How Can We Maximize Greek Membership?

[carnation]

Every year, I hear of more and more PNMs who go bidless. These girls have good grades, good reputations, good activities--and they come out of recruitment without bids. Yesterday Tiger's mom (Tiger is the PNM whose rush I followed at Auburn) called, very upset, and said that she just learned that a PNM she met at AU went bidless, even though she attended 3 pref parties and ranked all 3. This is so wrong!

I remember that when I was in college, there were lots of girls who signed up for COB and never heard a thing, although there were sororities who had openings. Again--wonderful girls who didn't happen to know any Greeks who would bring their names up for membership.

What's the answer? Should total be raised? Should all sororites be given a spring quota of say, 5, and they would all participate in semi-formal spring recruitment?

By being so exclusive (if you didn't get a bid in Formal, too bad for you, bye), we're sowing a crop of Greek-haters. I'm sure many women know of other women who would've been super Greeks when they rushed years ago but slipped through the cracks and to this day, are still hurt when they talk about their rush.

What can we do?

[Buttonz]

I think that spring rush is important, for those girls that slip through the cracks. As stated many times on GC there are girls that are girls that anyone would love to be a sister with, but for whatever reason they go bidless.

Make "quota" a set number and anyone under total can pledge up to total of course. I'd say that number should be 5%-10% of total...so if total is 100, let spring quota be 5-10 something like that.

[hoosier]

1 - reduce the number of rules

2 - reduce the number of rules

3 - reduce the number of rules

i.e. make it easier to join. Spring rush for HS seniors, summer rush, open rush parties, no fees, no required meetings or visits, oral bids, no limits or quotas.

Let each chapter choose what methods and styles of rush work for them.

Most of your rush rules are made by the big and powerful sororities and their leaders - ostensibly to make everything 'fair and equal' - but actually the rules only help the large and powerful, and seriously hurt the small, weak, and young. They don't have a chance.

[Firehouse]

My god, Hoosier, yes! Let me stand behind you so I won't get hit by the arrows that are coming your way.
Reduce the rules and increase the number of sororities. The sororities here are huge and successful, but we lose one every four or five years because someone is always the weak house. Instead of adding more new blood whose enthusiasm could energize the enttie system, they take the attitude that, well, if a woman doesn't want to join the best houses, she can always join the weakest. Panhellenic Love and all that.
When I was a freshman, we had nineteen sororities, all well-housed. Today, the memberships are larger, but we only have fourteen sororities; we've lost five and we're probably going to lose a sixth. Plenty of women want to pledge; they just don't want to pledge a weak house. Add more chapters! There are sororities dying to come back here, and a few still own their old houses.
Carnation's criticizm is on target. Not only are women going bidless, but a lot of really top-qulity women don't even go through rush because the top sororities won't take anyone who's not a freshman.

[PhoenixAzul]

What I'm concerned by is the standards to which we hold PNM's. I'm not saying we should take every delinquent out there, but we all talk about girls with perfect grades and great service records and leadership and blah blah blah...and it's great that those girls want to be part of a sorority, but what about the women who haven't had those sorts of opportunities (Example: Homeschooling, rural living, transfer students from other countries, kids who worked 2 jobs to pay for school meaning that they couldn't attend the Little Sisters of the South Central Purple Rose meetings)? It doesn't mean that they are LESS worthy of membership, it means that they perhaps have MORE to GAIN from membership in a sorority. What is there to gain if we are allready filling our chapters with spotless women? I think that there are some GREAT women out there who would make tremendous contributions to the sorority world if they were given a chance.

Now how to do this..I don't know. The whole "application" thing is really foreign to me. OC doesn't require transcripts (deffered rush = first quarter grades used for freshmen) or any sort of application listing involvement...just name, number, SMC, and legacy status. Had there been an "application" per say... I don't know how half of OC would have been pledged. Just because we're fabulous now doesn't mean we came into this that way. I think that the sorority process is a great way to build leaders...perhaps we shouldn't be expecting them to cure cancer before we bid them.

[WCUgirl]

Originally posted by Firehouse
... Instead of adding more new blood whose enthusiasm could energize the enttie system, they take the attitude that, well, if a woman doesn't want to join the best houses, she can always join the weakest. Panhellenic Love and all that.
...Plenty of women want to pledge; they just don't want to pledge a weak house. ...
Carnation's criticizm is on target. Not only are women going bidless, but a lot of really top-qulity women don't even go through rush because the top sororities won't take anyone who's not a freshman.

YES. I get so sick of hearing about chapters who talk about other chapters during recruitment. Why does ABC need to talk about XYZ to the PNMs at their party? I know that everyone claims to endorse Panhellenic love and unity, etc., but we all know it's just not happening.

Dirty rushing needs to stop. PERIOD.

Also -- if the PNMs could just open their minds a tiny little bit more, they would realize that it's okay to not be in the top chapter. If they truly desired to be Greek, then they would be willing to step into a chapter with a not so great reputation and work to turn that chapter around. I'm not saying that PNMs should settle for a group where they know they wouldn't fit in, but let's face it -- PNMs are dropping chapters they have incorrectly heard are going to close or have low numbers or are at the bottom of the food chain simply because they are concerned with reputation. If we threw reputation out the window, we wouldn't have this problem.

[honeychile]

I think one way is to teach EVERY chapter how to successfully COB. In my own chapter's case, we never had to COB more than one or two women when I was there, so we were horrible at it!! I can remember someone from EO saying, "You just invite women who are in your classes to events you're having..." when I was a senior. HUH?! I was a senior! Anyone who hadn't gone Greek by then wasn't going to do so!

Same chapter mumble, mumble years later: Last year was the first year in several that they came quite so close to Quota, but they are amazing at COB & Retention! Somewhere along the road, they not only learned how to COB, but they mastered it!

