what you need to understand about recruitment

To Goodwork:
Thanks for reading my message and not tearing it down.

I’ll address some simple points upfront.

DG and Kappa did not have pledge classes already made. Sororities cannot be responsible for rumors PNMs start. If you know how sorority rush works, you also know that even if a house wanted to have a pledge class made, the way that Panhel, our national organizations, advisors, etc work would preclude this from ever happening, and even then the girls actually have to want you back.

Regarding opening up C.O.B. There is a period where girls can see every house and be seen, and is not a “friend of a friend” process. It’s called formal rush. It happened. The problem with C.O.B. for groups with very few spots is if you are going to open it up for everybody, you need budgets for advertising, budgets for the events themselves, you have to open up the chapter house (where people actually live, study, etc) and thus restrict how sisters can use it, you have to have all the actives trek back out to the house, meet everybody, cancel study groups/dates/social outings (rush events are not optional), and then meet late at night to vote on everybody. After formal rush, everybody is done. You have no idea how late we stay up setting up, decorating, voting, etc. Nobody has the energy for it again and we’d rather spend that money, time, elsewhere, especially if we know a girl is a great fit already. CONTINUED...

I have read this post on closed COB twice and honestly it seems like a bunch of hoo hah. Whoever talked about what G Phi did so brilliantly in its recent COB nailed this issue perfectly. How expensive is it to post on facebook and hold 2 interactive events for 2 hrs each? Get real. This is totally doable for any of our houses. To use disruption and expense as excuses to eliminate fairness and openness in my mind is simply wrong. We will probably agree to disagree though. I do know that the ladies on my floor that were eliminated in round 2 or 3 and who will never hear of your private COB will forever question to ethical foundation of Cal panhel and most likely won't return (our loss as they are great ladies!). To me at least it seems like panhel is sitting on foundation supported by pillars of sand!

If those girls were cut from a house Round 2, they're not getting a bid from that same house with only a few COB slots.

There IS a time where all girls have an open and fair shot at every house and everybody knows of every opportunity and everyone starts on an even level. It's called recruitment. COB is not for the PNMs benefit. it's for the smaller houses benefit to get to an average size. They can decide to do it however they want.

What everybody seems to be missing is that fraternities and sororities are inherently exclusive, not inclusive, organizations, since not everybody can join. Collegiate men and women selecting their members IS the system. We can lessen the blow of rejection as much as you want, but you can't avoid it. If a sorority has, say, two open spots and there are two girls that are best friends with 20 actives that they know they want, sure they can put on a whole charade and invite a million people out but guess who is getting those spots anyway?

Now houses with a ton of COB spots have way more of an incentive to advertise and draw people.

And remember many sororities can't do COB at all.

Fun to debate this stuff with you! Seriously though the COB issue is one that I think should be brought up to Panhel and debated. You can rationalize all day long why the current COB works but in my opinion it is essentially giving the finger to all the people that posted honest and heartfelt comments about what they thought about recruitment. You can sneer at them and say, "Oh, they didn't know the right terms and didn't understand the process" and dismiss their thoughts and feelings and continue on with super secret COB. OR You can have a bit of structure to COB and NOT just invite just the 2 people that are friends of the 20 people in the house (honestly if I were one of the non-20 in the house I would be quite pissed!). I was surprised that you didn't bite on the issue of discussing snap bids. But now that I see that you are supporting a houses ability to do whatever it wants in COB it makes sense that snap bidding wouldn't have any appeal because it has structure, process and OVERSIGHT! I don't think this COB has anything to do with money or disruptions as it simply seems that the houses want to do what they want to do and hide that they didn't make quota. I agree these are private organization and by definition are exclusive. But as others have said perception matters. And right now the perception is poor of a number of houses and that isn't good for any of us sadly. Especially those houses amongst us that need to do larger COB. I appreciate (con't)

