<p>I just want to make sure no one is confused, recs are not at any school required to go through recruitment. As in, there is no policy that if you do not have at least 1 rec for each chapter you are barred from participating.</p>
<p>A better word choice than required would be necessary. It’s important to note that there are girls every year who go through recruitment at rec necessary schools without recs who receive bids to wonderful chapters.</p>
<p>But those without recs at “necessary” schools are disadvantaged. Semantics.</p>
<p>Regarding deferred recruitment, I found it worked great 25 years ago at my alma mater. In fact fraternity rush there also changed to deferred recruitment several years ago so that the young men could also enjoy the benefits of spreading their wings broadly before eating every night with pledge brothers and investing the time necessary for one’s pledge period. I did not feel I was in a fish bowl, nor did I worry that my behavior might disqualify me from a house, though would that be a bad thing? Are we suggesting that it’s best to commit before we show our true stripes? Is a glowing rec more informative than a young woman’s actual actions when faced with the freedom of college?</p>
<p>“PNMS can sabotage their chances by ruining their reputations through partying, unknowingly insulting sisters and other actions that they might not even realize are detrimental. All of this is known to occur at schools with deferred rush. It’s a giant flaw in that system.” – How is this a flaw? The house and the PNM know too much about each other?</p>
<p>I have no real horse in this race - I was not in a sorority and neither is my college D, but as a professor one advantage I see to deferring rush at least until the second semester if not the sophomore year is that it gives students time to assess how much time they have to devote to a sorority, and how much time the sorority is going to require. Every semester I can count on at least one student who has “a lot of mandatory sorority activities” asking for an extension on a due date or offering an excuse for a poor grade on an assignment. I realize that participation is important for any extracurricular - sports, the newspaper, whatever - but there does seem to be a lot of mandatory showing up at things with sororities. Or at least my students would have me believe that.</p>
<p>What I haven’t heard said is the financial aspect of the deferred recruitment debate. To shift to spring rush means giving up a semester of dues from a quarter of a house – a big financial disincentive to change even if a campus or national found advantages to doing so.</p>
<p>Cornell has deferred recruitment. D1 didn’t know anything about the Greek life until she showed up on campus. D2 had more information because of D1. Both of my kids got to know a lot of people the first semester. Some of those kids decided to go Greek and some didn’t. Some of their girlfriends ended at different houses, but their friendship remained. D2 will go to another sorority house to hang out with a good friend. They sometimes even go to each other formals. I think have deferred recruitment allows new students an opportunity to meet more people outside of their small circle of Greek friends.</p>
<p>Our kids’ sorority (they are trues sisters in every sense) only allows sophomores to live at the house. This year, between housing/food and sorority dues, the COA is actually few thousand $$ less than if D2 had lived on campus. </p>
<p>I think up north, Greek life is not the most important factor of student’s social life, they don’t take it as seriously as down south. Culturally, north is very different than south. In the NE, people care more about what you do and where you live. Down South, people care more about who your parents and grandparents are. It maybe an over generalization, but that’s how I find it to be. When D1 had an option of going to Duke or Cornell, she chose Cornell because of location/fit.</p>
<p>I had a daughter at Vanderbilt, an SEC school with deferred recruitment. Is Vandy considered a Southern school? It manages Greek Life differently from other SEC schools, but I imagine most people would say yes.</p>
<p>She had no recs. We talked about whether I knew anyone who could write one for her, which I didn’t, and my d never went further than that with the issue. She got into a sorority and wound up overseeing recruitment her senior year for the Panhellenic Council. From this, I deduce that at Vanderbilt, you don’t need recs. Their Greek Life website doesn’t even mention them. On a recent thread in the Vandy CC forum, though, several posters stated emphatically that you DO need them. However, I know one Northern girl from a non-Greek background who didn’t.</p>
<p>Understood!</p>
<p>Fair enough I guess. Any chance the moderator could create a new thread “Greek life rush discussion” and move the posts from the last few pages of this thread … it was pretty lively discussion.</p>
<p>PS - I’ve been on CC a LONG time and can’t remember other moderator interventions to bring threads back to the OP’s original question … is this a new approach? BTW - I can see maintaining “support only” threads as a good thing.</p>
<p>Not all posts discussing the racial issues have been removed from the thread. Just fyi</p>
