[shadokat]

As a LONG TIME advisor, and having pledged 24 years ago, the NM program has become somewhat ridiculous.

As a pledge, I was required to interview each sister and get their signature by showing them I knew stuff about them. We had NM projects like creating a NM class banner, creating a sisterhood banner, having a theme party for the chapter, doing a fundraising event (think a bake sale) for philanthropy, scavenger hunts and a couple other things. I never was a DD for drunk sisters, I never had to cook or clean or do favors for actives or that nonsense.

Today, the NMs are required to do little more than go to 2 meetings a week, go to their NM rituals and that's about it. Much of the "getting to know you" with sisters is gone from programs, sanitized with a national NM program. Then, when women are initiated (which subsequently, when I pledged, we didn't know when we were being initiated...we had a night when we were done with our NM program, called getting in, and we were initiated the following semester provided we passed the NM test and met grades), but when women are initiated, they are constantly overprogrammed because they think sorority is going to 2 meetings a week. But no, now they have to go to chapter, go to their committee meetings, go to philanthropy events, go to sisterhood events, go to workshops, go to ritual, go to recruitment, go to formal, go to mixers...GO GO GO! And everything is freaking mandatory. So now you've sold these NMs a bill of goods that they didn't sign up for, and they end up saying fuck this, I don't need this stress, because I never became invested in this sorority thing during the first 6 weeks of sorority life.

Nothing is going to change this...we're not turning the clock back to doing sister interviews and scavenger hunts. And we're still going to treat our NMs as princesses, and then once they get initiated, we will treat them like the work horse we expect everyone to be. Sorry, just calling it like I see it, and I see it ALL THE TIME!