Why is Rush so Cut-throat on the Sororities' End at Big Greek Schools?

[James]

I have figured it out. I think . . .



I'll make a thread to discuss this later but I thought I would quickly chime in.

In the schools with really "competitive" Rush, Formal Rush is designed to give quota to the majority of houses based almost exclusively on incoming freshmen that are begging to join. They don't have to recruit anyone.

An automatic population if you will.

The local PC knows approximately how many girls are coming through formal every year. In order to ensure that most houses get quota without having to COB, quota has to be designed around a smaller number than actually comes out.

Which is why its necessary to devise a system that has heavy cutting. IF quota matched the initial numbers that signed up for rush, the most popular houses would still get quota, but more of the bottom and middle tier would have to COB.

So it "appears" fairer for the more popular houses to really have to cut, because it reduces overall numbers in such a way that quota is more attainable for the less popular chapters.

Which is a bit of a mental hallucination, because if quota was higher more PNMs might actually end up placed in the top houses they wanted (the ones that cut them because they had to), but it would look like there was a greater discrepancy in the less popular houses.

For example, the less popular house gets 50 when quota is 60, or gets 50 when quota is 70.

Thats operating uner the assumption that a decent amount of girls that get cut from top houses refuse to pledge bottom tier ones. And since i know people that have done that, I believe its true.

So if I am correct, the system loses the girls that the top or middle tier would have liked to take if they could, but refuse to pledge bottom tier houses.

Is that a problem? And is there a solution? I think its a good discussion point.

[AnchorAlumna]

James, honey.
Almost 9 on a Saturday night, and you're posting a reply on a sorority-related thread that two weeks old.
A good-looking guy like you ought to be ought having fun.
Turn the computer off. Step away. Turn around. Get out of the house. I promise you the computer will be there tomorrow.
(I have an excuse...I'm old and married and too pooped to pop out).

[James]

LOL, we go out late in the NE Although tonight was an early night, just a late dinner.

Originally posted by AnchorAlumna
James, honey.
Almost 9 on a Saturday night, and you're posting a reply on a sorority-related thread that two weeks old.
A good-looking guy like you ought to be ought having fun.
Turn the computer off. Step away. Turn around. Get out of the house. I promise you the computer will be there tomorrow.
(I have an excuse...I'm old and married and too pooped to pop out).

[FSUZeta]

great observations, as always. and anchoralumna:too funny!!

All this talk about southern schools and rush......

When i went to Arkansas and When i was a RA it was pretty intense

My first roommate dropped out and moved back to washington state because she didnt get the house she wanted....she took the bid that was given to her and dropped out 3 days later...making me dodge the calls from the house.


When i was an RA i had to watch very carefully for a few girls on my floor because one was very emotionally upset and we did in fact have to watch her for suicide watch.

this all makes me very glad i was an Alum Initiate. I went thru rush and didn't get a bid ( age is a big factor) and the other house i was suppose to go thru COB with was closing down so they couldn't even save it with one more new member

At Arkansas Rush is some SERIOUS SERIOUS business! Very cut throat. The houses on campus are all pretty big names and everyone knows them coming on.

I come from a HUGE southern Family and have cousins and aunts who are top tier GLOS and they say the same thing.....

southern ancestry, tradition, legacy, reputation, cut throat, $$$!

[KSUViolet06]

Originally posted by cutiepatootie
All this talk about southern schools and rush......
When i went to Arkansas and When i was a RA it was pretty intense.
When i was an RA i had to watch very carefully for a few girls on my floor because one was very emotionally upset and we did in fact have to watch her for suicide watch.
At Arkansas Rush is some SERIOUS SERIOUS business! Very cut throat. The houses on campus are all pretty big names and everyone knows them coming on.

I'm always shocked and amazed when I hear about how competitive rush is schools like Arkansas, LSU, Ole Miss, etc.

Makes me very glad that I go to a big "Yankee" school- Kent State- where we're exstatic if we get close to 250 PNMs, are overwhelmed with a quota of like 25, 95% of PNMs get their top choice, and a WHOPPING 4 women went totally bidless last fall

[Firehouse]