con't I appreciate that houses want to hide whether or not they didn't get a full class in the fall. These houses wouldn't need to hide the lack of full complement of pledges (i.e. fall rush lack of success/failure) IF THE INFORMATION WERE PUBLISHED. This gets back to the transparency issue. If people that went through recruitment could see online that xyz house didn't get the full 60 quota they could say wow, there is a possibility of COB and based on your friend of a friend strategy of filling up to quota then that person could try to network their way to the super secret COB. I honestly find this a waste of time for everyone and is an insult to the intelligence of the ladies trying to go through the COB process. If you can't come to terms with eliminating the COB then why not have a 'unified' COB. All houses could advertise together, put up a single schedule on the panhel website and have some semblance of a process vs. the super secret COB. Its possible to hide behind the curtain of being private membership clubs and all that involves but I don't think this means its OK to have no public/published legitimate process. I tried to back track through all the math you described in your other posts today to get to the COB numbers to find out what we are talking about. I think I am close to the numbers but if possible could you put up the numbers by house. You don't have to put it up with house name just organize it by #1, #2 etc. Thanks so much!

You're missing a subtle distinction about snap bidding and COB, and thus probably quota and total.

Quota = The pledge class size all sororities aim for and are expected to take to keep things equal. Total = the total membership size sororities aim for and are encouraged to maintain. Even if every sorority takes quota every year, some sororities will lose more girls to deactivation, or gain transfers in, etc.

Snap bidding is meant to get a pledge class to quota. If you miss quota by a couple numbers, you can snap bid to quota.

COB is meant to get a sorority to total. If you had a lot of girls deactivate, or maybe you took a sophomore heavy pledge class in the past so the prior year you had more seniors graduate than usual, you can COB up to total. If you are beyond total, you cannot COB.

Technically both snap bids and COB are optional, but snap bids are treated very seriously and if a sorority missed quota, they're going to snap before bid day begins. COB is optional. A house can be below total and decide, "Ehhhh not for us this year".

Recruitment and quota is to benefit the PNMs. COB is to benefit the sororities. Quota helps the PNMs so everybody gets a place, and thus recruitment is even for the PNMs. COB is an option to help sororities get bigger, so they can do what they want with it.

What is made up? My post? Because literally everything in it is exactly how the system works.

If you are talking about the bid lists being exchange, that is probably not made up but is not a rush violation whatsoever. So it's a violation for girls to exchange public information and know who is in other pledge classes? It's all going to be on instagram in an hour anyway when all the pledges are tagged. If somebody saw my house's bid list I wouldn't care in the slightest.

For the millionth time, the BID LIST is the LIST OF GIRLS IN THE PLEDGE CLASS after it's final. It's public to the sororities before the pledges because we have administrative stuff to do and have to get their bid day shirts ready.

If sorority's ranked release and invite lists were circulating, that would be a huge issue. But those are fed into a computer program, there are no physical lists wandering around. And anybody in a sorority read those comments and knew exactly what she was saying.

"Bid lists were circulated". "OH MY GOD BUT WHAT IF SHE DIDN'T MEAN BID LISTS BUT MEANT SOMETHING ELSE AND THAT SOMETHING ELSE WAS A RUSH VIOLATION?" No, she meant bid lists. She's in a sorority. She knows what that is. Good grief.

The system is designed the way it is so that houses reach parity. The top houses don't need to grow. The smaller houses need to catch up. That is what C.O.B. is for. So I don't know what you are talking about there.

Adding chapters -- those chapters start out at the bottom. If girls were turning down middle tier chapters because they wanted a top house, adding new options for them to reject is pointless. Sororities are added when chapters are bursting at the seams and that's not really the case.

I have no idea why you are so concerned about ranking security. I'm in the system and did not hear this rumor you are talking about. The "evidence" you all gave was a girl posting on Greek Rank about bid lists and that's what you all have used as your proof, and when that was dispelled all of the sudden you "heard from somebody else."

For what it's worth, the adult Panhellenic advisor has access to the sorority's rankings.

The original point of this thread was that you are all claiming the system needs fixing, but you don't even know how the system works. Any of it. The basics. Rumors are rumors. Stop throwing tantrums about rumors about a system that you don't have any knowledge of how it works.

