XYZ gets their house back as a house for their new colony. It would get expensive for ABC, though.