Quote:
Originally Posted by HQWest
I think the question is in the age of internet - how can we encourage participation while not the perceived hurdles to finding a Panhellenic home? Make it easier for PNMs, chapters, and Alumnae groups?
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(emphasis mine)
Here's my question, just for philosophical purposes: are the hurdles actually "perceived"? We know that PNMs who read this information on the Auburn website are literally being misinformed as to the reality of the situation -- which is that it's a competitive campus where the sheer number of registered PNMs means that recs are all but required for a student who wants to make it through the first RFM-mandated round of no-brainer releases (GPA, etc).
If that hurdle is real, why should NPC take the position that the best option is to hide the truth? It can't be because they are afraid to discourage registration; registration is hitting record highs at the competitive campuses.
Is it because there is the need to maintain an elaborate facade the sorority recruitment is not in fact a process that still is heavily informed by network, family relationships, and hometown?
If NPC wants to make the experience better for first-generation Greeks, then the place to effect that outcome is not by encouraging the CPCs to dissemble. It's by strengthening the community education resources available to APHs, so that we can more effectively catch those 1st-gen girls during their senior year, and provide that fraternal education and preparation which makes all the difference between a great recruitment experience and a miserable one.
To tell a PNM in July that rush is this super-easy, "just show up and be yourself! the paperwork is extra credit!" situation, in an attempt to make the NPC community more inclusive when you know it's not true, is like locking the barn door after the horse has already been stolen. Because the "old girls network" of PNMs who already know all the secrets were finished on May 15 and are sitting pretty; meanwhile anyone who stumbles across the AU site right now is reading "you don't need recs to go through recruitment!!!!" as "you don't need recs
to have a successful recruitment"... and I think us alumnae can wearily admit that
it's simply not true, even if NPC will not.
Ignore my ranting if it's out of line. I've just spent so many weeks this summer talking to 1st-gen area girls and giving them the "real" story about their chosen SEC/Texas/Big 12 process -- and that their first experience with their College Panhellenic Council is a wishy-washy soft-pedaling of mistruth, doesn't feel very Panhellenic to me at all.
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