Rush Education is key!!!

[KSUViolet06]

I agree with honeychile on the COB comment. Some of the best women in the KSU Greek system joined their chapter informally. It's a better fit for those who are nervous about the idea of formal recruitment.

[aephi alum]

Hmmm...

Originally posted by carnation
Yesterday Tiger's mom (Tiger is the PNM whose rush I followed at Auburn) called, very upset, and said that she just learned that a PNM she met at AU went bidless, even though she attended 3 pref parties and ranked all 3. This is so wrong!

First and foremost... that poor PNM! I can't imagine what it would be like to spend an evening having three different sororities tell you how much they want you to be their sister, and then not receive a bid from any of them. I wouldn't blame her if she's bitter.

Maybe some form of guaranteed bidding would help. If you attend pref and rank all the sororities you've preffed, you are guaranteed a bid from one of them. Of course, this can be dangerous - you'd need a way to prevent a situation where everyone prefs the same 2 or 3 sororities and therefore those sororities have huge NM classes while other sororities get no one. (i.e. you'd have to adhere strictly to release figures.)

I like the spring recruitment idea. At some schools, you either go through FR (or maybe COB) as a freshman and get a bid, or you don't join a sorority at all, because non-freshmen are routinely cut for not having 4 full years ahead of them. A spring recruitment with a small quota would give PNMs a second chance at the "top" sororities (which presumably have no trouble meeting quota/total, and therefore would not otherwise do a spring rush) as well as a second look at those sororities that did not meet quota/total.

I couldn't agree more about dirty rushing. Members should be focused on selling their own org, not bashing other orgs.

Maybe reducing the number of rules would help, but we in NPC-land like our rules.

[Kevin]

It seems to me that if all but say one organization on campus are constantly hitting quota that NPC should mandate that a new group be allowed to colonize.

We have just that problem at a university I am close with. There is one NPC group that suffered a pretty major scandal that resulted in around half of their chapter being expelled. They never recovered and to this day have not once gotten even close to hitting quota (although I guess their numbers are strong enough to justify their continued existance to their HQ).

While all of the other sororities are at the maximum (some over) in terms of membership, this group hovers around 18-30 members.

Quality girls go bidless every year when there could easily be two or three other groups replacing (or supplementing). Once a house earns a certain reputation, it's very difficult to cast it off. Especially in the NPC system.

[hoosier]

Yes, we'll force every girl to visit every house, so they can all see who has the prettiest girls, the nicest house, the nicest furniture, and the most trophies - and then we wonder why the girls don't want to join the other - and possibly smaller, younger - chapters.

If they've been rejected in formal rush, it's unlikely they'll COB.

Sororities are very lucky to have the alumnae involvement, supervising their chapters.

Sororities are very unlucky to have alumnae involvement, perpetuating silly old rules which help only the rich and powerful.

[Kevin]

Hoosier, we've been down this path a million times. This thread is almost as tired as "How is XYZ at your school?"

I think I've said more-less the same thing too many times to count.

[MSKKG]

I've known some women who joined a smaller GLO after being cut from "the one and only" GLO they just knew they'd get a bid from. Funny thing happened: they had more opportunities for leadership positions and personal growth than they would have in the larger GLO. Try convincing a brokenhearted 18-year-old that everything happens for the best! A lot of the PNMs we're referring to were Miss High School but don't realize there are 500 other Miss High Schools going through recruitment as well. I think their egos take a beating when everything doesn't go their way, so their heads can't think clearly.

One thing I'd like to see is all GLOs being able to pledge up to the largest GLO's numbers. Even if everyone makes quota, the smallest group will never reach the same membership numbers as the largest one (unless something happens to the large GLO to reduce its membership numbers). The smallest one should at least be offered the option of pledging more women, whether through formal recruitment or COB.

AXiD670--AMEN!!! Dirty rushing boils my blood! Let the chips fall where they may--if the PNM you adore pledges somewhere else, then so be it. How sad that some GLOs aren't confident enough in their own sisterhood to play fair.

[TxGirl]

New Release Figure Method (RFM) will help some - once it is implemented FULLY at all schools doing a formal recruitment.

This one could cause a few screams - but I think that if they did a quota for each classification (fresh, soph, jr, sr) that is would encourage more non-freshman woman to go through recruitment. Of course it would have to be put out to the campus at large that these women had more of a chance.

I've seen jr. quota a a couple of schools - it hasn't made a huge difference in the number of jrs going through - but that is more b/c PH doesn't really do any PR to get current students to register for recruitment.

Any thoughts?

As for having a "open" round where all the women get to see all the chapters. I think it's a good idea - much better than just getting a list of those inviting you back for the first round and being cut with no rhyme or reason (at least not that a PNM would understand).

I also think it would help if each chapter, through PH actually posted what their grade cuts were. Maybe their national standard is 2.25, but the chapter is #1 in grades on campus and doesn't take anyone below a 2.75. This way women would not be as surprised if they were released from some chapters b/c they would realize it was for grades. Grades are such a big qualifier now - like someone said earlier - everyone going through is "Miss High School".

I can remember 15 years ago when I was in the chapter. I was on recruitment team and EVERYONE was in NHS, Student Council or Student Government and was either in Band, or a Cheerleader/Pom Squad/Drill Team/Flags etc. It was really had in some cases to have something truly unique about a women. For me it wasn't always the school activities that set a woman apart, but what else she did - lifeguard, build a house in Mexico, was into rodeo, won 4-H stuff - something that would seem random to some, but that was the point. I also don't think that women put enough stuff like this on their applications b/c they simply don't know to. As before, they don't release that everyone else was "Miss HS" too.

[TxGirl]

Oh, and don't even get me started on dirty rushing and bid promising!