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I make sure when I do recs that I'm completely honest about how well I actually know the PNM and where my info is coming from. The chapter can do with that information what they will.
I think assessing character in 18 year olds is pretty complicated, and while I do my best to spare chapters any difficulties by providing as much information as I can, to take too much responsibility for a girl's future behavior would make writing RIFs really hard for me. It may be a peril of teaching high school, but I hear about enough good girls with no signs of problems who go kind of wild freshman year frequently enough to know that what I see of them and the general consensus of adults in a girl's hometown is going to miss the mark in a small percentage of cases.
I'm not saying this to make the argument that it doesn't matter anyway, so recommend strangers or even that you should write them in cases when your instincts tell you that you shouldn't, like Zillini mentions. I just mean that even when you do know people well at this age, knowing what they are likely to do in the future is complicated.
And, I understood that the reason that it was kind of okay to ask strangers for recs was because that person had resources to find other alumnae who would actually know the girl. But maybe I'm wrong.
I think that many of our active alumnae networks are too small to really do recs only for people we knew perfectly. We'd miss too many great girls. Sometimes we're better off offering the imperfect information that we do have to offer what assistance we can.
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