PNMs and "cutting" chapters.
 

I liked where I read "back-up" as in, abc, def, ghi and jkl are my 1's and mno is my back-up.

I just responded in the other thread about referring to it (the lower-ranked chapter) as a "backup". Better phraseology, IMO...

The best way to think of this is, you are giving Panhel a way to weed out any EXTRA invites you might get. If you can only go to 7 parties, but 8 groups invite you back, the lowest group on your list gets the axe. Otherwise, you will go to every group that invites you back. You can only "cut" a chapter if all your favorites haven't cut you first.

We used to do the same thing in reverse. We could get invitations before our parties and cut chapters if we had more parties that we could go to. The other way gives Panhel more time to plan who goes to which parties and to inform the chapters which PNMs will be coming back that day.

I like that terminology.. backup. That's exactly how everyone should see it including my daughter.

But really what are the odds of getting your first choice house?

I prefer the old way. It makes way more sense to say to a PNM "Hey, you got invites to all 10, but you can only go to 7. Which ones do you want to cut?" than to allow them to rank and think they are cutting when they're not.

That being said, the way it's done now is a big time saver.

But I think it needs to be explained to PNMs much better. I think Panhellenics may be too afraid that it looks like just the sororities are cutting, so it's phrased in a way that makes it sound more mutual. Unfortunately, it's leading to a ton of misunderstandings and bad feelings.

That all depends on the school, the year's rush, the chapter, and the PNM. You can't Vegas-handicap it unfortunately. (I'm sure it would be done there if you could.)

There are some years where it seems everyone gets their first choice - chapters AND PNMs - and some years where it seems nobody does. You also have to throw in the factor that some people will remember things differently after the fact and report it thusly.

I agree. In the end, it's essentially the same thing, but to "cut" a chapter is very powerful.

There are many, many, many reasons why the new way is better. PNM confusion is pretty minor as compared to how it used to go.

Well, it's not that way for all PNMs. There are PNMs with quite a bit of power. We just hear a lot from the girls that are on this end of the spectrum. It's a bell curve. The other side is represented by girls that receive invitations from every group and get to pick and choose the chapters they return to visit. They have a lot more power than the chapters. In the end, they pick the chapter they want to join.

I agree. First off, I cannot tell you how many times I heard the word "cutting." No matter how many times the girls heard that they weren't "cutting" anyone or anything, they continued to think they were! Not everyone was happy that they were getting back houses they'd "cut."

I think I heard the term "alternate" used a few times. Like, on the first day, we indicated our top six sororities, followed by our bottom three in order, and they were our "alternates." I thought this was an interesting description (if you don't get all of your top six, you start filling from your alternates) and a very mutual term. I just wish the cutting thing had been emphasized more.

Back-up
 

Good choice. It took my daughter a few times to get that. She got her first choice; her first choice got her. In her version, many girls were happy and got their first choices. In my son's version as security watching from the upper decks there were many girls who were crying and were unhappy...I had a hard time imaging they were at the same bid day event!:D

Maybe your son was looking extra hard for girls he could "console." Not that I am saying your son is a li'l player or anything. :p

My daughter had one of her fellow pledges cry almost all day. She didn't get her first choice and "ended up" with her back-up house. It's a shame that a girl would feel that way. Too bad she couldn't look around and see all the happy girls, and just be thrilled to be a part of it!

And by the way, what a buzz kill. This is how you want to make friends? Being the whiny drama queen? It's one thing to take a moment and be sad but to hang crepe all day? What did she think was going to happen, that the sorority was going to apologize to her?

That's a little harsh. If you've had your heart set on one thing and end up with another, no matter how much of an open mind you've kept, it can be devastating. Especially if the bid reveal was done in the open in front of the entire campus. At least if it's in private you can have time to get your feelings out, but if you have NO private time, I can see where it would be harder to get a hold of yourself.

Any groups whose school still reveals bids in this horrid fashion should probably appoint a DPW (Disappointed Pledge Wrangler) whose sole job is to take disappointed NMs aside and let them vent it all out.

It certainly wouldn't hurt to have a DPW mainly to keep the weepy from contaminating the rest of the pledge class.

