Facebook... "Dirty Rushing"?

[33girl]

Originally Posted by GtownGirl98

I'm thinking about the campus' with spring rush... these girls have had a full semester to get to know people and befriend them. I would think that it would be easy to dirty rush now a days (not to say it wasn't totally easy to do before the internet) to drop a note of "great to see you tonight, there was great buzz about you." OR "great time with you tonight, see you tomorrow". And these things don't always show up in the feeds and headlines.

I'm also thankful I am not in college, going through rush, now. It would be very hard.

That's just a technologically updated version of telling a rushee the same thing when you see her in the dorm. It happened then, it's going to happen now.

Also I think there's something now that silence/disaffiliation for Rho Chis isn't supposed to be more than 30 days? So you couldn't say someone is "off limits" from spring until rush week, or all of the fall if you have spring rush.

[FSUZeta]

panhellenics can make whatever rules they want-if they want to make silence from the last day of the spring semester until bid day in the fall, they can do it. some panhellenic rules get veryspecific about suitable contact between a pnm and a sorority member.

[jaade124]

I recall a sorority on my campus (won't say which one) that made a rush group for their sorority on facebook. They also had an informational party before rush started which is against the rules at my school. Most sororities got in a tizzy about that group on facebook though...they felt like it was dirty rushing bc it was before anyone even got to speak to these girls *shrugs* Facebook and myspace cause a number of problems and unfortunately they are just too hard to monitor sometimes.

[blackngoldengrl]

I think I even saw that group on facebook, and I didn't go to your school. One of my high school classmates was a member. I thought it was kind of strange when I first saw it, and I was suprised that it remained up for as long as it did. (I have no idea if it is up there at present)

[FSUZeta]

let me get this straight-the sorority set up a group on facebook like: fall rush 2006 or are you rushing this fall, and pnms joined the group? wow! i have known of some campuses where the rho gammas or panhellenic hosted a facebook group like that.

that sorority should have suffered some major fines for that and the pre rush party.

[amanda6035]

Oh my god, facebook makes my blood boil for this reason. Good topic, OP. I'm curious to know how college panhellenics can combat this problem. Because seriously - you cant see what goes on behind the scenes. Sure, you might see a wall post - but you can only make wall posts if you're friends. And even if you make a rule about you cant be friends with freshmen girls, you can STILL talk to them through private messages and dirty rush them that way.

Our panhellenic, still under construction, has decided that the Panhellenic president and VP will have to dissafiliate this year. So how does that work? Do those members have to temporarily remove all their sisters from their friends list so that a PNM cant look at their friends list and say "my my, this person sure does have alot of XYZs on her friends list"....and are pictures of that person with XYZ letters in the background - do they have to be removed?" How does a college panhelleic association force all the members of the sororities to remove pictures of disaffiliated women? How can you enforce that each sorority member HAS to make her profile viewable by only her current friends?

Seriously, it's such crap. There's no way to effectively monitor it. And you cant tell me that all sororities on every campus are going to promise to play fair and not private message girls where the public cant see you've been talking to them.

Is there anybody from GA State on here? Some of the AZDs from there told me that the panhellenic there had some pretty strict rules - I'm curious as to how you guys made it work.

[AGDee]

A few comments from one of the old fogies here who rushed before the internet existed...

1) Our whole Panhellenic Council Exec Board and our Recruitment Counselors all disaffiliated, but the school library still had yearbooks in it and if someone was determined, they could find out which sorority they belonged in. They also only had to ask a fraternity guy. It's not that big a deal. The big deal is that the women in those positions are objective and unbiased in their dealings with potential new members. I think the bigger deal you make out of it, the more it becomes a game with the PNMs and they are focused more on that than on recruitment.

2) Telling members of sororities that they cannot befriend any freshman women simply leads to the appearance that sorority women are stuck up snobs. That is why the Green Book says that silence should be the period between Pref and Bid Day. What kind of impression does it make if no sorority women will speak to the freshman?

3) In many cases, dirty rushing occurs because Total is not set appropriately, leaving too many open spaces in chapters. The worst dirty rushing I've seen was on a campus where quota is 7-9 each year but Total is 45 and none of the chapters are at Total. This is a total set up for chapters to encourage women to drop out of recruitment and accept a bid through COR because every chapter KNOWS they will have empty spaces after formal recruitment.

Panhellenic unity and the understanding that if all the chapters are strong, the greek system is strong is tough to achieve, but that should be the focus, rather than worrying about who is friends with who on Facebook.

[ta kala]

Originally Posted by amanda6035

Our panhellenic, still under construction, has decided that the Panhellenic president and VP will have to dissafiliate this year. So how does that work? Do those members have to temporarily remove all their sisters from their friends list so that a PNM cant look at their friends list and say "my my, this person sure does have alot of XYZs on her friends list"....and are pictures of that person with XYZ letters in the background - do they have to be removed?" How does a college panhelleic association force all the members of the sororities to remove pictures of disaffiliated women? How can you enforce that each sorority member HAS to make her profile viewable by only her current friends?

My sister was VP the first year facebook was around and instead of removing all her friends and whatnot, she just changed her name to something completely random and removed her pictures. She had to let everyone know she did this so we all didn't think we had a random friend, but it also prevented PNMs from knowing which sorority she was in without completely removing all her info and friends.

[tunatartare]

Originally Posted by amanda6035

Our panhellenic, still under construction, has decided that the Panhellenic president and VP will have to dissafiliate this year. So how does that work? Do those members have to temporarily remove all their sisters from their friends list so that a PNM cant look at their friends list and say "my my, this person sure does have alot of XYZs on her friends list"....and are pictures of that person with XYZ letters in the background - do they have to be removed?" How does a college panhelleic association force all the members of the sororities to remove pictures of disaffiliated women? How can you enforce that each sorority member HAS to make her profile viewable by only her current friends?

Don't you only have like 6 girls in your sorority? Hypothetically speaking, it would be very possible for a Gamma Phi to be friends with every AXiD in that case.

[jaade124]

Originally Posted by FSUZeta

let me get this straight-the sorority set up a group on facebook like: fall rush 2006 or are you rushing this fall, and pnms joined the group? wow! i have known of some campuses where the rho gammas or panhellenic hosted a facebook group like that.

that sorority should have suffered some major fines for that and the pre rush party.

sorry it took me so long to respond! yes i agree! however, this semester which is formal recruitment, panhell decided that facebook recruitment groups could be allowed! However, they had to be shutdown after round robin (which was last night). I still feel tho that facebook is the ultimate dirty rushing tool and there's not much we can do about it.

Concerning rho chis, I kno that the rho chis from my sorority defriended all their sisters, took anything sorority related out of their profiles, and the rest of the chapter was told to make our profiles private or take all pics down of rho chis. A huge pain in the arse.

[DMCBlondie]

At my school its required that all women in sororities make their facebook profiles private. We don't want PNM's making judgements based on information they find because it may not reflect the whole chapter. We are not allowed to accept any friend requests until recruitment is over. PNM's should make their profiles private too. I know individuals that have used facebook to judge PNMs. I would advise PNM's to put up a pretty picture and make it private! The same goes with myspace.