Indiana University 2014 Recruitment

[hopeful mom]

Does anyone know how many girls are rushing? the new colony? or how many they plan to accept this year?

Also, as far as informal rush goes, with all the houses taking their quota, will there be any houses to informal rush? not sure how that works?

thanks!

[ASTalumna06]

Originally Posted by disgusted

I have read through all of this forum with much interest. My daughter was a casualty of this year's rush process. We do not nor do we care to know why. She is the child of "well known" parents with "more than plenty" of money. My husband and I do not allow any of our children to "ride" on our family's prestige/good fortune. So in the end, I do not believe the sororities are "doing research" on their new members and if my daughter is not a good fit based on her own than I am glad the losses are cut now.

I use the name "disgusted" because it seems that many young girls have been cut with little reason. Had my daughter let it be known who her parents were she most likely would have been welcome anywhere, but in hindsight would have been hugely unfair as on her "own worth" received no bid.

Originally Posted by disgusted

Please do not take offense by my posting. It was meant to defend the accusations of how a person looked or what they wore or researching the worth of their home address. I do not believe any of this to be true.

You don't believe extensive research into PNMs' personal lives by the sororities to be true, but apparently you do believe that all sorority members are so superficial that if they knew who you and your husband were, your daughter would be at the top of every bid list because you're so well-known and rich.

Awesome.

[ASTalumna06]

So I just went to the IU parents blog. Although her numbers might be off, the first post (from 2 years ago) sums it all up. It's sad that even her niece, who had a great recruitment, felt awful afterward:

My niece went through this rush and had a great experience. She went to the maximum three preference parties of houses she loved and ended up where she wanted to be. However, several of her friends ended up with nothing at all despite attending preference parties. These girls are not alone. We were told that 200 girls who attended preference parties did not receive bids and that a total of nearly 800 girls who began rush stopped or were dropped by the end. I understand the bed total quota, but you must be kidding. I am Greek, and we were thrilled to have as many people as possible involved in the Greek system. The reasons for that are endless. The current system at IU turns away almost half of the young women interested in participating in Greek life. It’s a travesty for the system and all these young women. At bid night, the girls who attended preference parties yet received no bid were told at the same time the other girls in their dorms received their bids, squealing and celebrating in the surrounding rooms. You can imagine how awful this scene was. My niece felt terribly guilty and didn’t know what to say to people. This has left these girls to try to rethink their whole college experience. One has left school and transferred out as she has always wanted Greek life to be part of her college years. It is a sad, insensitive situation that Panhellenic needs to address immediately. If IU is the only school in the country that uses this system, perhaps something’s wrong with it. It needs to change! It’s absolutely ridiculous. My niece isn’t so sure she wants to continue because she is astounded that girls could attend preference parties and then be left out and left to watch the girls who got in. It feels bad from the beginning. Honestly, being Greek myself, I am astounded at this system and surprised that the situation is allowed to continue as it appears to have been going on like this for awhile.

[GammaPhi-L-L]

I was a grad student in the student activities office and saw IU recruitment first-hand. It is brutal. As my user name suggests, my undergraduate experience was much different. Sorority recruitment and the entire system is part of what makes IU. The entire system is exclusive, and I think the administration likes it that way.

I have advised many PNMs during their IU recruitment. The ones that have happy endings were usually the ones who kept their options open - cut and kept a variety of houses (yes, they can cut a "coveted" house, after the first party even). One who had a particularly difficult time was a little disappointed with her options but pledged anyway. Many were too selective and dropped out when they weren't invited back to certain houses. This young woman competed on the Little 5 team her freshman year and then became captain. She had the time of her life. All of the IU sororities and fraternities to do the same things. There are best friends and buttheads in all of them.

While I feel bad for the women who feel hurt on bid day, I get over it. I don't know very many first-hand accounts of women who maximize their options and don't receive a bid. Just keep and open mind from the beginning of the process, not just the end. As long as women drop out because they don't get into certain sororities, exclusivity wins.

[AnchorAlumna]

Originally Posted by sigmagirl2000

I still don't understand. Why on earth have a room if you don't sleep in it? How in the world do you sleep in an unheated room in Indiana or anywhere else that gets remotely cold in the winter? This sounds like... I don't know.... girl scout camp in the winter or something.

No lights + no heat = no friggin way.

You had a room in which to keep your clothes, books and general stuff, in which to dress, study, hang out with your roomies etc. - everything except sleep, and we did that on the sleeping porch.
No heat - I still like a bit of a chilly room to sleep in. You turn on your electric blanket about 30 minutes before you go up to bed. Once you get there, with another blanket and your flannel PJs, you're toasty warm and can sleep SO well. It's not like being outside in the open. It's not nearly as cold inside since you do have walls and bodies around you. Summertime - well, the house was closed in the summer so it wasn't an issue.
And it's not pitch black dark - the exit signs are on 24/7. When the sun came up, it was darkish, but not black-dark.
As far as the alarm issue - we didn't have a schedule, but you could post a note in the main telephone room where people hung out to wake you. Usually the girls would turn their alarm off quickly. And you just kind of train yourself to ignore other people's alarms.

[AZTheta]

Originally Posted by GammaPhi-L-L

I don't know very many first-hand accounts of women who maximize their options and don't receive a bid. Just keep and open mind from the beginning of the process, not just the end.
As long as women drop out because they don't get into certain sororities, exclusivity wins.

wait…what?

Are we talking about the same campus where a PNM can attend up to three Preference parties and end up bidless? That, surely, means that a PNM has maximized her options.

That has nothing to do with exclusivity.

Your personal first-hand knowledge is limited to just that; more research is needed.

[aephi alum]

Originally Posted by AGDee

The thing I never understood about sleeping porches is how you manage to wake up when you're supposed to without waking up the whole porch.

