Okay - The girls the popular sorority might pledge, if they could pledge more girls, but they won’t pledge because they will eventually be cut, are going to be cut earlier on. Then those potential pledges have more time to give serious consideration to the less popular sorority?
I have to make myself a chart. I still don’t see how this ends up with a different result than the old system.
Based on photo albums of the various houses at IU, most fraternities and sororities are highly racially segregated.
http://www.indiana.edu/~gogreek/
Note that even the associations are racially segregated (IFC, PHA = historically white, MCGC = historically Latino, NPHC = historically black). Apparently, this historic tradition is rather strong.
Exactly. It’s the cruel to be kind approach. From a sociological point of view, everyone learns their status early in this system.
Think of RFM and the old system from the point of view of a middling rushee. In the old system, she could go to all her parties for the first two rounds, and then none of the sororities she visited would invite her back, as their lists got shorter. She would have been a perfect fit for a middle sorority, but because she spent all her time at the top houses, she never even got to visit the sororities that would have loved her. Under RFM, she is quickly eliminated from sororities where she has no chance, leaving her more scope to explore the sororities at her level.
The same for a rushee that could never get a bid from a top or middle house. She should not be spending her rush at houses that are not going to want her. She will quickly be funneled down to her correct lower level.
If there were no such thing as sorority rankings, if some sororities weren’t more popular than other sororities, then RFM wouldn’t make any difference. But it does make a difference.
Imagine that college applications were like this, with rounds. Harvard would need to prune its list heavily right away, because everyone knows that Harvard has a great yield. No sense having a non-top student spend time at Harvard’s parties when he should be impressing the admissions officers at Bates.
Suppose we have a bad system where every house can invite back as many as they want, and they all do. Suppose that there is nothing wrong with Susie Sorority; the top houses like her, but they all like other people better. So every round she is trotting back to the most popular sororities, and never visiting the less popular sororities who would like her. In the end, the popular sororities fill up before they get to her, and the lower sororities never got a chance to get to know her so they pick other women.
In RFM, the popular sororities are forced to acknowledge early on that even though they like Susie, they like lots of women better, so there is no chance that they will bid our Susie. And Susie goes to the parties of the middle and lower sororities who can appreciate her wonderful self.
It’s about status and sorting.
“Think of RFM and the old system from the point of view of a middling rushee. In the old system, she could go to all her parties for the first two rounds, and then none of the sororities she visited would invite her back, as their lists got shorter. She would have been a perfect fit for a middle sorority, but because she spent all her time at the top houses, she never even got to visit the sororities that would have loved her. Under RFM, she is quickly eliminated from sororities where she has no chance, leaving her more scope to explore the sororities at her level.”
You’re right in theory, but I don’t like the concept of “middling rushee.” Not being interested in and / or not getting the attention of a so-called “top house” doesn’t make someone a middling rushee. It’s not a crime not to like a top house.
This is somewhat analogous to how people always assume that the order that one “must” want is Harvard, Yale, Princeton, blah blah blah. No - it’s perfectly fine to have your first choice be Vanderbilt or Notre Dame or Carnegie-Mellon. You aren’t a “middling” person to think that way and it doesn’t make your preferences “lesser.”
I think the problem was less “middling rushees” and more “certain rushees decided upfront that they were going to target certain houses and not keep an open mind.”
In the Tufts system, if she goes to all parties to which she has been invited in a round, she is guaranteed to get at least one invite for the next round. If all sororities cut her in a round, they get together and at least one has to take her back. That’s the rule that sororities must follow at Tufts.
I am not going to use sorority names, even in hypothetical examples, since I’m anti status or at least try to be. The groups which will be most attractive to all rushees, (the HYPs of the sorority world) will have already created optimal bid lists pretty much by the time rush starts. Very soon in the RFM process they may only be inviting back that list. If they miscalculate their popularity, they may not make quota. This may explain something else I saw in that pdf. Groups making after rush bids (snap bids?) when they didn’t make quota.
I was surprised when D registered for recruitment, but also surprised to find that a number of young people from our area mentioned that they found themselves looking at Greek life because they found it difficult to find friends on their campuses, whether through classes, EC’s, or their freshman floors. I heard this from students attending elite schools, as well as from students at state schools, and these were not by any means limited to those with “socialite” aspirations.
When I mentioned the exclusionary aspect of sorority recruitment to frazzled D, her reaction was very similar to PG’s. She pointed out that the system at her school was set up to accommodate the numbers that were interested, such that the least popular sororities (usually the newer ones) were also under pressure to make themselves attractive enough to PNM’s to make quota. Also, that a girl who got cut from all sororities early in the game could choose to try again during informal recruitment or even during the next cycle, and that it wasn’t all that hard to walk away from the entire process and find other ways to spend time.
