NPC Recruitment & Chapter Listing: Fall 2015-Spring 2016

[ComradesTrue]

Observation, without trying to call out any specific chapter on any specific campus:

For years it seemed that RFM was doing its job of creating somewhat equality with quota numbers. This year, more than any year I can remember in the RFM era, seems to have some chapters missing quota by a lot. As in, they are taking about 25% of quota.

This occurred last fall on a few campuses and scrolling through recent postings it continues to happen.

What accounts for this? The only thing I can think of is the "other" website where people rank and post vile comments about perceived bottom chapters. Are they getting regular pref parties but more people are not listing them on their bid cards because of tent talk that has now moved online?

Does anyone have other ideas? It wouldn't make sense that RFM is this broken this many years in. These numbers remind me of my days pre-RFM. We had a chapter on campus that would only get about 1/4-1/2 the size of the other chapters and it closed while I was there.

[Griffins&Quills]

I was just about to say the same thing, that it looks like at almost every school there's one group that's quite a bit below the others. I thought RFM was designed to fix this?

[DubaiSis]

I think there are 2 possible reasons for that. 1 is there are so many brand new chapters and they are growing slowly. At least in the case of a few chapters I can think of they are not doing the numbers the more established chapters on campus are doing, but they are growing slowly and with intention. We all know the success rate of taking any warm body for the long term success of a chapter.
And 2-I think they've tightened up RFM so much that a strong chapter just has to be off a little bit and their numbers can be ruined, although I wouldn't expect it to be 25% of the others, but maybe more like 25% less. In those cases it doesn't reflect in the immediate numbers but they're probably right back on par within a few weeks.
Oh, and a 3-you may be seeing numbers that you traditionally don't see. A lot of sororities don't want to share bad numbers because of PR. But they can get out anyway! I'd rather see them so we can see positive change over time. But I'm a geek that way and not an 18 year old girl freaked out about joining "that house."

[irishpipes]

I know one chapter in the situation you describe - it was already a weak recruiting chapter, but it did fairly well in COB and had plenty of members to meet a budget, but was not popular with PNMs. Then, a couple of colonizations effectively killed the chapter. It's still open, but I don't see how it could possibly stay that way.

[shadokat]

We've all seen it a zillion times on here, and from my work with collegiate women today, most would prefer to not be greek at all before they would consider joining a "Lower Tier" chapter. It's not all, but many. Lots of schools have high ISP numbers, meaning the women are maximizing their options til the end, but come the end, they know that they won't accept a bid from anything other sorority than their top choice.

I had to deal with a mother this semester whose daughter was a legacy of a chapter. Her daughter absolutely did NOT want her mom's sorority, but had her heart set on another sorority. When it came to ranking parties, she was only ranking the ones she was going to, and then her regret chapters she just had ranked as 2, 3, 4 based on where they were on the screen. So for instance if she had 3 chapters to go back to and had to regret 2 others, she'd rank the 3 chapters as ones, and then 2 and 3 were just ranked by however they showed up on her screen. Needless to say, her legacy chapter was an ALPHA, and the stuff was appearing in alphabetical order. So while she said she wasn't ranking them highly, they usually ended up as her first regret chapter, and when she lost one of her top choices, the legacy chapter was the first to come into play. At the end of it all, she got a bid to the legacy chapter, and said no way. She said she'd rather wait a year and try to go through again than take a bid from them. We told her that her chances for going Greek decrease as she will be a junior, and she said she didn't care, she didn't want the bid.

Anyway, long story short, lots of factors play in, but I do think RFM is working. With all of the expansion that we've seen, I know there have been several schools who had a weak recruiting chapter or a smaller chapter but voted for expansion anyway, and it will more than likely be at the expense of that smaller chapter.

[Griffins&Quills]

That's another thing...why do panhellenics vote for expansion when there is a clear struggling chapter?

[DubaiSis]

It doesn't necessarily hurt the struggling chapter. Let's say there are 10 chapters with quota of 50 and one that gets 25. So presuming all factors stay the same, 11 chapters would make quota be 45 for the ones making quota and the one making 25 may or may not do any better or worse. That is a factor that can't be accounted for since the reason the girls aren't accepting their bids to there can be vast and nutty. Now, that is presuming the 11th chapter is drawing from the entire pool and not from the struggling chapter. And that's what the people in favor of expansion are thinking. At some schools, there seems to just have to be a bottom chapter and the new one won't necessarily affect that order at all. Or maybe it will and the struggling chapter will be seen as a better option than the new chapter.

