After Several Years: What Do You Think of the New Release Figures?

[ree-Xi]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Just interested
All I know is I applaud Chi O for sticking to their guns and waiting until after the semester and grades are made to initiate. I feel it makes membership much more special and moms I've talked to like it as well. I don't know about retention and all that but I think the way it is now girls feel they are just joining a club and not a life long affiliation. Change is good but at what cost, numbers or lifelong members. Just random thoughts

Originally Posted by AOII Angel

Are their any studies or numbers that support this? How does an extra month of waiting for initiation improve the odds that a girl will take the lifelong membership seriously? Have you seen more people intiated then have to be dropped for grades? There is a relatively small difference in time of the new member period in both situations...I fail to see how it can make that big of a difference. I don't think AOII has seen a change in grades over the years, which is the only thing that I can see would actually be different between the two options.

My thoughts: I read this more as suggesting that the mystery of "will I or won't I be initiated" gives NM more incentive to keep going, consistently improving, because only by achieveing something (here, it's grades, but if you look at old school pledge programs, where everything was covered in mystery) would you get to initiation.

[AOII Angel]

Originally Posted by ree-Xi

Quote:
Originally Posted by Just interested
All I know is I applaud Chi O for sticking to their guns and waiting until after the semester and grades are made to initiate. I feel it makes membership much more special and moms I've talked to like it as well. I don't know about retention and all that but I think the way it is now girls feel they are just joining a club and not a life long affiliation. Change is good but at what cost, numbers or lifelong members. Just random thoughts



I read this more as suggesting that the mystery of "will I or won't I be initiated" gives NM more incentive to keep going, consistently improving, because only by achieveing something (here, it's grades, but if you look at old school pledge programs, where everything was covered in mystery) would you get to initiation.

So the extra month of wondering really makes them more eager to be a true lifelong member? I don't buy it! Also, if you think about it, many of our organizations immediately initiated new members in the early days. Our first "pledge" was initiated almost immediately. This long pledging period evolved over time and was not an original ideal of at least the AOII founders. If it was good enough for them, it's good enough for me!