Accepting Bid as a contract

[honeychile]

Originally Posted by carnation

What Alphagamuga said! Because if you're going to force women to go to prefs they never wanted to go to, it's horrible to then penalize them for SIPing. It can also hurt sororities.

I recall a couple of years ago hearing about a sorority that had 2 full pref parties and didn't get one new member from them. Why? Because apparently, no one wanted to be there but was forced by Panhellenic to go as their second pref party. Girls who were in-house legacies or otherwise almost sure things to get a bid elsewhere were sitting there, as I'm told, with gritted teeth just counting the minutes until they could be out. Most of the members were aware of it and were in tears.

Then the next day when the bid lists came out and the sorority had no pledges, they were torn up again because some of them had been so sure that PNMs were there because they really liked them. The girls who told me about this said that of all the girls they knew at that pref, every one SIPed another sorority.

With a few exceptions, this could have been my chapter in the mid 90's. The chapter was small, had gone through internal turmoil, and were exhausted in rectifying it. By the time Recruitment started, they were practically cross-eyed with the lack of sleep, and it showed. There were about 20 women at each of the Pref Parties (huge, for our campus), and few seemed happy to be there.

On Bid Night, one PNM who didn't realize that putting a GLO on her Bid Card obligated her to pledge was matched with us - but only because the Panhellenic Advisor told us to put every PNM on our Bid List! I can still hear the arguing of the Panhel Advisor and our TCC, over trying to make that poor woman pledge where she obviously did NOT want to be - arguing with her sobbing in the background!

The only good it did was to solidify the Chapter, and they decided to become good at COR. And trust me, they are fantastic! This summer, they became a Diamond Four Point Chapter AND won our Achievement Award!
Yet, I would never "cheapen" our bid like that again.