300+ girls dropped. extension in the future?

The Panhellenic Council took a first step toward changing that image in December by voting to add two days of open house during rush week.
The vote wasn't unanimous but it did pass by a 2/3 vote of the 17 sororities.

You can read the whole article if you google it.


This was back when UPC wasn't a campus organization. Sororities not recognized by university. Wild Wild West if you will.

So this explains dance party!!
They are just coping with the fact they didn't want every rusher to set foot in their house? Did dance party start in 1989? Did Pi Phi vote in the 1/3 against Open House?

So this is why alums from before the 90s just aren't up to date.
Crazy quota setting and no Open House.
Surprised so many chapters are still here....,,,

How was quota set with closed rush? I'm really curious about how that was done in 1969 -- that's almost as many PNMs as Bama had come through this time.

Incidentally, Arkansas used to do bed rush just like Indiana -- there were only as many spots as there were vacancies in the houses.

So 1/3 of the 17 groups?
That would be 6 right....
Wonder which 6 voted against an open house where everyone would start on equal footing?
This began an era of vicious tent talk, an over the top elaborate rush week, dirty rushing etc.
Also same year GPhiB left... Coincidence?

And dear Prudence wrote her Big 6 defining article "Sisterhood is Powerful" in the September 1976 edition of Texas Monthly.
At the time there were ~20 sororities on campus. But not everyone got invited as there was no Open House round....

I do believe the author has stated that she intended the BIG6 article to be read as satire. If you read the Texas Monthly article which is online you have to see her original intent was to poke fun. But as with satirical articles today from the likes of the Onion there were some that grabbed it and ran with it. Bless their hearts.

[So before 1988 you didn't even go to every chapter on campus. You received an invite or you didn't even set foot inside the house?]

Yes. I knew almost nothing about rush. I signed up because it sounded like a nice opportunity. I received 3 invites. Went to 3 houses the whole time. Ended up pref 1 (suicided) and found my home. We had 50 in my pledge class (which was quote during the mid 70's) Loved it ever since!

Before RFM, quota was figured out basically the same way; number of PNMs left at preference divided by the the number of chapters. Obviously there's more to that and a complex algorithm but that's the simplified version. The big difference was in the number of invites a sorority could extend. It was basically the wild west with no limits. So the most desirable chapters would keep inviting tons of PNMs back who they never had any intention of pledging just so they would have huge parties and could brag about the size of their parties and their return rates. Meanwhile all those PNMs were earnestly continuing to go to those parties and believed they still had a chance while regretting chapters where they actually did have a chance. So once preference rolled around, the PNM would either receive no invites or receive invites to parties where she wasn't ever going to get a bid. The end effect was many unplaced PNMs because there was no maximizing options or guaranteed placement if you stuck through the process. It's also how the weaker chapters got smaller and smaller every year. You think recruitment is brutal now? This is what your mothers and grandmothers were up against.

The closest comparison to "Sisterhood Is Powerful" is "The Official Preppy Handbook." Written by somebody poking fun at something they know well, but then people start taking it as gospel.

I read (yeah, at GC) that for years quota was 50 during the old system, regardless of how many PNMs came through.

(Ohio State had a similar setup mandated by the university until recently -- total was always 100 and quota was always 25.)

That's not quite right. While it may have happened that way for a few years, quota was figured by dividing the PNMs by the sororities, but it happened earlier than preference. So the stronger sororities got more because they had their choice of all the PNMs they'd kept stringing along and the weaker ones didn't have any chance of making it because it was artificially high and the PNMs who still had the stronger chapters had dropped them earlier. I hope that makes sense.

Yasss it has changed the recruitment landscape At Texas and across the country Came from some big NPC brains!

With all the changes to the structure of recruitment in the last century Am interested to see what's next!

RFM came from an Alpha Phi at MIT-- not NPC brains.

APhi is a member of NPC. MIT women have brains.

While this is correct, truthfully at schools where a caste system is so deeply entrenched, there is virtually no way the less popular chapters can ever gain a stronger foothold unless something changes dramatically. I think SDT is probably at that tipping point and either needs to either 1) get a house again and rebrand themselves or 2) Continue as an unhoused smaller alternative and discontinue participating in formal recruitment or 3) Close, regroup and figure out how to come back with a house and renewed focus at some point in the future.

Sometimes it is most productive to bring a new sorority onto campus in these situations. Its easier for a lot of women to accept a bid to a chapter with "no reputation because they're new" versus one with a stigma that can never be overcome on a campus with a seemingly unbreakable caste system.

I agree that having some kind of house would be a huge help for SDT. As mentioned before, the Bama chapter is very similar, but they managed to secure a small university-owned house near the Jefferson Avenue (New Row) fraternities three or four years ago. It's very modest (more like a small apartment building), but it does provide a living space and a home base for the chapter. I think it's helped them build their numbers too -- back before they got the house, their numbers dwindled down to 7 or 8 members. Now they have close to 70.

Interesting was to describe her... The Glue That Kept It All Going. The Weight That Held It Back.

She did no favors for us back then as she had her favorites.

Was she hired when the Panhellenic Council and sororities went off campus in May 1968? Or was she around long before that?

Did she leave after the sororities and UPC went back on campus and adopted Open House??

And just curious, did she have an affiliation?

I really do not think rankings matter that much anymore to the institutions themselves rather it seems to be some false pre-conceived idea that one sorority is better than the other for x, y, z when really they all stand for the same reason so there is no point of rankings

True when you believe in the status quo.