But I think girls should be coached by their recruitment counselors in advance not to act this way. At some point, and I know it goes against the whole grain of only putting things in the best possible light that many campuses do, PNMs should be told that to remember that they may get the 2nd and 3rd choices they put down on their bid cards and that they should be prepared to suck up their disappointment and try to have a good time at bid day anyway.

I'm sure some of them ARE coached by their rho chi, and their emotions just overtake them anyway. It happens.

For those who remember - was it any better when bid day included a mixer? I mean if you did have weepy pledges, did they get over it a little bit when they went to the fraternity house full of hot men? (Not to mention beer)

But, really, can't one get over most disappointments by going to a house full of hot men and adult beverages?

That depends on whether the question is "first choice from the very beginning" or "first choice of what's left after the cuts." I'm going to guess that by Preference, the three houses left for the majority of PNMs will not be their top three favorites from Open House.

If you are asking "first choice in the Preference Round," well, U of I prints those statistics. For 2010, 1,258 NPMs attended Open House rounds. Of those, 908 NPMs completed recruitment as follows: 746 received their 1st choice, 129 received their 2nd choice, and 33 received their 3rd choice. Two NPMs were released by all chapters, and 360 chose to withdraw (25%!).

I have actually heard of a few PNMs actually cutting a chapter prior to Pref Night. These ladies specifically left off a chapter from their party list. Didn't know PNMs had the option to not rank a chapter. Has anyone heard of this happening at other campuses?

I believe I've read here that at some schools that will get you cut from rush and at others it will make you ineligible for quota additions. I have mixed feelings about this. One one hand I think the girls should give every chapter as many chances as they can as long as there are spots on their schedule. On the other hand, if she is utterly not willing to give a chapter a chance, then she might as well not show to a party and the chapter can focus on the girls who do have some social grace.

Actually
 

my daughter is stressing way more over the big/little reveal than she ever did with recruitment!

I figured out that cutting didn't mean literally "cutting" after the first party haha.

It's especially confusing to PNMs because the term is used when THEY are cut from a house and when they personally can "cut" a house.

I think that term (cutting) is a carryover from the past. we used to "cut"women, now we "release" them. They used to "cut" chapters but we called it "declined." Some things have just not caught up.

As stated earlier in this thread, I think it is all about education and how it is served up. I think there is a lot of confusion because these women are not told in detail how it works. Recruitment, for the most part, is still shrouded in mystery on BOTH sides. Every year we try to educate our women on what really happens but there are still all kinds of misconceptions and weird ideas that the Chapter gets about how recruitment invitation lists work.

The perfect PNM that has the perfect recruitment does get to "cut" chapters because every chapter is giving her an invite. These are the girls that are having perfect recruitments. The rest of the PNM's have to make decisions based on the invites they have received for that day. Like it has been said on here many times before "treat this day as the first day and these are the ONLY chapters on this campus" I think that is the best advice to give.

And these girls go on to be Rho Chis, just as members who didn't have the perfect rush do. Therefore, it is easy to see why the term "cutting" is used by some Rho Chis, even though we think that they have been better educated.

Bumping cause this is important information.

I think this is an interesting thread and useful information for any ladies anticipating going through PanHel recruitment in the future. As a member of a LGLO I have always wondered who has ultimate control during recruitment, the chapter or the pnm? It seemed to me, from the outside looking in, that the chapter had the last word in who stays and who goes. How is it from a chapter perspective, what control does a pnm have during recruitment?

In a very selective school (like most SEC schools), the sororities (especially the strongest ones), wield the power.

Funny you should ask that, there's a whole other sticky about it:

http://www.greekchat.com/gcforums/sh...d.php?t=127132

The PNM has the first choice of all the chapters who want her.

If every chapter wants her, she gets her first pick of all of them.
If only 2 chapters want her, she gets her pick of those two.

Maybe I'm overstating what Splash said, but I thought that was how it worked? :confused: Example:

During the party rounds, Awesome PNM Alex gets invited back to many groups. Because more chapters want Alex than there are parties for that day, she goes back to the chapters she ranked higher (or regrets chapters, depending on the system).

Alex prefs at the maximum two chapters, and ends up on the first bid list of both. Where she ends up then depends on which one she ranked first after pref.

Or is that not what Splash said and I'm confusing myself?