Too fat to recruit: or, DePauw, the Sequel

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by SECdomination

Quality over quantity is just an excuse for poor recruitment. Your chapter can have both if everyone works for it.

This is probably very true for fraternities because they can give out bids differently, and there's no stigma to year round rushing or having two pledge classes a year. You can even have summer rush parties and give bids before guys get to school.

NPC recruitment with quota and chapter total as well as incredibly structured formal rush during which you can't give bids until the end changes the game more than you might think. It's a little harder for the current group of members to make it all up in one recruitment or even a few years of working hard at recruitment if you're a group that girls don't go into recruitment knowing they'd join.

[CrimsonBlues]

Originally Posted by AlphaGamUGAAlum

This is probably very true for fraternities because they can give out bids differently, and there's no stigma to year round rushing or having two pledge classes a year. You can even have summer rush parties and give bids before guys get to school.

NPC recruitment with quota and chapter total as well as incredibly structured formal rush during which you can't give bids until the end changes the game more than you might think. It's a little harder for the current group of members to make it all up in one recruitment or even a few years of working hard at recruitment if you're a group that girls don't go into recruitment knowing they'd join.

This was very true on my campus. My chapter was also "small and struggling" (we usually had around 100 members on a campus where the other sororities had 120-150 members). We are not in any financial danger whatsoever, and, though our national really wants us to make quota, we're not being pressured as intensely as this group apparently is. Anyway, this past year, though we did release several women who did not meet our standards for whatever reason (we refuse to be a "warm bodies" chapter), we were fairly good about following the release figures. We ended up with enough women attending our pref parties to fill more than three pledge classes; however, when it came time to sign bid cards, so many women chose not to list our chapter that we barely matched to half of quota. We are not actually collectively "fat" or "ugly" or "dorky," but this is the reputation that our chapter has acquired, and nothing we did to combat it in my four years as an active seemed to much of an effect. This is not me wearing blinders about the reality of our chapter - just about every member of my chapter could easily blend in with the membership of the majority of the groups on my campus. The reality seems to be that, apparently, every semi-competitive or competitive campus has to have a "bad sorority." As recently as five years ago, our chapter was just another "mid-to-lower tier" group that had no problem coming close to or making quota every year. Unfortunately, my campus lost a couple sororities in rapid succession, and we were apparently next in line to be "that house"...and so it went.

As long as the other sororities and the fraternities on our campus remain devoted to telling pnms that we are the "fatties," that we are closing this year, that we're the "sorority that takes the girls nobody else wants," etc, it will be extremely difficult to impossible for us to make quota. It really is a shame for us to lose out on so many quality women, and it is just as much of a shame that these quality women miss out on Greek life entirely because they cannot overlook the stereotypes they've heard - and, honestly, who can blame them for wanting to avoid that kind of stigma for three-four years? I guess what I'm getting at is that sometimes, it really isn't laziness or lame excuses when a chapter is smaller. We have had some success with informal recruitment, but most women on my campus don't live under a rock.

It's too bad that greeks treat one another this way, because it weakens us as a whole. Truly, if the sorority that does the most negative talking about us gets its wish and sees our chapter closed...they're next in line.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by SECdomination

You got me there. I guess all I can say is that I'm glad I don't have to deal with NPC rush.

I think that most NPCers have, at best, complicated feelings about the way we do things.

At the top chapters, it actually limits how many excellent girls they can take despite those girls wanting them first.

It's kind of bizarre.

[PeppyGPhiB]

Originally Posted by SECdomination

Obviously we have a serious difference of opinion here. A small chapter has to do everything they can to stay open. Once things have gotten this bad, priorities change. It's a question of preserving individual freedoms (the fat girls feelings) or protecting society at large (her chapter).
Either way, I agree that it's totally unacceptable to send her completely away from recruitment. It's not like they can't use her.

You got me there. I guess all I can say is that I'm glad I don't have to deal with NPC rush.

I have been a member of a smaller, "struggling" chapter. However, my chapter was overall one of the best looking chapters on campus when this was happening, and the fraternities loved to mix with us. We were small because we attracted some women who were not very committed to sorority life, who dropped out throughout the year. And you know what? The smaller numbers hurt us every year during rush...it was a self-fulfilling prophecy...every year got worse. Even though we had so many beautiful women in our chapter, we got smaller pledge classes because PNMs made snap judgements based on our size. I think size of the chapter has way more to do with it than the size of the women in the chapter.

