phi mu rec letters

Personal recommendation letters used to be useful as a way to vet the girls seeking membership to show a chapter that pnm's were quality girls who would make good members. A 'do not recommend' has also been a thing too for this reason. Times have changed. With so many girls coming through rush on many campuses, rec letters have become a real pain for the chapters to sift through, and for the pnm's to get for all the different houses. Only an alumna of the sorority can write a rec and not every pnm has good contacts with alumnae for recs. This has resulted in recs being written by alums who don't really know girls personally at all just to tick a box, rendering the rec virtually useless from the original intent of personally vouching for a quality girl. And very importantly, having the existing sorority alum connections to get recs has put minority girls especially at a disadvantage. So to level the playing field a bit and cut out the giant pain they cause, a lot of sorority nationals have ditched the requirement.

Most letters of recommendations now come from alumni who don’t personally know the PNM and if they do, they don’t know them that well. They are still accepted by all the sororities other than Phi Mu but I don’t know any house that requires them. I think the letters of recommendation will likely fade away in coming years just like legacy status. I know so many girls that got bids from houses they never sent letters of recommendation to.

Just to be clear, it has always been the chapter's responsibility to get a recommendation for a girl they want to bid, never the pnm's requirement. This is an NPC rule. If a chapter really wanted a pnm they would call around and get a rec on her through their alumnae network. This actually happened to me when my mom got a call from an alum before prefs. But pnm's whose social circles were plugged in to Greek life with tons of personal alumnae contacts would have recommendations all lined up and sent in to the chapters way ahead of rush. The alums would simply offer to do it for them just as soon as a girl knew which school she was going to attend. As this became known as a thing that was being done, almost everyone else started doing it too, finding alums everywhere to write their recs even if the alums didn't really know them well. With so many recs coming in to chapters unsolicited, it became an easy cut for a chapter to release pnm's who didn't have a rec already in. But if they really wanted a girl, the chapter would get that rec. So yes, girls may not have sent a rec into a chapter and still got a bid, but they had no idea that the chapter was procuring one on their behalf behind the scenes, because they HAD to.