<p>My daughter is a sophomore at a southern - ish school (not SEC). She went through recruitment last year, ended up in a sorority she loves, and is getting ready to do it from the other side this week. One thing about all of this - The girls going through have to remember that the sorority girls are just as nervous! They have been in workshops for weeks, they are stressed that they need to impress the girls, etc. So, if each side realizes the other is just as nervous, they can just try to enjoy it!</p>
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<p>Absolutely not the case with my daughters. Both of my Ds went through rush at different schools. Both were encouraged to submit recs, but neither school said they were “required.” My Ds would never have requested a recommendation or letter of support from an alum whom they did not know. I can’t imagine how that would be very helpful.</p>
<p>At my Ds’ high school, there was an information meeting held for seniors interested in going through recruitment. I was not in a sorority. I had no knowledge of how it all worked, so I found the meeting to be very informative. The process was explained by mothers from our class who had been in sororities, and a packet was given with all kinds of helpful advice. There was no discussion of what to wear or how to act during recruitment. The particular university the girls attended gave them dress guidelines, which of course they appreciated. There were no “rules” dictated whatsoever. A list of mothers who had girls in our daughters’ class was provided with their sorority affiliation. I contacted mothers on that list who knew my daughter to get recs and letters of support. I also asked around my other friends about their sorority affiliations and obtained recs that way. There were a couple of houses on each campus where I just didn’t know any alums, so too bad, we didn’t submit recs to that house. As it turned out for D1, the one sorority for which we didn’t have recs was the one D1 fell in love with. She got a bid.</p>
<p>D2 just went through the process from the inside for the first time. Recs are not “required,” but every single one which is submitted is read, and according to her, often provide interesting information about the girls. Not true at her house that they are simply tools to make pnms jump through hoops.</p>
<p>According to D2, due to the large numbers of girls going through and the desire of her particular house to display a high appreciation for academic scholarship, the easiest first cut to make was for “scholarship risks.” And yes, they must make “cuts.” There were 900 girls going through rush and each sorority can only take 50-70 or so due to the physical size of their house, in addition to the fact that too large of a pledge class hinders bonding. They cannot ask everyone back (and the girls are also eliminating houses from contention each night). Low GPA is a consideration for sure. Not only because the sorority is proud of the academic achievements of its members, but because of the time requirements associated with the sorority, someone who struggles academically in high school might find herself in a bad place once in college. They do not want to set up a pnm for failure, nor do they want to lose members to academic suspension or worse.</p>
<p>D1 did the sorority thing for awhile and finally decided it was not for her. She thought the girls were awesome, but as her interests expanded, she began to resent the time demands. She remained on friendly terms with her big sister and many of her sisters. It just wasn’t her “thing.” </p>
<p>D2 is loving her sorority experience, but did not enjoy some of the negatives which come with the recruitment process. Her school is not one of the big cut throat Greek schools, but it would be disingenuous to suggest that that fact means that no one gets their feelings hurt during recruitment. The girls in the houses feel the sting of rejection also when a girl they liked chooses not to come back the next night. It is an imperfect system imo. So far I’m supporting it because D2 has made some very close friends she would not likely have met otherwise. She also has some close friends she met at her dorm who are not in sororities, which I also think is a good thing.</p>
<p>D2 is in the Honors College and has a scholarship, so she has GPA requirements to meet. She knows that if her sorority life interferes with her education or causes any problems relating to her health and behavior on campus, that we will pull our support for Greek life. So far it’s working out. We shall see…</p>
<p>^Good post, Nrdsb4. We sometimes get so caught up in the idea that sororities cut girls from rush that we forget that PNMs have choices too and and often have complicated reasons for not wanting to return to certain houses. When I went through rush in the waning days of the Carter administration, I was invited back to the “dream” house with the rich, pretty girls. I chose not to return - I was not and am not that high-maintenance - and some people were surprised by this. I got a bid from the house I wanted with the girls I liked the best and had a great sorority experience, one I wish all girls who go Greek can have.</p>