If truth be told, many of the EC’s on her campus where students might go to find their tribe were far more competitive and exclusive than most of the sororities, and demanded much more of a student’s time. A student could be cut from the cheer leading squad or not get call backs for performing arts auditions or cut from the debate team even after a couple of successful cycles, and suddenly find themselves looking for new friends in the middle of sophomore or junior year.
A student hoping to find their tribe in an academic major might also find themselves cut loose if a major did not work out and they could not immediately segue into another. At the least, a sorority member cut loose from an EC or major or career path would not at the same time also lose the cohort they were counting on to hang out with, or provide social support.
Finding others to live with can also be a challenge for many students, especially if dorms do not have enough space for all students, and singles (on or off-campus) are not widely available or affordable. Even in dorms, students apply for housing in groups, and nobody seems to want to be the “leftover” or to have to accommodate a “leftover” aka “the random roommate.” It is not always easy for a GDI to find a place to live, or peers to share the cost of housing. I think this is what makes the house system at Rice so attractive to many students, at least in theory; a combination of housing and social inclusion.
PG - interesting to speculate on how a study might have gone if the queen bees in this dorm had been joining culturally-based organizations. Cultural segregation seems to be an issue of concern at many schools.
I am still waiting to actually read the book, but I am already turning over possibilities in my mind about how the calculus might be changed to further examine the premise that some state schools operate with policies that increase inequality for students entering from a lower SES, even if this was not the case a generation ago.
“If truth be told, many of the EC’s on her campus where students might go to find their tribe were far more competitive and exclusive than most of the sororities, and demanded much more of a student’s time.”
Another wrinkle that my D described is the Greek-life domino effect for other EC’s. Being a Greek and having contacts in an EC increases your likelihood that you will be accepted in the EC (non-talent based ECs, unlike theater and cheerleading, of course.) Just like networking in the real world, I guess. But another level of discouragement for a freshman seeking contacts outside of her dorm life and necessary and time-consuming job.
RFM gives them numbers for each round. If they don’t invite back as many women as they can, then they might not make quota (and it’s their own fault), but if they do invite back their maximum, they should. The RFM numbers are based on their popularity in previous years, but with a cushion built in. I suppose if sorority ABC had some scandal some year, and suddenly their popularity dropped, then the RFM numbers would be wrong, but the rush coordinator would probably make on-the-fly adjustments; I don’t know the details there.
Thanks. I’m not really sure why I’m worried about them making quota. They can survive just fine if they don’t.
BerneseMtmMom’s post reminds me of something I’ve been wondering about.
Whitney figures out how to get into a top sorority. She doesn’t get the job she wants post graduation. I think networking can be important. My expectation would have been a parent of one of Whitney’s sorority sisters used connections to get Whitney a job, or at least interviews for possible jobs.
Did her sorority sisters not help Whitney for a reason? Was it not the norm in that group to create networking opportunities for their sisters without any?
Excellent points frazzled. Many ECs are highly competitive - club sports, theater, debate, college newspaper, TV station or others. Of course, the same applies as to the Greek houses: the kids can always find a less popular EC to pursue. Or be involved in a different way. If you can’t act, you may still be welcome to paint sets or sell tickets.
RFM is good for rushees, and it’s also good for less popular sororities. The top sororities don’t need any help.
I wonder if we could build some handicapping into the system like they do with golf? So that it is more fun for everyone?
Purple–EVERY town has their local rich family–might be the local car dealer or John Deere dealer or banker or doctor but there are always a few better off than the rest. 60 miles from NYC they just happened to be WS or maybe Mafia. Dont be so literal.
When I went to UW I met a girl from Beaver Dam. Her family owned the GM dealership there. She seemed pretty rich to me because she could fly to places over break like Colorado to ski and they had a place at Vail. . She dated the UW QB at the time. Royalty.
Then I met a girl from Mass whose family (Forbes) owned a significant island off Mass. That turned out to be just too much for me to feel comfortable with.
If this was 2008 or around then, it was tough for everyone to get a job. My friend’s kids that have been in Greek life have not received any internships or jobs through sorority sisters or frat brothers. And that includes at least 2 that were presidents or other high level officers at their houses.
It wasn’t just Whitney. Karen, Alicia, Nicole and Blair couldn’t find the kind of good jobs that the rich women could find. Evidently, their sorority networking did them no good after college. In the book, we don’t see any examples of sorority networking helping anybody get a job. The book says that the rich women who were able to find jobs in big cities due to their family connections were then able to socialize with sorority sisters in the big cities, but we don’t see anybody getting a job because of sorority connections.
This seems to me to be an indictment of colleges. Even if we believe that Greek life belongs on campus, it shouldn’t be the only way that students can find friends.
@barrons, not every place has rich families.
When the upper crust includes the CPA who has a local tax preparation business making $50K/year (OK, that probably is $100K in current terms) and there were no car dealerships in the small school district where I grew up, the gap simply isn’t that wide.