Recruitment Fees

[suzipiphi]

At my school they don't charge a fee to go through recruitment, but in a round about way the charge you once you get in a sorority. We have a weird greek system, 300 girls signed up to go through with 150 actually participating and 124 accepting bids. What we do at NMSU is they charge the sororities for each new member they get and in turn the induvidual chapter charges the new member.

I learned this all in our greek leadership class. And taking this class proves two things: you either are obsessed with being Greek and/or you need an easy A.

[KappaKittyCat]

Hmm. We don't have a fee.

[LouisaMay]

My alma mater charges only $5 for Rush registration. No t-shirts, of course. We were given a little booklet with info on each of the sororities.

LM

[DaisyCrazy]

At my school, when I went through it was about $15 and you got a little booklet with information on the chapters. Now (6 years later) it's about $35, you get a t-shirt and a booklet. The money goes to pay for the printing of the t-shirts and booklets, for the reserving of the rooms in the Student Union, and the zillions of copies of stuff that Panhellenic has to give out.

[shadokat]

Funny thing is that a friend of mine and I were talking about recruitment fees the other night, and she said that her school only had 75 girls signed up for recruitment and normally they have 150. They thought maybe the recruitment fee was one of the reasons, so they abolished the recruitment fee and made it free to rush. Within 2 weeks, they went from 75 women to over 300...so do we think that these fees are worth it?

[Nhfulmer]

When you speak of what you "get" for your fee, you are not thinking about the costs that you do not see. Rush booklets have to be laid out and printed (the cost can depend on how elaborate the booklet is), mailings, refreshments, training Rho Chi's (or whatever they are called now), clerical workers if PH delegates do not take care of it, and many miscellaneous fees. Believe me, the money does not just fund a tee shirt and a booklet. PH is not looking to make money from rush - they just need to cover expenses.

I'm curious - when the school dropped the fees and a great many more girls signed up, how many actually pledged? Sometimes the fees weed out those who just go through to see what it is like -- this can really mess up quota! If you pay the fee, you are probably serious about pledging.

[GeekyPenguin]

Originally posted by Nhfulmer
I'm curious - when the school dropped the fees and a great many more girls signed up, how many actually pledged? Sometimes the fees weed out those who just go through to see what it is like -- this can really mess up quota! If you pay the fee, you are probably serious about pledging.

So we should only take girls who have wanted to be in a sorority since they were five? I can think of a lot of great sisters, some of them on GC, who would have been lost this way.

What if a girl goes through to "see what it is like" and doesn't pledge, but later becomes a tour guide for State U and encourages her prospects to rush? 30 of those girls then end up pledging, even though this girl wasn't "serious" about rush.

[33girl]

I think that a fee of some sort is a good idea, because there ARE people who will just go through that have no intention of actually joining and are rushing solely to poke their noses into the system. It should be small enough that unsure people can afford it, but large enough that people who are just doing it to make a big sport of it will stay away.

However, when the fees get too out of hand, and don't include sleeping arrangements or anything (like mullet81's $90 t-shirt) it's sending a subtle message about what kind of girls should go through rush and join sororities.

[shadokat]

Originally posted by Nhfulmer
I'm curious - when the school dropped the fees and a great many more girls signed up, how many actually pledged? Sometimes the fees weed out those who just go through to see what it is like -- this can really mess up quota! If you pay the fee, you are probably serious about pledging.

I'll let you know. They start recruitment tonight. My own school never charged fees for recruitment. They covered the expenses they may have to incur through the actual DUES we paid each semester.

[KappaKittyCat]

Yeah, our Panhel dues cover recruitment. Here we practically have to pay freshmen to go through recruitment. We're lucky if we get thirty women per year. I can't imagine how awful it'd become if we actually charged for it.

"Yep, you're buying your friends. See? You even have to pay to go through it!"

[Kristin AGD]

When I went through rush at UNT and didn't get a bid (sophmore w/ no clue), I didn't even think about getting a refund. Maybe I should have. LOL. But after I had spent so much money on pictures, clothes, make-up etc... The recruitment fee was just a drop in the bucket.

I think big schools need those fees. Especially the schools with hundreds of girls going through. Obviously at those schools the students are pretty familiar with the benefits of our sisterhoods. But at small schools I think it is up to us to foot the bill. The benefits of joining a sorority need to be publicized. And we don't want anything to detract the students from giving greek life a chance.

[tunatartare]

Wow, I never even heard of having to pay or register for recruitment. At my school, recruitment starts in the 2nd or 3rd week of school and anyone who wants to can attend without signing up. The only rule is that freshman can't go through rush in their first semester. Because of it, first semester recruitment is really small and usually roughly 10 girls turn out. You have to come to at least 2 of the 3 nights of rush to get a bid and it's school policy that every rushee gets a bid and they divide the number of rushees by 4 (the number of sororities) to see how many bids they can give out. For example, when I rushed, there were 36 of us rushing so that meant that each sorority gave out 9 bids. You can't COB so you have to go through rush, but if you don't get your first choice bid, you can decline your bid and open bid your first choice. When you go through rush you're given a small pamphlet about the sororities on campus each sorority gets one sheet of paper to print whatever they want. Student activities just runs off a bunch of copies of it and that doesn't really cost much. My school is really not big on Greek Life so I don't think that many people would even come to rush if they charged for recruitment.

[DeltaBetaBaby]

What about sponsors? At U of I, local businesses donate things like bags.

[HotDamnImAPhiMu]

I went through rush "just to see what it was like." Then I pledged, was initated, and was a pretty productive member of the chapter. Then I moved on to the alumna group and am working on being a pretty productive member of that, too.

[AlphaChiCutie]

I think here at UGA it is around $90. I figure most of that money goes to rush food and the cost of putting all the 58 rho chis and exec in a hotel for aweek.