Anyone know about ICS?

[Firehouse]

I am not having any luck on the recruitment site. Does anyone know anything about Interactive Collegiate Solutions? They offer a service that registers people for rush and allows them to pay a fee. It's focused on sorority formal rush, but I'm interested if any fraternity systems have used it. Thanks.

[sunnydebs]

sure, we use it at Clemson. It stores transcripts, tracks legacies, and we use it to make our bid lists. It's a good program, and it makes rush a LOT easier but there are a few kinks in it....

[Firehouse]

Thank you for your response. Please, do you use it or the fraternities as well? What are the kinks?

[sunnydebs]

I have no idea if the fraternities use ICS too. The program has a few problems where someone will be dropped from a sorority and yet she will show up on the attendance sheet for the next day....so theoretically, you may end up with a pledge that you actually tried to drop once or twice. That's the biggest complaint about ICS that I've heard...

[AXO Alum]

Only NPC groups use ICS at the school where I advise. There are definitely "kinks" in it & every year we have to make a conference call to tech support during bid matching to figure something out. But, it also is up all year long & functions as a chapter management tool for each of the NPC groups - which is nice because its easy to update. The only issue there is that it continually shows you every member that was ever entered into the database. You have to run specific reports to find out which members are active, alum, etc. It would be nice if it kept a separate file for that, and only showed you current rosters as the default.

[TSteven]

I'm not familiar with ICS, but it sounds like it might only be useful for a very structured and very formal type of rush. You noted in the Recruitment Forum that IFC rush works well at your campus as it is, so I can't see any advantage to using ICS for your campus.

Now many IFCs do use some sort of an on-line registration for IFC rush. At The University of Kentucky (UK), it is free. And rushees are not required to sign up before rush if they don't want to. The main push for signup is before "formal" rush in the fall which can serve two basic purposes. To get information about potential rushees to the chapters (postal address, email address, GPA, high school, legacy status etc.), and to get information regarding the chapters to the rushees. (dues, fees, costs, GPA requirements, etc.). Outside of that, it doesn't track the rushees or provide most (guess here) of the services of ICS.

We didn't have an on-line signup when I was at UK, but my understanding is that this works well at UK. It is free and it allows those students interested in rush to learn more about all the chapters. It also allows all the chapters general information on the rushees. "Formal" rush is still conducted as before. Rushees don't have to sign up for rush and may attend as many open parties/events as they want during rush week. Some chapters may have invitational only events at the end of the week if they want. Bids may not be extended or accepted before the Thursday of rush week. And if a chapter is still wanting to fill out their pledge class, they do have a list to refer to with much of the basic information.

[Firehouse]

TSteven, are the chapters at Kentucky free to pledge anyone they want during the summer and in the time before formal rush? That is, are there any rules outside of the formal rush period?

[TSteven]

Originally Posted by Firehouse

TSteven, are the chapters at Kentucky free to pledge anyone they want during the summer and in the time before formal rush? That is, are there any rules outside of the formal rush period?

Well... sort of. In a "wink, wink" unofficial kind of way.

Chapters are allowed to rush over the summer. Most chapters have both open and by invite only events. Nonbinding (unofficial) bids (promises as it were) are often extended after/during these events over the summer. However, the bid is not binding until an "official" bid can be extended after school starts. Formal rush starts the Monday prior to the first day of classes - which is a Wednesday - with bids extend and accepted starting that Thursday.

As such, most chapters have a group of pledges in place prior to the start of the fall semester but can not "officially" extend the bids until bid day. And during formal rush, most chapters usually pick up even more guys as well. It is not unusual to pick up a friend (friends) of guys "bided" over the summer.

By the way, UK has two "formal" IFC rushes - one in the fall and one in the spring - with the fall rush being the major rush. The same restriction - no bid until that Thursday - is applicable for both.

And unless the rules have changed, these "promises" are not considered "dirty rushing". UK does not have quota or totals and encourages chapters to rush year round. The pledge must simply be an enrolled student to accepted the bid.

And one final thing, I believe a full time UK summer school student may accept a bid. He just most likely would not start his pledge training until the fall.

[Stef the Pef]

And sometimes the people chapters mean to keep and invite back accidentally get cut as well--that's what happened to me. I didn't have a full schedule and I was supposed to be invited back to KD early on in the week...

...that was remedied when I told my rho chi that the invite back didn't appear on my schedule, she ended up being a KD, and took the complaint back to her chapter, but it was really, really, really traumatic for a freshman chick going through rush to not be able to rely on the schedules that the computer system generated.

The weird thing is, KD appeared on my list of invites back for ranking and somewhere between ranking and scheduling, that just got lost. Weird.

--really, really not a huge fan of ICS...unless they've worked out the bugs