James, you pose an interesting question. You have asked about all the women who drop out of sorority rush because they are not willing to pledge a house of lower prestige. You've asked whether that's a problem, and if so, what is the solution.
I believe I know the answer (as I believe you do too), but there are two problems: 1) Women are smarter than us men generally, and since they are aware of that they assume that our answer carries no real importance and that they alone are right about all things to do with sorority rush; and 2) since we are guys and have enough to keep us busy with our own fraternity chapters, we should consider the possibility that sorority rush is none of our business.
That said, I am happy to provide the simple answer to your question: free enterprise.
Sorority formal rush has evolved into the most rigidly structured form of socialism. Everyone except the very worst chapter is guaranteed a pledge class, and the top chapters are guaranteed a top pledge class with very little effort on their part. The aboslute worst is deferred formal rush. By January, everyone knows who's who. Potential members certainly know who's on top, and who's on the bottom, and as for the middle - well, who cares?
Yet, the most vocal and most passionate supporters of formal soroity rush with all its convoluted terms and rules seem to be the chapters that dwell in the lower half of the heirarchy. They cling to the myth - somehow, for some reason - that the Panhellenic ideal is that we all love each other and all houses are equally respected, and that it doesn't really matter which house you join because we're all Greeks together working on Homecoming floats and Dance Marathon and isn't that the most important thing after all...
The sororities at the top benefit the most. They have the reputations, and they know that even if they TRY to screw up in rush they're going to do well, because they know no matter what happens, under the rigid rule structure YOUR sorority is never allowed to pledge any more girls than MY sorority. There's literally no chance that some dynamic, enthusiastic, creative rush chairman and her chapter can come in and clean your clock. If quota is 45, they're not allowed to pedge 70 and set the campus on its ear. We had this discussion in another thread about fraternities at Oklahoma. Until recent years a have-not, the upstart Sig Eps pledged 75 men - about 25 more than the IFC "allowed" - as a way of breaking into the elite. The biggest complaints came not from the top tier fraternities, but from those in the middle or near the bottom. "SigEp took guys we would have gotten." Well, you should have gotten them yourself anyway, if you were ambitious. You see, the middle tier houses have no ambition to be anything other than what they are. They seem astonished ny the fact that given the choice, men would rather have a Mercedes than a Kia provided that the cost is the same. The mid-tier groups want the protection of limiting the number of Mercedes sold. Yes, they're guaranteed to sell some Kias, but they'll never have Mercedes dealership.
A free enterprise system for sororities would mean that any given sorority has the opportunity to improve their standing in the pecking order. At large, established systems such an opportunity does not now exist.
Free enterprise for sororities does not mean that they have to give up formal rush. But, if you want to see more women in the system, and fewer drop out of rush, then remove the caps (total) and restrictions on rush (quota). Let XYZ sorority earn their pledge class, and let lower-standing-but-ambitious ABC sorority pledge as many as they want in formal rush. To say the low-performers can always rush later like saying the law is fair because prohibits kings as well as beggers from sleeping under bridges. In the minds of rushees, when formal rush is over, it's ALL over. Often, sororities forced to open rush afterward lack confidence to be effective and are stigmitized as being not good enough.
If rush is wide open from a numbers standpoint, then the different chapters will rush differently. They won't all have the same skits and all sing the same praises of the Panhellenic Ideal. Those who are more aggressive will be rewarded; those who are lazy will pay a price. I've heard some on this board imply that "a pledge class of 75 or a chapter of 200 is unweildy." Why? What do you care? What business is it of yours? If So-and-So sorority is the one everyone is dying to join, let them pledge 100 if they want. If their chapter grows to 300 or 400, then according to those who say it's "unweildy", that sorority will collapse under its own weight and someone else will take their place. The fact is that those things just don't happen. In a free system, there's always someone who's lazy and loses their grip on the top spot, and there's always someone else who's ambitious and wants to take it from them. In a free system, the rushees are impressed by the dynamic sales abilities that sorority women are then allowed to show.
Here's a simple question: in a sorority formal rush, if quota is 35 and total is, say 100, why can't the small 30-member sorority pledge 50 or 60 girls in formal rush if they can get them to join? Panhellenic can provide no legitimate answer to that question. "It's the rules", they say and cast their eyes Heavenward as if to say I wish we could help you but we can't possibly violate the sanctity of The Rules, even if it makes sense.
What would such changes accomplish? Well, free enterprise would bring more women into the system, and the system would be forced to add new chapters to meet increased demand. Women might start out wanting to join XYZ because of their reputation, but once exposed to the unconventional rush tactics of ABC, they might find they like that experience more.
Isn't all this kind of what you had in mind, James?

