PinkBabygirl10's Informal Sorority Recruitment Thread

[pinkyphimu]

congratulations!! i have to admit the process was a bit confusing to me, but i am glad that it had a happy ending for you and your friends!

[amanda6035]

Originally Posted by pinkyphimu

congratulations!! i have to admit the process was a bit confusing to me...

I agree - her informal experience sounds way way similar to our formal process. Informal for us if just constant COR/COB events. Having actual parties to go to, and signing a bid card sounds like a formal process. With us, we COR, if we like a girl we just extend a bid. There's no signing of cards to go along with it.

[amanda6035]

Originally Posted by PinkBabygirl10

Yes, our informal recruitment process is pretty much structured just like our formal recruitment in the fall. The only differences are: you only attend the parties you would like to attend (in the fall, you are required to keep going to all 8, until cuts are made), there are no cuts (you must be invited back to sororities after the first night in the fall), you can get bids from more than one sorority (in the fall you will only receive one bid), and there are usually less girls being taken in the spring pledge classes.

I'm probably gonna step on some toes with this comment, but I think every girl should get as many bids as chapters want her - just like your informal process. I think it's stupid to do bid matching. If 4 sororities want that girl - then all 4 should give her a bid - then she should be able to accept the one she wants. I think it's ridiculous that a girl should have to make an emotional decision and rank the sororities right after preference and go from there. SOmetimes you just need to sleep on it. ANd I realize that some people are going to say that friends and sorority members would probably try to continue to "dirty rush" that PNM up until bid day morning....but if you can do it during informal, then why does formal HAVE to be so structured?

Yes, I know, it's a campus thing. But still. As we all know, there are alot of broken hearts due to mismatching and technicalities, this that and the other and I think multiple bids and the PNM making the decision on the one she wanted, based on the sororities who also wanted her would be a much better solution.

[epchick]

Originally Posted by amanda6035

I'm probably gonna step on some toes with this comment, but I think every girl should get as many bids as chapters want her - just like your informal process. I think it's stupid to do bid matching. If 4 sororities want that girl - then all 4 should give her a bid - then she should be able to accept the one she wants. I think it's ridiculous that a girl should have to make an emotional decision and rank the sororities right after preference and go from there. SOmetimes you just need to sleep on it. ANd I realize that some people are going to say that friends and sorority members would probably try to continue to "dirty rush" that PNM up until bid day morning....but if you can do it during informal, then why does formal HAVE to be so structured?

This is how formal recruitment is at my old school. You pretty much went to all the days (the only cuts that happened were right before prefs), and for bid day, you'd get bids from all the chapters that wanted to give you a bid, and you got to choose which one you wanted to accept.

[AGDee]

If you have a formal structured recruitment, then having every chapter offer bids to everybody they want would be chaos. If there are 15 sororities and 1200 PNMs, then it's possible that all 15 could offer bids to a couple hundred women. You could have one chapter getting 100 PNMs and another chapter getting 300 while others could end up with 20 or 30. You have no way of knowing who is really interested in your chapter because none of the rounds are invitational and PNMs can attend as many as they want. You would have to do away with the Total/Quota system completely because how would you determine quota or make sure that chapters only took quota?

At smaller colleges/universities, this can work, but not at the larger ones. That is why NPC now has 4 different options available, with guidelines for each College Panhellenic to determine, with guidance from the NPC area advisor. At a campus with two or three groups where quota is typically less than 10, then an informal recruitment can work very well. There is flexibility with all this.

[FuzzieAlum]

I don't know whether it would be better or not, but if the guys manage to do rush that way at huge schools, surely we could too?

[Drolefille]

Part of the reasoning is that this will keep as many chapters healthy as possible. The IFC fraternities don't really seem to be interested in that. It is beneficial for sorority life in general if as many chapters as possible meet quota. There's a larger number of fraternities and, at least from what I've seen, a much greater mobility in the number of chapters on campus. Guys don't rush all of the chapters, just the ones they're interested in. This isn't in the benefit of all the chapters (in the NPC's opinion).

*shrug* it's kind of like saying, why don't we recruit like the D9? Because we don't.

[33girl]

Originally Posted by FuzzieAlum

I don't know whether it would be better or not, but if the guys manage to do rush that way at huge schools, surely we could too?

The difference is that most of the guys who rush don't go to every single fraternity. (I'm envisioning the guy at Penn State with 60 bids.)

[PhoenixAzul]

See, I don't think this would work even on a small campus like mine. I think that chapters would bid like crazy, and because girls are girls, they'd take a bid to a sorority that probably isn't their best fit, because it is "one of the best" (see also: Duke thread and Core Four). Then again, the institution of a ceiling would help as well. Dunno...maybe im just stuck in the "this is the way its been done" mode?