Facebook... "Dirty Rushing"?

acuisla · #14 02-09-2007, 01:52 PM

One of the campuses I work with deals with facebook in this fashion (quoting 2006 recruitment rules)

XV. The Facebook
1. Rho Chis will remove all mentions of affiliation from their Faceboook profiles, and adjust privacy settings to limit access to their friends by date.
2. Chapter Women will adjust privacy settings to limit access to their friends by date2. Chapter women are strongly encouraged to potray themselves on the facebook in accordance with Panhellenic guidelines. More restrictions may be implemented by individual chapters.

I believe that the chapters on the above campus are mostly self-policing about Facebook contacts. The CPC does spot checks of chapter women's profiles, and the individual organizations do check up on each other. They have seen a problem with the fraternities accidentally giving away CPC/Rho Chi afilliations, but it usually gets straightened out before recruitment. I also believe that there's some contact through Facebook during recruitment, but it doesn't seem to constitute dirty rushing - people are just too darned busy to do any of that. And the PNMs seem to be coached too well about giving everyone a chance and the realities of bid matching for them to fall for the dirty rushing. But I could also be naive here.

What really interests me is how much sorority members use Facebook to research the PNMs. I can share that I know of some organizations that cut PNMs because of the (extremely lewd) profile and pictures they had posted on Facebook. I can add that when I saw one of the PNMs on Facebook, I was glad I wasn't in the chapter and having to make the decision about whether I wanted someone who seemed to be into public soft porn doing it while wearing my letters. That may be judgemental of me, and I'm okay with that - I don't know that my organization can afford to take that kind of a hit to its reputation. However, I wonder if it is fair to do this, when it would take just one person to say to the PNM, "hey, make sure your Facebook profile is classy and clean before recruitment starts".