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<p>This cannot be emphasized enough.</p>
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<p>This is a valid point. Recruitment could be set up in such a way that a rushee can avoid a house she knows she won’t want from the get-go. That would certainly provide feedback to those houses which are perceived as close-minded. I’m pretty sure it won’t happen though, only because rush is supposed to be based on the “open-minded” concept that it provides an opportunity for both sides to give each other a chance. Like with college searches, many girls do change their minds about which house they like best by the end of the process.</p>
<p>I never talked about networking with other chapters. My comments about networking were specifically about the girls / women in my chapter. </p>
<p>POIH- your D is in the same house at MIT that LINYMOM and I were at NU.
One of my friends from high school went to MIT and joined that house (and was president of the class at MIT). Her younger sister went to NU and joined our chapter. Both are incredibly successful businesswomen–one for a major company, the other in her own business. They are both as far removed from the bubblehead stereotype as you can
can imagine.</p>
<p>Yet one can be a serious, high minded student AND enjoy looking good, dressing well, and giggling with girlfriends over cute guys too.</p>
<p>“Recruitment could be set up in such a way that a rushee can avoid a house she knows she won’t want from the get-go.”</p>
<p>Realistically, if they made that rule, most 18-year-old girls wouldn’t use it to avoid meeting the shallow chapters. They’d use it to avoid meeting the fat loser chapter. This is as true at Penn as it is at Texas State. Which would just make the problem of stigmatizing the unhot girls even worse. </p>
<p>I don’t know if there’s a solution to this problem. Every sorority system I’ve ever seen sorts the women, at least in part, by looks. And you have to cooperate with the system in order to get into the nice, non-judgmental chapter.</p>
<p>Exactly, Hanna. The issue isn’t solved by allowing the rushees to say, “I want to go through rush, but I don’t want to visit the Kappa house because I hear they are too … snooty / rich / slutty / prudish / druggie / party-hearty / Jewish / WASPy / jock / loser / fat for my taste.” That’s the very same stereotyping that we all decry when it’s on the other end of the spectrum. </p>
<p>The only way to do it most fairly is to set up a system in which every girl who desires to go through rush gets to meet all the houses on fair grounds. Which is what the system is set up to do. First round, you get X amount of time with every single house. Then, after that, if you decide that you think the Kappas are too snooty / rich / slutty / prudish / druggie for your taste, it’s simple – you cut them from your next round. Cutting works both ways, which is the point that also seems to get lost. You never know who you are going to like or not like.</p>
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<p>Our sororities had roughly 100-120 girls in them at any one time, except for one house that had maybe 20 girls. They were really struggling (and have since disappeared). How many rushees would have chosen to have gone there, if they could have determined they didn’t want to go to certain houses upfront? This way, everyone got a chance to meet that particular house, and if someone clicked with them, hey great!</p>
<p>You can’t worry about “prestige” in a sorority any more than you can worry about “prestige” at your college. If you like people and you click with them, that’s all that matters.</p>
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<p>Are you talking about professional networking, or personal networking?</p>
<p>If it was professional networking, and I found that so-and-so who was also an XXX at (her college) had a contact into a job or professional opportunity I was after, why would I particularly care whether that person was serious or an airhead in college? We’re not in college anymore. Maybe she grew up and matured. Maybe she never did, but she still has a contact I can use. </p>
<p>If it was personal networking (say, I moved to a new town, didn’t know anybody, and joined the alumnae group to make some new friends), well, then, I’d make my determination upon meeting her whether I thought she was someone who I wanted to be friendly with, or someone that I wasn’t interested in getting to know better. You know – taking the person at face value.</p>
<p>Changing the system? The only way I could be comfortable would be put all the names in a hat and randomly divide them equally among the number of sororities on campus. For me this would solve all the problems. And it would be kind of exciting to see what your pledge class was each year.</p>
<p>Ellebud, thank you for the greek chat board, imho a great resource for any potential rushee or her mother. I love your rush story there and thank you for sharing it. The prejudice and bigotry you describe as part of the rush process (way back in the days you and I were sorority girls) are exactly the reasons I find sororities rather distasteful. Your response to the experience was evidently quite different? Things are much better today, but I am not sure I see a huge difference in automatically excluding someone from your group because of race, religion, family background – or just on looks, social graces and poise. I understand it may be a huge difference in the eyes of those excluded. I don’t want to be insensitive. In my eyes these are just different types of biased judgements. Evidently my group was top-tier (first time I ever heard this term LOL and am pretty embarrassed to use it!) and it was absolutely devastating we were excluding girls for what seemed to me ridiculous and hateful reasons. (Frankly there was practically no one I wanted to exclude for any reason at all. The whole idea of exclusivity was troubling. But the pledge class couldn’t be more than a certain number.) A few of my sorority sisters felt the same; we were very forceful about our feelings but not powerful enough to create any meaningful change in policy. Quitting might have been a powerful statement, but we just couldn’t do that to our mamas. We did our best to get dismissed with uncooperative behaviors, constantly challenging the status-quo, but were unsuccessful – again that was probably due to our mamas’ influence. If we had quit, I wonder if they would actually have removed our names from the rolls or just changed us to alum status. They did let us be alums instead of actives our senior year so we didn’t have to participate in rush and waste everyone’s time with a lot of objections that never made the slightest difference in the end result. In retrospect it is pretty amazing how tolerant the sorority was of us. We were not good sisters.</p>
