Formal w/ 5 Sororities

[DolphinChicaDDD]

We colonized on campus last semester so we didn't particiapte in Formal. Now, I sit on Panhel, and we need to start thinking about formal (its in Jan). But we're having major issues thinking about how to run formal w/ 5 sororities. Everyone wants to keep rush Monday- Thur, with Thur as pref night.
For those of you w/ 5 sororities (or pretty much anyone with uneven number groups) How do you handle formal on your campus??
HELP!!!

[aephi alum]

Here's what we did back in the day:

- PNMs had Friday evening and Saturday to visit all 5 sororities.
- Sororities issued their first round of invitations.
- PNMs had to cut down to 4 if invited by all 5 sororities.
- PNMs had Saturday night and Sunday to visit those 4.
- If going back to 4 sororities, PNMs had to cut one by Sunday afternoon.
- PNMs returned to each of the 3 remaining sororities Sunday evening.
- Sororities issued their second round of invitations (for pref).
- PNMs could accept 2 pref invites. Pref was Monday night.
- Bid day was Tuesday.

They do something similar now, but they've gone to deferred rush, so rush is held over two weekends.

Maybe something like this would work for you?

[shadokat]

I just finished up recruitment with a group that has five sororities on campus. They did recruitment in 4 days as well. Tuesday night was round one, and all women went to all five sororities for half hour parties. Then, they cut to 3, and Wednesday, they went to three 45 minute parties. Then, they cut to 2, and on Thursday they went to 2 one hour pref parties. Bid matching was friday morning at 8 am and bids were distributed at 3 pm.

[PenguinTrax]

Check your NPC manual, they have suggested schedules for Recruitment events based on # of sororities on campus.

For example, Schedule for campus with 4 NPC groups:

Round 1 - First Day
Orientation Meeting
Women div. into 4 groups
4 open houses, 30 min each

Round 2 - Second Day
4 invitational events of 30 min each

Round 3 - Third Day
3 invitational events of 45 min each

Round 4 - Fourth Day
2 Preference Events of one hour each
Women sign Membership Recruitment Acceptances Immediately after last event.

For a 7 member campus

Day 1 - Orientation, 7 open houses of 30 min each

Day 2 - 5 invitationals of 30 min each

Day 3 - 3 invitationals for 45 min each

Day 4 - 2 pref events of 1 hour each, sign cards

Either schedule would work for you, keeping in mind that on day 2, that is the maximum number that any one girl can attend, but you can make it possible for a PNM to not have to accept an invite.

[AZ-AlphaXi]

New Mexico State had 5 NPC groups this past fall for formal
recruitment. Here's a link to their schedule.

http://www.nmsu.edu/~gogreek/pha/rush.html#anchor562455


They ran formal recruitment Thurs. thru Sunday with pref. Sunday afternoon. Bid matching and distribution were on Sunday evening.

[XOcrlstln]

My campus has 6 sororities, and every year we've done it a little different. The number of days it involves is consistent, but the timing is what has varied. I think this year's was the best so far.

Sat - visit all 6
Sun - visit 5
Mon - day off (this allows the org to get homework done, decorate, and practice for the skit, and allows the pnms to get homework done/not feel overwhelmed)
Tues - Skit night w/ 4 sororities
Wed - day off to practice for pref, do homework
Thur - pref night with 2 sororities
Fri - Bid Day!!

This was a much better use of time it seemed to me. It allowed the active members more time in between the bigger parties to decorate, and also allowed the pnms to not feel they had to spend the ENTIRE week with us.

I know from my experience, this was a much less stressful week. Instead of having to stay up ALL night tearing down decorations from one party, and setting up for the next part, we were only there for an hour or two. We then had the whole next day to finish up the decorations.

Hope your recruitment goes well!
~C

[SmartBlondeGPhB]

We have 5 on the campus I support (Univ of Puget Sound) and here is what we've done in the past (Jan recruitment - starts MLK weekend).

1st round Sunday
2nd round Monday (I think PNM's can only be cut after round 1 for grades)
3rd round friday evening (I think they can go to 3 - but I might be wrong).
Prefs on Saturday (they go to 2).
Bid day Sunday

Now, I've heard they are changing it for this next year but I didn't understand it when it was explained to me. PiPhiERDoc will know all of the details of how they have run it and will be running it.