There was one independent living group (ILG) at my school where there was a sleeping porch. Before going to bed, everyone put his/her name on a list with his/her requested wake-up time. One person slept in the main house with an alarm clock set for 5:30am or so, and it was his/her responsibility to go up to the porch and wake people up at their requested time and say, "It's 8am [or whatever], time to get up". This was a rotating house duty known as "arousal". LOL

[blueiumom]

Originally Posted by sigmagirl2000

I still don't understand. Why on earth have a room if you don't sleep in it? How in the world do you sleep in an unheated room in Indiana or anywhere else that gets remotely cold in the winter? This sounds like... I don't know.... girl scout camp in the winter or something.

No lights + no heat = no friggin way.

In my chapter, the members were displeased if they got assigned to one of the two triples in the house, because there were too many people in the room... and those rooms were like 15' by 20'.

Everyone fought for the one tiny single... maybe we New Englanders are just more private people?

Still making me smile . . . in Indiana, our "cold dorms" definitely have heat - at least they did by the time I was in school in the eighties. It was radiator heat though, hard to control from room to room. So, we chose our bunks based on what temperature we prefered. The warm dorm was just plain hot and I figured cultivated germs like crazy, then there was an in-between temperature dorm, and the cold dorm usually had the windows open to offset the hot radiator heat! And of course we all slept in those hot Lanz flannel nightgowns! I'm sure the house corp loved our approach. :-)

[AOII Angel]

Originally Posted by GammaPhi-L-L

I was a grad student in the student activities office and saw IU recruitment first-hand. It is brutal. As my user name suggests, my undergraduate experience was much different. Sorority recruitment and the entire system is part of what makes IU. The entire system is exclusive, and I think the administration likes it that way.

I have advised many PNMs during their IU recruitment. The ones that have happy endings were usually the ones who kept their options open - cut and kept a variety of houses (yes, they can cut a "coveted" house, after the first party even). One who had a particularly difficult time was a little disappointed with her options but pledged anyway. Many were too selective and dropped out when they weren't invited back to certain houses. This young woman competed on the Little 5 team her freshman year and then became captain. She had the time of her life. All of the IU sororities and fraternities to do the same things. There are best friends and buttheads in all of them.

While I feel bad for the women who feel hurt on bid day, I get over it. I don't know very many first-hand accounts of women who maximize their options and don't receive a bid. Just keep and open mind from the beginning of the process, not just the end. As long as women drop out because they don't get into certain sororities, exclusivity wins.

Apparently you do NOT understand what maximizing your options really means. If a PNM maximizes her options at any other school, she will walk out of recruitment with a bid to a sorority. At IU, there are fewer spots than number of women in recruitment so even if every single PNM maximized her options, 30% or so would still go home empty handed on bid day. It's nice that you can be so cavalier about a situation just because you personally don't know any of the women affected first hand. It is plainly obvious that it does happen, however. Claiming that this is just IU is like saying that saying "water is wet." We know. It doesn't make it right.

[naraht]

Just as a note, IU Panhel is in the process of expansion. Prior to this year they had 21 of the 26 Panhel Sororities and with the expansion this semester (DPhiE chosen over AST) they will have 22. The other three members of the PHC not on the campus are PhiSig, SK and Tri-Sig.

But with the numbers that went through this year, I'm not sure that even if they added all of the rest with similar sized houses that everyone would have gotten a bid.

http://bl-ids-website.ads.iu.edu/new....aspx?id=95066

[Titchou]

775 posts on 52 pages....haven't we said everything that needs be said about this topic?

[Benzgirl]

Originally Posted by aephi alum

There was one independent living group (ILG) at my school where there was a sleeping porch. Before going to bed, everyone put his/her name on a list with his/her requested wake-up time. One person slept in the main house with an alarm clock set for 5:30am or so, and it was his/her responsibility to go up to the porch and wake people up at their requested time and say, "It's 8am [or whatever], time to get up". This was a rotating house duty known as "arousal". LOL

Our house didn't have a sleeping porch but I stayed overnight with a DG on another campus and they did. The person on wake-up duty would do it for reduced housing expenses. Although, for their wake up call, there was no speaking. They literally came over and shook your body. Luckily, I was forewarned.

[GratefulGramma]

Who supplies the bedding for the cold dorm/rooms? Is each student assigned a particular bed, and he/she provides bedding?

[Sigmapsimom]

Originally Posted by disgusted

I have read through all of this forum with much interest. My daughter was a casualty of this year's rush process. We do not nor do we care to know why. She is the child of "well known" parents with "more than plenty" of money. My husband and I do not allow any of our children to "ride" on our family's prestige/good fortune. So in the end, I do not believe the sororities are "doing research" on their new members and if my daughter is not a good fit based on her own than I am glad the losses are cut now.

I use the name "disgusted" because it seems that many young girls have been cut with little reason. Had my daughter let it be known who her parents were she most likely would have been welcome anywhere, but in hindsight would have been hugely unfair as on her "own worth" received no bid.

Not sure what I think of this. I hope you are a legitimate poster, but I'm not sure. Regardless, after a semester of school, unless your daughter never talked about herself or her parents(not boasting, just talked) I would think her fellow students would have known who her "famous" parents are. I mean my daughter's friends know I'm a teacher and so did many girls in the sororities. During recruitment, she was asked what her parents did, what kind of car she drove and where she vacations. I don't know if it was "research" or not, but I choose to believe it was polite conversation.

[silver_blue]

Originally Posted by Titchou

775 posts on 52 pages....haven't we said everything that needs be said about this topic?

As one of the people who participated in beating this dead horse, I agree. Any way this thread or another sort of "IU FYI" thread can be stickied?