Please read the post by "not exactly". Is it true that people can see the data contained in invites and the ranking by pnm's? She's clearly insinuating that a lot of information that you say is confidential is actually not! Instead of lashing out please pay attention! Who sees the data contained in the invites and the rankings given by pnm's? Please review that! Why is it necessary for anyone to see it other than a few girls with " maturity"? Forget about names like "bid lists" and "pref lists". Who sees the data in the invites and the rankings given by the pnm's? She has clearly indicated that these cards are not held close to the chest. In fact she has also disclosed the fact that some houses asked for pnm's rankings so that they could release some girls early. What is going on here? I honestly don't think she's making this up! This original thread was created by someone who obviously has been involved with the administrative side of recruitment. While I do respect and admire your dedication and commitment to a very taxing and grueling process, you do need to look at what the allegations are here and not dismiss it as rumors. Unless you do that loopholes will never be closed! Maybe there's no way to avoid people knowing the rankings given by pnm's or the invites sent out, but,you need to look at it and the problems it creates and really work as a team to come to that decision or any other decision.

But the rumors she's talking about...we haven't heard them. First the evidence were the comments that were actually about bid lists. Then the evidence is now "offline". OK. Do you have any evidence to substantiate this as anything other than another sorority rumor?

Girls don't rank houses #1-#12 for rounds. If the girl is returning to a day where there are, say, eight parties, she ranks eight #1s, then a #2, #3, #4, #5. So I don't even see why actives would want this info. If we were #1 or #8, we wouldn't know, and if she ranked us dead last she's probably not coming back regardless of whether we cut her or not.

Not to mention that you may be misunderstanding how girls are cut or kept anyway. There is typically a compilation of scores and those scores are averaged out and TADA...the invite list. If we have 300 girls to invite back, the top 300 girls are coming back.

We are ranking, scoring hundreds and hundreds of girls each round. The idea that anybody would go out of their way to find confidential ranking information that wouldn't even help us anyway, and wouldn't change the nationally mandated formulas we have to use anyway, seems extremely farfetched.

You're asking me to provide evidence that something didn't happen, which is literally impossible. Certainly have not heard it myself, don't see how or why it would happen in the first place, and seems like just another rumor.

I DO agree with you, 100%, that the system should be explained thoroughly to all PNMs. It's always rainbows and sunshine and they never explain about releases, how some houses must cut more, how bid lists work, etc. I think that would help a TON and I really wish that were the case. Girls are sold a simplified fantasy and then when the real cuts happen, they panic and start rumors and all of that could be prevented by just acknowledging that it is a numbers game and that virtually everybody will get cut by chapters they like.

Every campus has lots of girls drop. Many of those girls are set on 2-3 chapters and when those houses drop them, they quit rush. The majority of them had several chapters that were thrilled to invite them back, but those PNMs decided those chapters are "beneath" them. So it's not just on Panhel or the chapters, its on the PNMs. Cal's drop numbers are not abnormal for any system across the country. And believe me, ours is not a competitive rush. SEC schools, USC, UT austin, Indiana, those rushes are brutal and make ours look like a cake walk.

Totally disagree with you about one standard for COB. COB is used to help chapters get to the same size. Recruitment is and always will be the main avenue for girls to join sororities, by a landslide, so the uniformity matters there tremendously. Its imperative that every girl be seen by every house. COB? Not nearly so important.

I DO agree with you, 100%, that the system should be explained thoroughly to all PNMs. It's always rainbows and sunshine and they never explain about releases, how some houses must cut more, how bid lists work, etc. I think that would help a TON and I really wish that were the case.

Every campus has lots of girls drop. Many of those girls are set on 2-3 chapters and when those houses drop them, they quit rush. The majority of them had several chapters that were thrilled to invite them back, but those PNMs decided those chapters are "beneath" them. Cal's drop numbers are not abnormal for any system across the country. And believe me, ours is not a competitive rush. SEC schols, USC, UT austin, Indiana, those rushes are brutal and make ours look like a cake walk.

Totally disagree with you about one standard for COB. COB is used to help chapters get to the same szie. Recruitment is