Alabama Recruitment Prediction (Fall 2008)

[aopirose]

Originally Posted by 33girl

Theoretically, there will be people who drop out because they are interested in the colony, plus there will be women who have been cut. I wouldn't be surprised if there are rushees who are even less open minded about the groups because they figure "I can join a colony and make it my own and not have to put up with these jagoffs judging me." Of course that's not the whole case.

Plus, if you go from regular recruitment to colony recruitment, it's a little jarring, and not all the women will get it. A sorority at my school attempted to do this with alumnae doing the rushing and I think it laid your basic egg.

Not only that but you want a variety of class standings within the colony. (Sometimes reflective of the current groups.) You can't get that with a primarily freshmen recruitment. Another thing is that a good number of women who join colonies may never have gone through recruitment before for a variety of reasons. It is a great misconception that colonies pick-up all the "recruitment leftovers". Not that anyone here has said that but I have heard that comment IRL.

Colonization recruitment within the context of FR can work on some campuses but definitely not all.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by aopirose

Not only that but you want a variety of class standings within the colony. (Sometimes reflective of the current groups.) You can't get that with a primarily freshmen recruitment. Another thing is that a good number of women who join colonies may never have gone through recruitment before for a variety of reasons. It is a great misconception that colonies pick-up all the "recruitment leftovers". Not that anyone here has said that but I have heard that comment IRL.

Colonization recruitment within the context of FR can work on some campuses but definitely not all.

I don't really know of course, but I think Alabama is likely to be one of the places where it might work better.

I'm afraid for the new chapters that there aren't that many people on campus who are good candidates for Greek life who aren't already Greek or who couldn't go through formal recruitment because they have a separate junior quota. I sort of use perceptions of COR as part of my standard here.

The chapters are huge, so we're talking about trying to get up to 200+ members relatively quickly so you're not at a huge weakness when the colony does do formal. I wasn't thinking about filling the whole chapter during formal, but starting with 80 or so, which I think was the ballpark for last year's quota seems like a great start.

And even if you could recruit an awesome group of women from people who wanted nothing to do with formal recruitment, won't that be a big disadvantage when you have to turn around an recruit in formal the next year? You don't just need good people, you need good people who will be able to recruit other good people with the methods that are successful on that campus.

33Girls, I do take your point about some PNMs holding out for the colony instead of taking what they see as somehow a "lesser" bid during formal, but I just wonder if there will be enough of them who are actually well qualified PNMs to form as good a chapter than if you participated in formal and they knew they could get the whole Bid Day experience too.

I certainly hope I'm wrong. And I bet there are some great girls who have no idea how big Greek life is at Alabama until they get there and have missed recruitment, but I just think it makes a challenging process even more challenging not to participate.

Is it the existing but smaller chapters who prefer that colonies recruit after formal or is it the preference of colonizing groups?

[33girl]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

And even if you could recruit an awesome group of women from people who wanted nothing to do with formal recruitment, won't that be a big disadvantage when you have to turn around an recruit in formal the next year? You don't just need good people, you need good people who will be able to recruit other good people with the methods that are successful on that campus.

33Girls, I do take your point about some PNMs holding out for the colony instead of taking what they see as somehow a "lesser" bid during formal, but I just wonder if there will be enough of them who are actually well qualified PNMs to form as good a chapter than if you participated in formal and they knew they could get the whole Bid Day experience too.

I think that there are probably more women at Bama (and other similar schools) than we realize who enjoyed doing formal rush and that sort of recruitment who may have just had bad luck - getting paired w/ a sister they had nothing in common with, missing a party for this or that reason - and didn't get a bid because of that. At a smaller school they could probably rush again and get a bid - to a top chapter - and be a great member. But at Bama those top chapters can have classes full of freshmen without having to consider anyone else so that's not going to happen. Those are the kind of people they want to get in a colony - who are on a par w/ any other sorority member there but "fell through the cracks."

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by 33girl

I think that there are probably more women at Bama (and other similar schools) than we realize who enjoyed doing formal rush and that sort of recruitment who may have just had bad luck - getting paired w/ a sister they had nothing in common with, missing a party for this or that reason - and didn't get a bid because of that. At a smaller school they could probably rush again and get a bid - to a top chapter - and be a great member. But at Bama those top chapters can have classes full of freshmen without having to consider anyone else so that's not going to happen. Those are the kind of people they want to get in a colony - who are on a par w/ any other sorority member there but "fell through the cracks."

But the number of women who see recruitment through and don't get bids is really tiny and you have upperclassmen/person quota so actually you could re-rush at Bama more easily than at the rest of the SEC, I think.

I'm certainly not saying that the colonies won't be successful. I fully expect them to be and I think that the groups expanding there will understand what they need to do.

I just see recruiting after formal as being harder than participating in it and I wondered why it happens like this.