Maybe your son was looking extra hard for girls he could "console." Not that I am saying your son is a li'l player or anything. :p

My daughter had one of her fellow pledges cry almost all day. She didn't get her first choice and "ended up" with her back-up house. It's a shame that a girl would feel that way. Too bad she couldn't look around and see all the happy girls, and just be thrilled to be a part of it!

And by the way, what a buzz kill. This is how you want to make friends? Being the whiny drama queen? It's one thing to take a moment and be sad but to hang crepe all day? What did she think was going to happen, that the sorority was going to apologize to her?

That's a little harsh. If you've had your heart set on one thing and end up with another, no matter how much of an open mind you've kept, it can be devastating. Especially if the bid reveal was done in the open in front of the entire campus. At least if it's in private you can have time to get your feelings out, but if you have NO private time, I can see where it would be harder to get a hold of yourself.

Any groups whose school still reveals bids in this horrid fashion should probably appoint a DPW (Disappointed Pledge Wrangler) whose sole job is to take disappointed NMs aside and let them vent it all out.

It certainly wouldn't hurt to have a DPW mainly to keep the weepy from contaminating the rest of the pledge class.

But I think girls should be coached by their recruitment counselors in advance not to act this way. At some point, and I know it goes against the whole grain of only putting things in the best possible light that many campuses do, PNMs should be told that to remember that they may get the 2nd and 3rd choices they put down on their bid cards and that they should be prepared to suck up their disappointment and try to have a good time at bid day anyway.

I'm sure some of them ARE coached by their rho chi, and their emotions just overtake them anyway. It happens.

For those who remember - was it any better when bid day included a mixer? I mean if you did have weepy pledges, did they get over it a little bit when they went to the fraternity house full of hot men? (Not to mention beer)

But, really, can't one get over most disappointments by going to a house full of hot men and adult beverages?

That depends on whether the question is "first choice from the very beginning" or "first choice of what's left after the cuts." I'm going to guess that by Preference, the three houses left for the majority of PNMs will not be their top three favorites from Open House.

If you are asking "first choice in the Preference Round," well, U of I prints those statistics. For 2010, 1,258 NPMs attended Open House rounds. Of those, 908 NPMs completed recruitment as follows: 746 received their 1st choice, 129 received their 2nd choice, and 33 received their 3rd choice. Two NPMs were released by all chapters, and 360 chose to withdraw (25%!).

I have actually heard of a few PNMs actually cutting a chapter prior to Pref Night. These ladies specifically left off a chapter from their party list. Didn't know PNMs had the option to not rank a chapter. Has anyone heard of this happening at other campuses?

I believe I've read here that at some schools that will get you cut from rush and at others it will make you ineligible for quota additions. I have mixed feelings about this. One one hand I think the girls should give every chapter as many chances as they can as long as there are spots on their schedule. On the other hand, if she is utterly not willing to give a chapter a chance, then she might as well not show to a party and the chapter can focus on the girls who do have some social grace.

Actually
 

my daughter is stressing way more over the big/little reveal than she ever did with recruitment!

I figured out that cutting didn't mean literally "cutting" after the first party haha.

It's especially confusing to PNMs because the term is used when THEY are cut from a house and when they personally can "cut" a house.