"No Frills" Recruitment - Need advice

[KSUViolet06]

In 2004, when my school first started moving toward the "no frills" recommendations, Panhellenic required all the PNMs to wear KSU clothing for the first round. That was a mess. Girls are already hard enough to remember, but it was really hard when 90% of them wore the SAME KSU t-shirt (because it was on sale for $5 at the time). You can imagine the frustration when someone said things like "You know, the one with the blonde hair in the KSU t-shirt." Well gee, that really narrows it down.

[SigmaPsi_Star]

The way we do it is, what I would call, light on frils. It's not bare minimum blank room no matching at all type...we just can't go overboard. We don't do rush in our houses, we do all of it in different rooms in the student center. They changed the rules a little this year so that we can only have baloons and food at two of our parties (I suppose this is assuming that we'll use the "shiny" things where we feel they're the most important). We still wear matching outfits, but only to the extent of we order shirts for three parties and say what sort of bottoms/shoes to wear, and wear our black (ritual) dresses for ther fourth set. Some groups do skits, some don't. Basically it's cut back enough that the focus winds up being on meeting people and getting to know people, and not how pretty someones decorations are. Though, that still happens no matter what.

I think how we do it works out pretty well, because it still lets us do the fun slightly frilly part of rush, but keeps it from being insane and super expensive...and really it keeps it from being a "who can spend the most and be the most impressive with stuff" competition.

[UGAalum94]

It's so interesting to read about schools where people seem to be making their decisions primarily based on what happens during rush.

The reputations of the groups (and who from your hometown is in which one) are so important at some schools that I think certain groups could not decorate at all and wear pajamas and still get ranked in the top three by 90% of the PNMs.* It's weird for me to imagine a school at which what the groups wore would really change how PNMs ranked them.

*Of course their conversations would still be charming because that's who they are.

[PeppyGPhiB]

Things like hometowns of members meant nothing at my school, since students came from all over the country to attend. With 7 sororities for about 300 PNMs, women will use all kinds of things to label each chapter, but I never heard geography mentioned as a consideration.

[SoCalGirl]

Hometowns meant nothing at my school either. Plus, combine my lack of geography skills with my lack of knowledge of cities/towns outside of SD and I didn't really care where the girl was from. I usually just asked to see if I could tie in info about other sisters. The good ole "You're from Calabassas? Megan is from Calabassas too!" I'd quickly switch to a lovely sisterhood story and avoid discussing Calabassas again.

[UGAalum94]

It's not the towns themselves so much, as it is the type of people that you knew already who are in certain groups: did you go to the same private school, do your parents know each other, are you from the "right kind" of family.

If your school does have a national draw, it might break this down, but I get the feeling that even when kids go out of state in the south, it's still a pretty small network.

It's a little weird for 18 years olds, I admit.

[SoCalGirl]

I understand what you mean. Especially considering my first year as an alum I was helping with recruitment at the other chapter in the area. Megan's biological sister was going through rush and when the VPM saw Calabassas on the rush app she immediately made a comment about money.

[tunatartare]

Originally Posted by SoCalGirl

Hometowns meant nothing at my school either. Plus, combine my lack of geography skills with my lack of knowledge of cities/towns outside of SD and I didn't really care where the girl was from. I usually just asked to see if I could tie in info about other sisters. The good ole "You're from Calabassas? Megan is from Calabassas too!" I'd quickly switch to a lovely sisterhood story and avoid discussing Calabassas again.

Hijack- one of my friends lives in Calabassas.

[EGAOPi]

Originally Posted by PeppyGPhiB

Things like hometowns of members meant nothing at my school, since students came from all over the country to attend. With 7 sororities for about 300 PNMs, women will use all kinds of things to label each chapter, but I never heard geography mentioned as a consideration.

Agreeed. They mean nothing at my school, either. Almost everyone is from south Florida (either coast). There are some people from out-of-state, which is exciting for us (as oppossed to counting against PNMs, as it does in many Southern schools).
There will always be rumors and reputations but each chapter here is constantly changing and evolving. People have good years and they have bad years and oftentimes, the PNMs can see that.
They definitely wouldn't rank a chapter that wore pajamas and didn't put forth an effort #1 here.

[UGAalum94]

Well, I mean, deliberately showing a bad attitude during rush would be a problem, sure. But I meant that as long as the girls were themselves in their interactions with the PNMs, it wouldn't matter very much what they were wearing or how they decorated.

[jadis96]

We had a mix of frills and no frills at my school. We were told it was "no frills" but looking back it was more of a combo. Round 1 was always a Panhellenic shirt, every sorority got the same one, only difference was your color and letters (same logo on back and style of letters). Round 2 was a frills party, but the cap on money spending was low and there was no "matching" outfits, it was the basic "wear white deck shoes, kakhi shorts and a white fitted T type of thing. Round 3 was always "business casual". Pref night was black dresses for everyone.

Round 1 and round 3 you could have your sorority stuff around the suite and you could have fresh flowers, but no food besides finger foods and water. Round 2 you could have food and a drink, but no "meals" and the decoration budget was 500$ and had to be submitted by the end of that night's voting. Pref was a 500$ budget and you could have any food or drinks you wanted.