Quota Additions at Super Competitive Schools

[Barbie's_Rush]

I had this response all typed out on the previous thread and presto! It came back as locked when I went to post. I think it's important to help both PNMs at super competitive schools as well as GC members who don't have personal experience with those types of recruitments to see the flip side of RFM in those situations.

Overall, I think the system works or at least certainly works much better than it did in previous eras. I do think that one of the situations where it doesn't always work so well is on those old established campuses like mine where the pecking system has been in effect for generations. There's one chapter that has always struggled, and before RFM would hand out maybe a third of the bids the other chapters could. But at least most of those bids were accepted and were girls who were truly interested in Awkward Alpha. They COBed but remained a significantly smaller chapter.

Now with RFM, that same chapter will continue to appear on the invite lists of PNMs who would rather die a thousand deaths than pledge Awkward Alpha. It appears round after round and once pref comes around, the PNMs have invites to Popular Pi, Super Sigma and Awkward Alpha. They are told they have to attend the Awkward Alpha party but really don't believe they could ever get a bid from them because they have the two "good" options left. And when they go to rank, they are pressured to rank all three due to the dangling carrot of QAs and guaranteed placement. I think PNMs are generally led to assume that listing all chapters will increase their odds with the chapters they want but not the one they don't. (We have certainly seen many cases of this on GC too!)

So on bid day Awkward Alpha now makes quota plus with a bunch of new members who would rather not be Greek than commit social suicide by joining that chapter. Panhellenic and the NPC can pat themselves on the back for a job well done. EVERYONE MADE QUOTA! But what happens behind the scenes and is never mentioned is that only half of those new members show up to bid day, and after a few weeks of seeing what it really means to be an Awkward Alpha in the university caste system, only half of those who show up to bid day end up sticking it out until initiation. So Awkward Alpha ends up with the same (and sometimes even fewer) number of new members as they would have using the old system plus those new members get to deal with a bunch of unhappy pledge sisters with bad attitudes and the constant news of who has dropped this week. Awkward Alpha continues to COB now, and does better with that as they always did before RFM, but always remains well below total.

I know it's a difficult concept for those at schools that have more fluid "caste systems" where a few good or bad classes can make a huge difference in the hiearchy. Honestly, I wish it were a matter of Awkward Alpha getting a few classes full of Perfect Pollys who stuck it out so they could no longer be that house, but when you are dealing with big monolithic systems, it's naive to believe that we can manipulate social change with a process.

I do think RFM really does help the "mid" to "upper lower" tiered chapters attract and retain members. These chapters get a second chance to impress women who would have dropped them earlier in recruitment before RFM came to be. But every time recruitment results are posted here and I see "OMG YAY ICKY IOTA GOT ELEVENTY BAJILLION IN QUOTA ADDITIONS AT SEC SUPER SCHOOL! YAY RFM!" I sort of cringe because I know what is also going on behind those numbers.

I don't know if there is a solution. Even if you impress upon the PNMs that they really really really can get a bid from the chapter they don't want if they list them on their pref card, they're still only going to believe they will get those other chapters. Because they are certain that anyone can see they're Popular Pi and Super Sigma material and the fact that they had to attend that Awkward Alpha party was only a fluke. They only see and hear what they want to believe. It's the human condition.