SPRING RECRUITMENT AT UGA

[33girl]

Originally Posted by notyouraverage

I think it sounds like a great thing. I've never understood how actives managed to juggle deferred recruitment with class and labs and homework and other clubs and organizations. This means (potentially) not every girl will have to be present for every event. Maybe some gcers with deferred recruitment can explain how it's supposed to work?.. I just can't imagine my usual workload on top of recruitment - I had a hard enough time with fall bid day!

Deferred rush usually takes place the 2nd or 3rd week of the semester. It's not during midterms or anything and your other orgs are probably still in the middle of reorganizing. Honestly, if you're used to it, it isn't as much of a hardship as a lot of people make it out to be.

I can see where the limited # of actives would be a good thing, but on the other hand, I can see where it might play havoc with membership selection and girls getting selected that a good number of women don't know or like. Anytime I've heard of limiting the number, it's only for the first round (often because of space constraints as much as trying to equalize things).

[BAMA2]

Vanderbilt has deferred rush. It used to last 2 weeks long so we did not have rush activities every night. In addition, we would come back to school early from Christmas Break so at least the first part of rush took place before school started. It was the beginning of the semester and it was over before you really got loaded down with work. I never really remember it being a problem. Of course, the number of girls going through rush is smaller than at larger schools so the number of parties were limited. This was all about 30 years ago! Don't know if they still do it the same or not.

[honeychile]

Originally Posted by BAMA2

Vanderbilt has deferred rush. It used to last 2 weeks long so we did not have rush activities every night. In addition, we would come back to school early from Christmas Break so at least the first part of rush took place before school started. It was the beginning of the semester and it was over before you really got loaded down with work. I never really remember it being a problem. Of course, the number of girls going through rush is smaller than at larger schools so the number of parties were limited. This was all about 30 years ago! Don't know if they still do it the same or not.

Okay, very weird statement: About 4-5 years ago, I met up with a friend in Nashville, and TWO fraternities were having their Winter Weekend at the hotel where we were staying. ALL of the women had to be 5'1" or shorter! My (non-greek) friend made some sort of remark about Vandy sorority girls must only recruit midgets.

So, when I read the one statement about "rush is smaller", the first thing I thought was "how small can they possibly go?!"

[Kansas City]

Originally Posted by 33girl

I can see where the limited # of actives would be a good thing, but on the other hand, I can see where it might play havoc with membership selection and girls getting selected that a good number of women don't know or like. Anytime I've heard of limiting the number, it's only for the first round (often because of space constraints as much as trying to equalize things).

This was my initial thought. How would a chapter ensure that one clique of girls wasn't determining the future membership for the entire chapter? I assume that you would rotate members in throughout the week but as far as the selection process for any one evening/party/event, I would not want to rely on just a portion of my chapter making decisions without my input or meeting of the PNMs.

[SWTXBelle]

But even with every member of the chapter participating, you have to rely on each other - you can't meet more than a few pnms per party. The reservations some of you have are in fact problems right now - especially at some of the larger recruitments, where, let's face it, the vast majority of chapter members are making their choices for membership selection based on what their sisters say, not on having personally met each pnm.

I think every chapter member should still get to vote for membership selection - and it may be that the chapter wants to rotate members so more women get to meet pnms. It could work - and it could be good for chapters, too. Every chapter has women who are great conversationalists and rushers, and women who aren't comfortable doing that. Some can cook, some perform, some paint scenery - I'm not saying to not havethe whole chapter participate. It would be especially good for those recruitments which are held during classes - missing recruitment would not be the crisis it sometimes is now.

[UGAalum94]

This may seem odd too, but I'm not sure the benefit to smaller chapters is that great by limiting the number of rushers.

Sure, the smaller chapters don't appear smaller right off the bat, but you might have a better chance competing with a whole cross section of a chapter than with just the top 50 (or whatever) most socially gifted.

From a pure pragmatic standpoint though, I think you'd have to limit numbers just so not to overwhelm the PNMs. I'm assuming that the PNMs will be broken into groups, and with only 150-200 (or whatever) and 17 groups that you could go to, you don't need 4 member to 1 PNM ratio.

My guess is that it's to really make people do an informal recruitment event rather than just recycle parties from formal.

[SWTXBelle]

The problem with appearing much smaller is you never get over that initial "Oh, they must have a problem or they wouldn't be so small". Meeting a cross-section then isn't an issue - pnms too often simply won't give them a chance. Some chapters have used members from near-by chapters to fill out their numbers - I hate that. You need to be meeting girls who might be your sisters.

It's just an idea - I think we all are looking ways for ways to improve recruitment. I would be interested in knowing if any school does do it that way, and if that made a difference.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by SWTXBelle

The problem with appearing much smaller is you never get over that initial "Oh, they must have a problem or they wouldn't be so small". Meeting a cross-section then isn't an issue - pnms too often simply won't give them a chance. Some chapters have used members from near-by chapters to fill out their numbers - I hate that. You need to be meeting girls who might be your sisters.