I'm glad I didn't go to a SEC school after reading all about how "it's all about looks." It's not like that on every campus, even competitive ones, and I'm glad. I think I'd feel stressed out and uncomfortable if I knew my sisters were THAT obsessed with me looking my best all the time. I mean, would I have to sleep in my makeup just in case I had to get up in the middle of the night? I bet I wouldn't have had the wild and super-casual twice-a-year camping trips with my sisters if I was in a SEC chapter.

I was a rush counselor two times - once as a sophomore when I was pre-med and knew I'd be too busy with classes and studying to spend those late nights in membership selection, and later as a senior when I was on Panhellenic exec. - and it was great. I was SO excited to do it my senior year...it was much more enjoyable than dealing with the decorating, the conversation, etc. It is also a lot of fun to see what all of the other chapters do during recruitment, and to hear the reactions of the PNMs throughout the process. I encourage all NPC women to apply if they're considering it...it's a good opportunity to see recruitment from a more objective standpoint.

[BabyPiNK_FL]

I am on the Panhellenic Council (Pi Chi) and we have Rho Gammas who are the actual recruitment guides and I LOVE it. I actually fell into it by default, but it's an amazing experience and I'm so glad to not be going through recruitment this year...seeing it from the other side makes me soooo happy that I can see the bigger picture and not focus on certain aspects of the process.

[carnation]

Originally Posted by PeppyGPhiB

We were small because we attracted some women who were not very committed to sorority life, who dropped out throughout the year. And you know what? The smaller numbers hurt us every year during rush...it was a self-fulfilling prophecy...every year got worse. Even though we had so many beautiful women in our chapter, we got smaller pledge classes because PNMs made snap judgements based on our size. I think size of the chapter has way more to do with it than the size of the women in the chapter.

Oh wow, that first sentence really has something to it. Year after year, I've noticed that the stronger groups tend to know how to pick who'll stay in and who'll drop or transfer. Those groups end up with big senior classes.

[cuteASAbug]

Originally Posted by carnation

Oh wow, that first sentence really has something to it. Year after year, I've noticed that the stronger groups tend to know how to pick who'll stay in and who'll drop or transfer. Those groups end up with big senior classes.

talk about a veiled insult

[carnation]

Nope, not in the least. You look at the composites of various groups at a school and you realize that the stronger groups have managed to keep far more seniors.

[AlexMack]

Originally Posted by carnation

Nope, not in the least. You look at the composites of various groups at a school and you realize that the stronger groups have managed to keep far more seniors.

No one can predict life. No one knows who will stay and who will drop or transfer. What you said sounded really bitchy even if you didn't mean it that way.
My pledge class dissolved for various reasons. There are only two active sisters left from it. I had to leave for unforeseen medical issues. They never thought that I'd have to drop because of that when I was given a bid and neither did I. My chapter is strong.

[carnation]

Well guys, anyone can manage to take a statement the wrong way if they want. I guess y'all have.

Again: through 35 years of involvement with the Greek system, I have seen that the stronger groups on any given campus tend to manage to maintain more seniors. They don't seem to have many who get married in the middle of college or transfer or flunk out for whatever reason. This is not a dig on anybody at all. Look at some of the rosters on college websites and compare size of senior classes.

And if you still think I'm trying to insult someone, too bad. You're way too sensitive.

[NutBrnHair]

Originally Posted by porkfriedrice

No one can predict life. No one knows who will stay and who will drop or transfer...My pledge class dissolved for various reasons. There are only two active sisters left from it. I had to leave for unforeseen medical issues. They never thought that I'd have to drop because of that when I was given a bid and neither did I....

What you CAN do is average the attrition rates over a 3-5 year period and have an idea of how many seniors will probably drop out for one reason or another. It's kinda like figuring relase #s for recruitment.

[33girl]

Originally Posted by carnation

Nope, not in the least. You look at the composites of various groups at a school and you realize that the stronger groups have managed to keep far more seniors.

Or else the seniors stayed because the groups were stronger and had more to offer. i.e. the social status or connections they got from being an XYZ were something that enabled them to get student govt offices and such. Or as some people have pointed out, local political offices.

If being a Nu Mu alumna gets you an "in" with the local Junior League and you want to be in JL more than life itself, you'll stay in Nu Mu thru senior year...even if you're miserable and hate every minute of it.

