Who Has Removed Preferential Treatment for Legacies?

[carnation]

A problem there might be that non-members can write a positive rec about a terrible girl (maybe due to pressure from a relative or neighbor?) with no problems to them if the girl pledges and wrecks the chapter.

[bevinpiphi]

Originally Posted by carnation

A problem there might be that non-members can write a positive rec about a terrible girl (maybe due to pressure from a relative or neighbor?) with no problems to them if the girl pledges and wrecks the chapter.

We still got positive recs for terrible women from members. The person writing the rec only knew what the woman presented, and didn't know that underneath she was a verbally abusive, manipulative narcissist. Or didn't know that the woman did a pretty good job of hiding her cocaine habit...until she didn't. Or that another was dealing ecstasy under the table. On the surface, especially to alums, these women would look great...but not once you dug deeper. Some of them we may not have offered bids to without the positive recs, but all of them became standards nightmares.

Recommendation letters are a sticky thing, with no right answer, and not universally helpful (or unhelpful - I no rec'd my brother's cheating, controlling ex with zero regrets over it - and then she ended up expelled from the university in her 2nd semester)

[ASTalumna06]

Originally Posted by bevinpiphi

We still got positive recs for terrible women from members. The person writing the rec only knew what the woman presented, and didn't know that underneath she was a verbally abusive, manipulative narcissist. Or didn't know that the woman did a pretty good job of hiding her cocaine habit...until she didn't. Or that another was dealing ecstasy under the table. On the surface, especially to alums, these women would look great...but not once you dug deeper. Some of them we may not have offered bids to without the positive recs, but all of them became standards nightmares.

Recommendation letters are a sticky thing, with no right answer, and not universally helpful (or unhelpful - I no rec'd my brother's cheating, controlling ex with zero regrets over it - and then she ended up expelled from the university in her 2nd semester)

Exactly. It could go either way. Because many of these women are getting recs to simply check a checkbox. We actually encourage it, telling them to tap into their local panhellenic group or to ask anyone and everyone they've ever known in their entire lives if they are a sorority member or know a sorority member who can get them a rec. So perhaps they got their seventh grade English teacher who's an ABC to write them a rec, but hey, that PNM has changed quite a bit since seventh grade. And when considering some young women aim to have two recs to every sorority at schools with 15+ chapters, it stands to reason that some of those are of the "I got my friend's stepsister's aunt to write this" variety.

[carnation]

Oh, I realize that. Where they're valuable is if we're trying to find out about unknown girls, like those from small schools, or if we're trying to find out about girls who would rip up a chapter.

[DaffyKD]

Originally Posted by bevinpiphi

We still got positive recs for terrible women from members. The person writing the rec only knew what the woman presented, and didn't know that underneath she was a verbally abusive, manipulative narcissist. Or didn't know that the woman did a pretty good job of hiding her cocaine habit...until she didn't. Or that another was dealing ecstasy under the table. On the surface, especially to alums, these women would look great...but not once you dug deeper. Some of them we may not have offered bids to without the positive recs, but all of them became standards nightmares.

Recommendation letters are a sticky thing, with no right answer, and not universally helpful (or unhelpful - I no rec'd my brother's cheating, controlling ex with zero regrets over it - and then she ended up expelled from the university in her 2nd semester)

I was asked to write several recs who needed them at the last minute for an SEC school. National would send me their contact into since I was the President of our local AC. I met each of the women at a Starbucks and talked to them, asked questions based of their rsume. When I wrote the final copy of the rec, I made sure that the chapter knew that I was basing my remarks on a 10 minute conversation and would not guarantee the veracity of what they had to say. One girl joined a chapter that was not from my sorority and the others never let me know where or if they ended up somewhere. Recs are useless in my opinion when they are written by some random someone who has no real information on the PNM.

DaffyKD