<p>It’s all about whether one is comfortable with excluding and rejecting some people, since that is the entire basis of sororities. The sorority sisters and sorority moms on this board think it’s just fine to exclude some young women because they’re just not good enough, which is what it comes down to. I don’t like that system at all.</p>
<p>But then, it makes sense. You sorority women are doing the rejecting. I’m the one who would be rejected. Naturally we feel differently.</p>
<p>I honestly don’t recall any bigotry in our rush process back in the '70s. I do recall that we had several Jewish girls in our house, but I didn’t even know they were Jewish until after I graduated. Those types of conversations just never came up. Maybe being out here in the West had something to do with it, I don’t know. We are less constrained by tradition and lineage (3rd and even 2nd gen Californians were not that common).</p>
<p>I do know that my D’s house has a restriction on rush discussions that we did not have back then. They are not allowed to make any negative comments about rushees, only positive ones. I’m sure judgmental feelings still get communicated, but at least it is a more humane approach.</p>
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<p>You nailed it. We sat around excluding and rejecting people all day long for 4 years. And girls were flocking to join us!</p>
<p>My mom was a typist (she worked from home). One of her yearly jobs was to type up notes that a sorority had written about the girls who were rushing. My job was to proofread the notes. Ack! I can’t remember specifics, but a lot of the comments seemed pretty catty and shallow. That’s when I decided that I could live without being in a sorority.</p>
<p>If sororities didn’t want to exclude and reject women, they could easily set up a system where no one was excluded or rejected: admission could be by lottery. But no sororities set up that system. Why? Because you sorority people want to exclude some women. You make the deliberate choice to reject some women. You are very happy to set up your social strata that reject some women. You know full well that some women, probably women who are a bit clueless, will be made very unhappy by your actions, and you don’t care.</p>
<p>If I were socially skilled, I might feel the same way.</p>
<p>alh: Thank you for kind words and reading MY story. There were two more stories (one just referenced to, my oldest daughter who didn’t pledge) and my youngest daughter’s story written a few months ago. My youngest’s story is very different than mine: polar opposites in fact. Same school, not so different looks wise, personalities different of course, but nothing drastic…but it makes for comparison of the modern day recruitment.</p>
<p>Cardinal Fang,</p>
<p>I admit that the process is not perfect: I was rejected by a house I liked during rush and it hurt; but I also declined the invitations of several houses I didn’t like. Its a two-way street. There is absolutely NO compulsion for ANYONE to go through this process if they feel so hateful about it as you do. It is completely OPTIONAL.</p>
<p>alh:
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<p>You know, the very fact that you mention “not being able to quit because you couldn’t do that to your mamas” tells me that you were in a Southern sorority system and all that that entails in terms of focusing on family background and social status and whose-daddy-makes-what and mama-was-a-Theta-and-I’ll-just-die-if-I’m-not-one-too and can’t-let-the-Jews-in-they’ll-ruin-the-place and all that other stuff that makes those of us from the north leery of sending our kids <em>any</em> place down south for fear that that stuff still exists. </p>
<p>I am sorry for what you went through, but please don’t extrapolate those experiences to those of us who have more normal and healthy and rational Greek experiences where prejudice against different religions / backgrounds / socioeconomic status wasn’t part of the game, ok? I certainly accept your experiences as valid for that time and place, but there seems to be a lack of acceptance that really, up north we did it all a completely different way, and what you call “a typical sorority experience” is what we call “an outlier.”</p>
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<p>You must have a real problem with colleges, then – I hear that some of them exclude some people, too, and don’t just accept all comers. I even hear that jobs work that way too.</p>
<p>I think one point that has not been stressed enough is that recruitment is a “mutual” decison process. The potential new members are also ranking/cutting those houses that are not a good fit for them. If you really delve into the process, you will see that for the most part if girls will keep an open mind, they will find thier home. There is an unbelievable amount of information/resources on the website that Ellebud mentioned earlier. OP, if I were you, I would most definitely visit that site…and take the time to read the Recruitment Stories…not everyone has a happy ending but I do agree that there is much knowledge to be gleaned from those stories, good and bad.</p>
<p>ellebud: I did read all the stories and have bookmarked them for the next time a non-sorority friend is asking me for advice on her daughter rushing or not. They give the story. I will try my best to just send her to your threads and the site you mentioned – and keep my lips zipped 
Thank you again.</p>
<p>pizzagirl: I am sure you are right in all you say. And I already confessed to being a bad sister.</p>
<p>My D is pledging this semester. She was vehemently opposed to the idea of joining a sorority prior to rush week. I have no experience with it. H told her not to join as he quit his frat when his brothers voted not to accept their first black pledge.
D’s dormmates convinced her to do rush. Well, she didn’t get a pledge from 2 houses but is very happy in the 3rd. Its alleged reputation does not match my daughter at all so I don’t think anyone should put much emphasis on that. She’s still friends with girls who did not rush as well as with friends who are pledging in other houses. She will live with some of these girls next year in a dorm. So far I don’t see it as a big deal. I think she looks at it as a way to have a social life and to do cool things, ie philanthropy. She’s also on a team and spends time with them as well. Students - at least at her school -just seem a bit more “chill” about it compared to some of the statements here.</p>