[AnchorAlumna]

Firehouse,
Your reasoning makes a lot of sense. I think you are probably right.
One point: you ask, "if quota is 35 and total is, say 100, why can't the small 30-member sorority pledge 50 or 60 girls in formal rush if they can get them to join?"
The answer is yes, according to NPC rules, they can. Now, the individual campus may restrict to quota during formal rush, but after Bid Day, yes, they may pledge up to total, and have a new member class of however many it takes to get up to total.
Someone please set me straight, but I believe NPC is testing out going away from "chapter total" to a concept of "average chapter size" or something like that.

[pinkyphimu]

Originally posted by Firehouse
In the minds of rushees, when formal rush is over, it's ALL over. Often, sororities forced to open rush afterward lack confidence to be effective and are stigmitized as being not good enough.

this i agree with...almost 100%! i completely disagree that some groups lack confidence with the cob process. for some smaller chapters, they are MUCH better at the relaxed and less fake process known as COB. i completly agree with the rest of this statement. some rushees would rather not be greek at all than consider going through cob. there are definately people (greek and nongreek) on campus that will look down on the chapter or two that have to cob...which only makes PNMs want to be a part of that chapter less.

it is kind of annoying because in reality, there is probably nothing bad about the chapters who need to cob. it is hard to break out of a cycle, especially if your campus is steeped in traditions and if the repuations continue...even years after they have changed.

my biggest pet peeve during this time of recruitment threads occurs when suzie pnm writes that she didn't get asked back to any houses she wanted, so she dropped out. we all are trying to be supportive and say, "oh honey, give cob a try" when realistically, the chapters that invited her back....are the ones who will be cobing....and are the ones she felt like it would be better to drop out of recruitment than to even go to their parties. do you think she is really going to go to cob? no...i hate that we pretend she will! (sorry this just makes me aggravated)

[James]

This needed to be quoted and I added the emphasis.

Originally posted by pinkyphimu

my biggest pet peeve during this time of recruitment threads occurs when suzie pnm writes that she didn't get asked back to any houses she wanted, so she dropped out. we all are trying to be supportive and say, "oh honey, give cob a try" when realistically, the chapters that invited her back....are the ones who will be cobing....and are the ones she felt like it would be better to drop out of recruitment than to even go to their parties. do you think she is really going to go to cob? no...i hate that we pretend she will! (sorry this just makes me aggravated)

[Lindz928]

I'm not sure exactly why you wanted to emphasize that James, but it is absolutely true.

Most of the people who drop out of rush do it because they were cut from the "top" houses. No one goes through rush wanting the bottom tier chapter. Everyone wants to be in the top houses, that's one of the reasons they are known as the best. So naturally, if everyone wants to be in the top house, that house will not have to worry about making quota... They will get all of their top choice PNM's. They are never going to have to COB. So, the girls who drop out because they were cut from their top choice has almost no chance of getting COBed by that chapter.

The reason that I think we try to talk these poor PNMs into COB is because once they get past the "I have to be in the top house" idea, they are VERY likely to find a sorority that they will be more at home in than they could have thought possible.

I have said before that when I went through, I did not get my top choice house... BUT I decided that being GREEK was the most important thing to me. And in the end, I ended up in a sorority that I have been SO much happier with than I think I would have been had I gotten a bid from XYZ. I LOVE my sorority, and I would not change it for anything.

So, I think we encourage COB because we want these girls to be open-minded and take a look at what they might not have paid any attention to at first glance.

If anyone thinks I am wrong with any of this, please feel free to let me know.

[Munchkin03]

Why is Rush so cut-throat at Big Greek Schools?

Because so many of them know that this is the One Big Thing in their lives.

[James]

But Lindz928, your bottom tier chapter was 120 girls lol, twice the size of total for many chapters in the NE.

Puts things in perspectives.

[Lindz928]

Alot of those schools might not have 45,000 students and more than 800 PNM's each year.

Also, I realize that 120 seems like a large chapter. But, when all but one other chapter has at least 175, and the majority of chapters have 200+, you must see how it can look differently.

ETA: I do see what you are trying to say though.

[pinkyphimu]

Originally posted by Lindz928
No one goes through rush wanting the bottom tier chapter.

i wouldn't agree with that...mainly because i only went through rush in order to become a member of the house that was considered the "bottom chapter." why? because the other three houses on my campus had very, very, very open hazing practices....and still do. i never really thought that getting food thrown at me in the middle of the street next to the president's house was a part of sisterhood. my chapter was considered the "bottom" because we didn't haze...and because we were younger than the other chapters. i am not saying that this reasoning works at most campus....or any other campus for that matter.

eta: cob is great for women who never really considered going through formal recruitment...but in my experience, very few of the women who dropped out of, or were dropped from formal recruitment end up going through cob.