It's just an idea - I think we all are looking ways for ways to improve recruitment. I would be interested in knowing if any school does do it that way, and if that made a difference.

Absolutely. I was just thinking of UGA specifically and even there it might help; it just might have some unintended consequences as well.

[KSUViolet06]

Originally Posted by SWTXBelle

The problem with appearing much smaller is you never get over that initial "Oh, they must have a problem or they wouldn't be so small". Meeting a cross-section then isn't an issue - pnms too often simply won't give them a chance. Some chapters have used members from near-by chapters to fill out their numbers - I hate that. You need to be meeting girls who might be your sisters.

I tend to think that bringing in members from other chapters actually hurts a chapter. The women may be passionate about XYZ, but they can't speak to the experience of being a member of THAT chapter, which is alot of what the PNMs will be asking about. The women from other schools can't talk about how fun the mixer with ___ fraternity was, or why they do _____ for the local philanthropy event. That leads PNMs to wonder "Why are some of the girls at XYZ from different schools, and the girls at AAA, BBB, etc. all from the same school?"

[SWTXBelle]

Agreed. I've never know bringing in other chapter's members to work. (But of course, my experience is limited.)

[33girl]

Originally Posted by SWTXBelle

But even with every member of the chapter participating, you have to rely on each other - you can't meet more than a few pnms per party. The reservations some of you have are in fact problems right now - especially at some of the larger recruitments, where, let's face it, the vast majority of chapter members are making their choices for membership selection based on what their sisters say, not on having personally met each pnm.

Yes, I'm aware of that at large chapters. The problem could come, as KC said, if the SAME 50 women (out of 200) are the only ones meeting ALL the PNMs. At a regular rush, you at least have all the chapter members' input as far as the women they did spend time with. I mean - what if those 50 sisters you pick to do the rushing don't want anyone who's (random example) on a sports team? They could come up with bogus reasons as to why they didn't like those PNMs and get people cut who the other 3/4 of the chapter would have really liked.

You would HOPE that wouldn't happen and that the chapter would have enough brains to pick a cross section of sisters who are different in all ways, but with chapter politics sometimes you never know.

Depending on the chapter's/GLO's voting policies, who knows, they might not be able to rotate sisters - maybe some of them say that you have to see a PNM twice to vote on them. I don't know, I'm just throwing that out there.

[shadden]

Many of the houses will use their most recent initiates - theoretically this should be a cross section of the house, and with Fall pledge classes at roughly 60 for most houses, the numbers are right. I think the idea of seeing roughly the same number of girls at each house is great - should benefit the smaller houses.

[carnation]

Can somebody who's on campus tell me if women who rushed in the fall need to get new recs for this recruitment?

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by shadden

Many of the houses will use their most recent initiates - theoretically this should be a cross section of the house, and with Fall pledge classes at roughly 60 for most houses, the numbers are right. I think the idea of seeing roughly the same number of girls at each house is great - should benefit the smaller houses.

For informal with a small quota, seeing this recruitment as sort of a prep for fall with the new girls makes sense.

On the other hand, if I were in charge of selecting for a chapter who would attract for my group this spring, I'd go with the folks who I thought had the strongest interpersonal skills and represented the chapter in a outstanding way. These folks might not be absolutely new to recruitment.

I think most chapters are going to do very well no matter how they decide to select participants and going with one fall pledge class avoids any hurt feelings.

There are pluses an minuses to any method of selecting them.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by 33girl

Yes, I'm aware of that at large chapters. The problem could come, as KC said, if the SAME 50 women (out of 200) are the only ones meeting ALL the PNMs. At a regular rush, you at least have all the chapter members' input as far as the women they did spend time with. I mean - what if those 50 sisters you pick to do the rushing don't want anyone who's (random example) on a sports team? They could come up with bogus reasons as to why they didn't like those PNMs and get people cut who the other 3/4 of the chapter would have really liked.

You would HOPE that wouldn't happen and that the chapter would have enough brains to pick a cross section of sisters who are different in all ways, but with chapter politics sometimes you never know.

Depending on the chapter's/GLO's voting policies, who knows, they might not be able to rotate sisters - maybe some of them say that you have to see a PNM twice to vote on them. I don't know, I'm just throwing that out there.

This may seem like a silly thing to point out, but I don't think most chapters who previously had spring recruitment were doing COB/COR events with the whole chapter rushing anyway. So, I'm guessing that with the relatively small size of anticipated quota (around 200/17?), it's just not a big risk. I suspect what we're talking about is letting slightly more than 25% of a chapter pick new members who will total less than 10% of the chapter, maybe much less than 10% at some chapters.