Smaller Groups-how can you make PNMs feel chosen?

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by 33girl

Did the sorority vote to invite these rushees back? Did these rushees have some good conversations with these women (in the sorority's mind, anyway)?

If so - then they WERE chosen!! Maybe the girls didn't choose the sorority, but the sorority chose them. Don't get hung up on the fact that they're "stuck" at your chapter. You don't know what they're feeling inside. Maybe they're a triple legacy to XYZ and got cut from XYZ, but it's not that they dislike you, it's that they have to tell their 98 year old granny they aren't going to be an XYZ.

However, if the chapter is being forced by whoever have you in authority to invite back members that everyone hated and that the chapter DID cut - then that's another matters entirely. I don't care what your advisor says, I don't care what national says, I don't care what Panhellenic or the rho chi or your rush chair says. If no one in the chapter could find anything redeeming in a woman, DO NOT HAVE HER BACK. It creates feelings like Carnation's above scenario. If this woman is such a hidden jewel, she can come to a COB event or two and maybe she'll make a better impression.

I think some women get so distressed about voting in general (especially if they're in a smaller chapter) that they let people off too easily. You're not voting on whether to ever talk to this woman again or to shun her from the campus or something. You're voting on whether you're going to spend a large part of your college years with this person and possibly live with her. If you don't want to do that, then don't vote to the contrary.

Just because your chapter is smaller - don't settle for crap. Your crap may be someone else's shining star, and vice versa. Invite and cultivate the women at rush that you like for themselves, not just because they're cute or what have you.

I got the impression more that the chapter did really want these women but since a certain segment of the women who were coming back were only coming because of rules about maximize options, the sense of mutual selection was off.

Carnation's OP wanted to know how they could make these women, who they really do want, feel as chosen at their chapter as the women at the 100% return rate chapter feel.

And when release figures let you invite a lot of people back but only some of them accept, it IS complicated to communicate that they are there because you really want them, not because they were so undesirable elsewhere that no one had any choice.

[33girl]

Originally Posted by AlphaGamUGAAlum

I got the impression more that the chapter did really want these women but since a certain segment of the women who were coming back were only coming because of rules about maximize options, the sense of mutual selection was off.

Carnation's OP wanted to know how they could make these women, who they really do want, feel as chosen at their chapter as the women at the 100% return rate chapter feel.

And when release figures let you invite a lot of people back but only some of them accept, it IS complicated to communicate that they are there because you really want them, not because they were so undesirable elsewhere that no one had any choice.

Umm - talk more to the girls who have good attitudes and be just polite to the girls who have bad attitudes?

I know that's not a very PC answer, but honestly, there's not really much else you can do. If Susie the XYZ groupie is only at your party because she thinks XYZ might open bid her and she knows she has to maximize options to do that, even though there's a snowball's chance in hell it wil happen, and she's sullen or rude, I don't see why anyone should have to suffer through that. Spend time with the girl who's happy to be there.