If you have a school that is just bursting out of its seams, but has one chapter that just continues to struggle, do you really make the rest of the chapters deal with a huge number of members instead of expanding and alleviating some of that pressure? If the struggle has been that way for years, holding your breath waiting for them to fix it helps nobody.

[irishpipes]

Because nothing short of a miracle will save a chapter like that. Nothing, not even magical RFM, can force young women to pledge a chapter they just don't want. RFM can help, or delay the inevitable, but some chapters just aren't viable, and the system may need expansion to help other chapters and give PNMs an option they will consider. Expansion can speed up the death of a weak chapter, but it usually was already in a death spiral.

[DeltaBetaBaby]

Originally Posted by Griffins&Quills

That's another thing...why do panhellenics vote for expansion when there is a clear struggling chapter?

And it can actually *help* a struggling chapter if it slows down the growth of the other chapters by reducing quota.

E.g. four chapters, 100 PNM's, quota = 25, WRC gets 10 and has to COB 15 to catch up.

five chapters, 100 PNM's, quota = 20, WRC gets 10 and only has to COB 10 to catch up.

That's a vastly simplified example, obviously, but for chapters that don't do well in formal recruitment, it can be beneficial for quota to be smaller, as usually happens when another chapter is brought on.

Also, if the WRC doesn't have enough members to match 1-to-1 with PNM's, adding another chapter will shrink each PNM group and help with that as well.

[Griffins&Quills]

Ah that all makes sense. I guess I was thinking of the girls who would normally go to that WRC but because there's a colony, instead of putting that chapter down, and giving it a shot, they drop out with the mentality "well, I'll just get a bid from the colony"

[clemsongirl]

I think we forget sometimes that while RFM is great for increasing a PNM's realistic options by forcing her to return to groups she has more of a chance at, at the end of the day it can't force a girl to join a WRC if she would rather implode than accept that bid. I see it happen a lot on my campus where many girls, especially sophomores, will draw a line in the sand and say "I will not accept a bid/pref invite from any chapter 'below' XYZ" and then withdraw from recruitment if those chapters she deems unworthy are her only choices. During recruitment I remember looking around the holding room the PNMs were in and seeing a line to go into one chapter's pref party that was easily twice as long as the others, and that chapter still didn't make quota that year.

RFM may not be able to save those spiraling chapters, but I do think it does a good job at helping prevent those chapters from entering that spiral based solely on formal recruitment, because the number of girls each chapter invites back can be adjusted year-by-year.

Also, at the Pi Phi presentation at Clemson on Monday they mentioned that of the 240 girls in their Delaware colony, only 15 had gone through formal recruitment and then withdrawn. Some of that might have had to do with them having deferred recruitment and girls who are sophomores or juniors not bothering with formal, but I was still surprised at how few had done so.

[33girl]

Also, if some of these expansions are for interest groups (official or non-official) it does Panhel no good to block an expansion in hopes that "if the women want to be Greek, they can just go to the struggling chapter. " My chapter voted in favor of expansions twice, despite the fact we were under total and our national was against it, because we knew that all a negative vote would do was make us look like big pouty pantses. It certainly wouldn't compel 2 very strongly bonded groups of women to join us.

That all being said, I think the stacking is winding down as we get to the last od the baby boom's kids.

[BlueCarnation]

Originally Posted by Griffins&Quills

That's another thing...why do panhellenics vote for expansion when there is a clear struggling chapter?

I think it depends on the campus and the circumstances. We voted for expansion even though we have a chapter that regularly struggles to make quota. This chapter appeals to a niche group of young women who know they are going to go through recruitment well before they get here, and the new organization that came in has not taken away from the struggling chapter at all--it seems to appeal to a group of women who may not have normally gone through recruitment at all. It has allowed more young women to get involved in Greek Life and has been a very positive addition to campus. The struggling chapter is struggling for very specific reasons (e.g., no physical house, risk management issues, wanting only a certain type of member, etc). I was a member of the committee that voted for expansion and we took this into consideration and I think we made the right call.

[3DGator]

Stanford begins formal recruitment tonight. I think that it will end formal recruitment for 2015-16.

[irishpipes]

Originally Posted by 3DGator

Stanford begins formal recruitment tonight. I think that it will end formal recruitment for 2015-16.

Yep. They're always the last to go! Now we just need to wrap up all of the pending extension decisions.