"Taking someone else's spot"

[psusue]

Originally Posted by DGTess

A closer analogy to what I'm seeing is everyone on my street having an open house on the same day, and inviting everyone in the neighborhood. There are some who don't want to come to my house, or to my neighbor's house, but want to visit everyone else. Why should that person have to visit the homes s/he doesn't want to? Seems to me that rush is the same way. Just because there are 8 time slots for parties and someone gets invitations to 8 parties, why must she go to all 8? Wouldn't "mutual" selection dictate that both sides get to "cut"?

The thing is, the way the system works is some people put in a bid on some of the houses in the neighborhood, and so the sellers take them off the market because they are likely to be sold soon. Then, there are less houses on the market for sale, but the potential new homeowner still wants to 'live in that neighborhood' so she has to visit the houses that didn't overwhelm her with joy at first, because she still wants to live there. Note, she does not have to live in that neighborhood, and can go elsewhere at any time. But if she wants to buy a house in that community, she will follow their rules. It is to make sure all the houses get sold, in effect, and that more people can become homeowners.

Obviously this is not a perfect analogy, but you get the idea. It's to maximize placement. Often young women will think that they are above a certain chapter and because recruitment is such a stressful and first impressions based time that PNMs often make snap decisions not knowing all the facts. The reason RFM works the way it does it to give that young woman a little more time (and a little more information) on which to base that decision, because for whatever reason that PNM may have not wowed the sorority that she had originally favored. There can be mistakes made on both sides (bad first impressions, etc), but mostly, the system works. And now more women are getting placed in homes, so overall it seems to be working the way it was intended to, even if it isn't perfect.