I guess it all depends on the defintion of "strong group" you're using.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by carnation

Oh wow, that first sentence really has something to it. Year after year, I've noticed that the stronger groups tend to know how to pick who'll stay in and who'll drop or transfer. Those groups end up with big senior classes.

Well, like everything though, the stronger groups not only can pick them, they can pledge them and keep them because the strong groups seem more desirable in recruitment and may be more fun once your in.

Think about the difference between a connection a girl feels on bid day to the stronger chapter she placed first vs. the second or third chapter she got because although she wasn't crazy about them, she wanted to maximize her options. Is it entirely fair to attribute the strength of her connection to the groups' ability to pick members with certain innate traits?

I think there's a tendency for folks from strong chapters to assume that the strength of their chapter during their active years was mainly attributable to the merits and talents of that group of members. Who wouldn't want to think that: our chapter of this GLO is strong because we're awesome? But the flip side seems to be "and therefore, that weak group is weak because they don't know how to work hard at recruitment or pick new members."

Certainly the present membership mainly contributes to the reputation of the group and really does well or does poorly, but there's another probably either a third or maybe even as much as half of recruiting strength and reputation that happened before those members arrived on the scene.

Surely people who work at the national or international level of the groups must kind of see this, or it really would be as easy as having a couple of consultants help the chapter for a year picking new members with commitment and showing them how to recruit. How often does that really work on a SEC or competitive recruitment campus?

(And think of individual members you've known: it's weird but I can think of chapters where every single woman that I've known whose joined there is amazing and seemed to belong at an even "better" chapter, and yet the overall reputation stays the same. Weird, huh?)

[SWTXBelle]

Remember, with most PNMs we are dealing with 17 and 18 year olds who are away from home and in a very unfamiliar enviornment. It is no wonder the "herd mentality" holds such sway. I would not suggest they are shallow, but if you are in unfamiliar waters you tend to grasp at what you think you understand. So, a larger chapter about whom everyone has great things to say would be far more appealing than a smaller chapter which has "scuttlebutt" about their "problems". As we've seen in so many of the retro recruitment threads, tent talk and peer pressure can really mess up your mind as you go through recruitment.
My chapter graduated a very large number of seniors a year before I pledged - and our numbers could never bounce back, and we ended up in the death spiral. We had beautiful, smart girls - sparkling personalities, campus leaders - but not enough of them. We also were less concerned with appearance, to tell the truth. We had more girls who were not a size 2, and we also had more hispanic members. If we had more members overall, I don't think this would have been a problem. I don't know what the solution is. I'm proud of the fact we were not superficial, and that we pledged girls who weren't Barbie, but who had a great deal more to offer. I also wish that we could have recruited the numbers we needed to remain viable on campus.
I too am upset at the cattiness and shallowness sometimes shown by other GLOs when a chapter is struggling. There is no excuse for it. Every GLO should realize that the system is only as strong as its weakest link - and that every chapter which has to close is bad for the system. It's not an end-sum game. The more chapters there are, the greater possability for true diversity, and the more likely PNMs are to find a home. More happy Greeks means a larger system, which is good for everyone.
I'm frustrated by my inability to come up with a solution. Sisterly love comes in many shapes, colors and sizes. Also, a chapter is truly what the sisters make of it. We need an implant for PNMs that would help them realize that.

[33girl]

Originally Posted by SECdomination

A small chapter has to do everything they can to stay open.

I hate to revisit the DePauw situation, but one of the things that the women who left that chapter alleged was that they were keeping their numbers steady and that they always had women coming up who wanted to pledge them. They weren't in debt or unable to fill offices. But that wasn't good enough for the national, she said, they wanted the "Barbie" image. Basically, she said if DZ would have just let them be "the smart quirky chapter" and recruit the smart quirky women, they wouldn't have had a problem.

If a chapter at an SEC school was under that much pressure to pledge women, who the hell do you think they end up pledging? Anyone who will sign a bid, that's who. What if they got a huge pledge class, got their numbers up to total, but every woman in that pledge class was over 200 pounds with a mustache? Do you think that would fly?

Believe me, I've been on the receiving end of "you need to pledge more girls and get your numbers up, no matter what" and then a year later, hearing "WHAT ON EARTH made you pledge those girls?"