Defered Recruitment: Pros and Cons

[TSteven]

Originally Posted by ufdale

What I don't like about the way that my school does rush is that it only happens once a year. If you miss out on fall rush, there is no spring rush to go to.

I've wondered this as well. Do any campuses do this - a fall and spring recruitment? Other than COB/COR that is.

Why not have some sort of formal spring recruitment? Basically scaled down and perhaps less structured. All NPC rules and regulations would apply. Girls would still have to sign up and there would be quotas etc. If Polly Pledge signed her fall bid card and drops, she still has to wait a calendar year until the fall to rush again.

Basically, the women that want to rush (join) in the fall can do so and the women that want to wait until the spring to rush can do so.

[ufdale]

I think most of the other campuses have both spring and fall, just spring is more informal. My campus gets enough girls in the fall class that most of the chapters don't need to do spring.

[Drolefille]

Millikin University in Decatur does a structured informal rush for sophomores and up in the fall and formal rush in the spring. Freshmen must wait til spring. I don't think many chapters want to go through the stress of formal recruitment twice a year.

My chapter COB'd every year and it was fine. One year we did more of an invitational informal (reserved a room in a restaurant, that sort of thing) but our COBing went better if it was just... informal.

[kiteflyerzl]

I am recruitment advisor at a school that decided to move recruitment this year from August to NOVEMBER OVER FALL BREAK. It is a huge mess! Dirty rushing is rampant. The women in my chapter are drowning between the school work (mid terms) and trying to prepare for Recruitment. I think it has been bad for chapter morale (no time spent bonding at the beginning of the semester over Recruitment prep like usual and no new pledge class (other than a small COB group of upperclassmen) to get excited about. Every fall we have a Greek event around the beginning of basketball season that includes skits put on by the new members. The skits for the sororities were cancelled this year because we don't have new member classes yet. We can't get midterm grades (not all professors provide them) so we could end up taking a whole class of women who are failing out of college despite the fact that they did well in high school.

It's also terribly hard on advisors like myself who have children in school. I'm trying to juggle work, advising, family life, soccer practice, homework, etc.

Say a prayer or just think positive thoughts for us. Recruitment starts Saturday morning and runs for 4 straight days - with Preference AND Bid Day on the last day.

I need a drink...

[violetpretty]

My school does a deferred formal recruitment that starts the weekend after spring classes start. It's not too hard to juggle the work, because classes just started, so you're not too bogged down. Every chapter does informal recruitment in the fall. The only way a freshman can join in the fall is if she has 12 credits (usually AP credits). I guess the reasoning is that a freshman who has earned AP credits is more likely to not fail out of school than a random freshman who wants to pledge. I can't say that there's too much dirty rushing, at least not with the chapters that we "compete" with. Deferred recruitment is not without its downsides, but I think the pros outweigh the cons.

[33girl]

Originally Posted by kiteflyerzl

Recruitment starts Saturday morning and runs for 4 straight days - with Preference AND Bid Day on the last day.

Now see, this is stupid.

If you're going to have rush while classes are going on, it should be spread out - over a week AT LEAST.

Not to mention that judging by your post, they just made this decision like 2.5 seconds before the fact and the sororities didn't have time to reschedule or plan properly.

This is the kind of thing that pisses me off because it makes deferred rush look so terrible!! If it's done right, it's NOT this horrid.

But as far as worrying about getting a pledge class filled with "women failing out of college despite the fact they did well in high school" - couldn't that happen just as easily, if not more easily, when you pledge women who haven't even had a college class yet? At least this way, you might avoid bidding someone who's realized that either her major or the college isn't for her and she needs to transfer or make other changes, academic wise.

[KSUViolet06]

Our recruitment is *somewhat* deferred. It isn't before classes start, but it's not super late either. It's usually the first 2 weekends of September. I think that's a good time for it. It gives freshmen time to adjust and get used to their classes and such. It's good for the members because there isn't really a ton of homework in our classes yet and we can spend alot more time preparing. There also isn't much room for "dirty rushing" and the PNMs don't hear too many rumors because school really has just started.

I think a problem with having rush BEFORE classes start, is that PNMs join, then start classes. They could get overwhelmed with class and depledge. With having rush during school, girls get a realistic picture of how it is to balance sorority and school because they already have had to go to recruitment events and school too.

Then there are issues with having recruitment later in the semester. Last year, Panhellenic had to move recruitment to October because of a conflict with University Scheduling. It was a mess for us. October is MIDTERM TIME for everyone. We were all up to our necks in homework and tests. Day 3 of recruitment is on a Friday afternoon, and every sorority had at least 10 or so women missing from one of their rounds because they had midterms in their night classes!