Quote:
Originally Posted by DeltaBetaBaby
Does anyone know about historical numbers of IU PNM's? Indiana was on my radar when I was selecting a school back in the late 90's, and I don't remember hearing that it was especially competitive, but I was also totally clueless on this type of thing. Has the bed rush always been a disaster, or was there a time when 1000 PNM's were rushing, and it made *some* sense that the chapters with bigger physical houses took more women?
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Just emailed my mom for her take, as she pledged an IU sorority in 1981. She says that her pledge class was 30 women and house total was 80 then (can't remember if that was set by PHA or her chapter). Her junior year, total was raised to 90 and they allowed senior live outs for the first time, increasing pledge class totals by 10. EDIT: she doesn't remember if PHA set total then, but she does remember that in 1983, they had 10 more girls living in the house because of a campus-wide mandate to increase numbers.
She's been reading this thread too, and says that the quota problem still existed in the early 80s (kind of the hey day of IU greek life, before a lot of crack downs happened) and that there were only 18 chapters on campus then.
In 1983, IU made national news for having the largest rush in the country with 1600 women. My mom was a rush counselor/rho gamma that year and remembered a lot of heartbreak. She says it was even worse then because you only got to attend 2 pref rounds, so a LOT of cross-cutting happened resulting in bidless women.
In re: 33girl's comment about little sis programs, my mom says those were more of a prelude to sorority membership more than anything, that lil sis women had easier times joining sororities because of their lil sis involvement.
Phi Mu came to campus in 1980 and had the entire chapter live in the Poplars building (then apartments, now offices), which she said helped with the stigma of being unhoused.
Basically what I'm getting at here is that these same issues have been around for DECADES at IU and nothing ever changes because the women in the greek system are winners of IU's hunger games-style recruitment, they like being elitists and could care less that they're excluding around 40% of the women who also would like to go greek. Something has to change, but I seriously doubt it ever will. I'm only 25, but a huge IU supporter still, even though I ended up transferring. A daughter of mine will never attend IU because of my experiences there.
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