COB question - Is this a thing?

[jessyallison]

I'm sorry if this is long, but I'm just not sure what kind of advice to give my daughter. She is a sophomore at a medium-size state school and had an unsuccessful virtual rush this semester. She is not sure what went wrong, but she was released from all the chapters before pref round. She's been really sad about the whole situation because with COVID it is so hard to meet people and most of her friends either did not come back to campus this semester or are involved with their sororities. I told her not to dwell on this too much because we would never really know what happened and maybe the zoom format was just not optimal for her.

When the school decided to have virtual recruitment, they cut it down from 4 rounds to 3. So the cuts were harsh the first round. She found out later that most of the sororities did not make quota. Her Rho Gamma advised her that some of the groups would be doing COB because they did not make quota.

She has a good friend in one of the sororities that was doing COB and she let both the friend and her Rho Gamma know that she was insterested in COB, but the sorority sent a message through the Rho Gamma that the could not offer her a bid because they cut her in the first round and their national sorority has a rule against offering bids to anyone that they have ever cut during a previous round or recruitment. She was dissappointed but said that she did not want to give up hope because some of the other sororities would also be doing COB.

Now there is another sorority where several of her very close friends are sisters which announced that they would be doing COB. Her friends told her that they let the sister in charge of recruitment know that she was interested and that her name has been put on a list. This was over a week ago. One of the friends asked her today if anyone has contacted her and she said no. The friend said that maybe they also had a national rule about not extending bids during COB to girls who were cut earlier from recruitment. She's not sure what to do now. With COVID there are no official COB events, everything seems to be through word of mouth. She doesn't know if she should try to reach out directly to the sister in charge of recruitment to find out if she could be considered for COB or just let it go.

I'm not super familiar with COB rules - I rushed back in the 90s at a small college up north and I know that things are different now, but I never heard of this rule with my sorority, which is Delta Phi Epsilon. Is this a thing? That if you are cut from recruitment, you can never be offered a bid even the following semester / year?

I'm also just sad for her. I've always told her and her friends to have faith in the system and that there is a place for everyone. She went in with a super open mind and a great attitude, but it just didn't work out for her. My sorority experience was wonderful and she always hoped to be in a sorority too.