[breathesgelatin]

We follow the schedule that PnguinTrx describes.

[AXO_MOM_3]

We have five sororities and here is a basic schedule: (There are variations from year to year, but most of it pretty much remains the same)

Tuesday - Convocation - Meet PX's, groups, hear about finances
Wednesday - Round 1 (Girls attend all five houses)
Thursday - Round 2 - Philanthropy (First invitational - girls can attend five houses)
Friday - Round 3 - Skit nite (Girls attend 3 parties)
Saturday - Round 4 - Pref night (Girls attend two parties)
Sunday - Bid day!

There has been recent talk of possibly combining Rounds 1 and 2 to save time and shorten the rush. Those of you have just three rounds - what do you think of it? I'm just curious...

[polarpi]

My university had eight sororities when I was going through FR, but the day before it began, one of the sororities withdrew from FR, and eventually closed. So starting the year after I joined, our schedule looks something like this:

Tuesday:
7 invitational rounds, 30 minutes each.

Wednesday (1st night of Round 2)
3 invitational rounds, 40 minutes each

Thursday (2nd night of Round 2)
3 invitational rounds, 40 minutes each

Friday:
4 invitational rounds, 45 minutes each

Saturday:
2 invitaitonal rounds, 50 minutes each

** If my lengths of rounds are incorrect, please correct me. The year I went through, we just had a one round break when we would have visited the chapter who had withdrawn from FR (and when there's almost 100 women going through recruitment and you only have ONE bathroom stall to use the entire time, you appreciate having that 30 minutes to use the restroom and relax with your Rho Chi group!)

[DolphinChicaDDD]

thanks for the info girls!!!

and anyone else- keep em comming!
i think some of our sticking point is no one wants to cut anyone until pref night...and also we are a HUGE communter/suitcase school, so panhel wants to keep mon-thur and bid day on fri.
i'm shooting for a sun-thur thing.

[PiPhiERDoc]

As SmartBlondeGPhB said, we have 5 chapters and used to have rush over two weekends. The possible plan (still in the works, I'm not sure if we'll actually get it implimented for this January's Formal recruitment or not), is to cut down to 3 days which would be
Saturday - PMN's visit all 5 chapters/open houses
Sunday - PMN's visit up to 4 chapters
Monday - Preference - PMN's visit up to 2 chapters
Tuesday night - bid day

We had many reasons for feeling this was better --
1. We used to have the PMN's visit all 5 chapters on Day 1 and Day 2. It seems sort of pointless to basically have 2 days of open houses
2. We felt like the week in between caused us to loose PMN's, either because they talked to each other and GUYS especially, and heard "oh such and such a house isn't very strong" or whatever, which hurt our smaller chapters, rather than PMN's just going on where they felt comfortable.
3. It was always really hard to have a week of classes when the sorority members would run into the PMN's on campus and try to be friendly but not give the perception that they were "dirty rushing"

So we'll see what happens. I'm not sure that we'll be able to get things changed for this rush, but I'm optimistic that it will be either this year or next....and we'll see how it goes!

[sarahgrace]

I think we've got the 5-5-3-2 thing going on this year at UPS, but it's been changed from last year in that instead of stopping for the beginning of class and then starting again at the weekend, recruitment will simply continue through the first few days of classes. So we have:

Saturday: "Go Greek" - all 5 chapters
Sunday: "Go (chapter)" - all 5 chapters
Monday: Service - 3 chapters
Tuesday: (classes start) Preference - 2 chapters
Wednesday: Bid day

I think I'm one of the few people who didn't mind two days of visiting all five houses (I rushed last year), but it was very tiring. And I did find the break frustrating. This seems to be a transition year for UPS recruitment.

Sarah

[sueali]

at UNLV we have five sororities. We hold recruitment from thursday to Monday.

Thursday is a group informational

Friday is the real first day 5 parties (30 min. i think)
Saturday cut to 4 parties (45 min)
Sunday pref 3 parties (an hour-hour and ten minutes, once again I think)
Monday night bid day

I'm not sure why we pref 3 but I was on campus when we brought our 5th sorority in and we've been doing ever since.

[Amalia17]

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