I'm surprised no one has mentioned yet what's probably the biggest deferred recruitment there is. Midwest. State school. The largest number of NPC sororities anywhere. Horrible weather. It's Indiana of course.

Last I heard, the University of Michigan is being forced to move to deferred. It's causing great concern for filling the houses. I think that's the biggest driving force for fall recruitment is housing. Housing in college towns is typically difficult to find so students sign leases in October/November for the following academic year. That means with deferred recruitment, sophomores can't live in. You have to fill a house with Juniors because Seniors usually don't want to live in (for a variety of reasons- being at legal drinking age, having internships, fieldwork, student teaching, etc.)

That's a really interesting point - how many of the deferred campuses have housing to fill and how does deferred impact it?



I'm thinking of how deferred would completely change the housing aspect at a school like the University of Washington, where new members move into the houses on Bid Day.


ETA: Why am I getting huge spaces in my posts?!?!

Vanderbilt and UVA have winter recruitment. The pnms have an entire semester to meet members and form opinions of each group, which I believe make the cuts that much harder - the pnms have stronger feelings of where they feel they fit in, and the mutual selection aspect is tougher to take.

No idea why you're getting huge spaces in your posts :)

I know of at least one of our campuses someone mentioned here as deferred who are having a very hard time filling their house and end up with very large parlor fees to cover the expenses of having empty beds. It's not a good situation.

Do most of the sophomores stay on campus or move off? Would the university be willing to work with the Greeks to let people out of their leases, since they are the ones forcing this change?

Or is the school purposely doing this to throw a monkey wrench into the sororities’ operations?

I also just want to state that I cannot imagine what a living hell my sophomore year would have been had I been forced to make housing decisions in October of my freshman year, because to say my situation changed DRAMATICALLY by that time is a major understatement.

I think it would be easier for deferred at a school with smaller or no housing. University of Virginia does deferred recruitment, but the houses there are smaller...largest holds 32 last I knew and most only hold around 20 or less. I was at Virginia over 30 years ago and they were doing deferred then. The reasoning was, as others have pointed out, to let students become adjusted to college life and establish themselves a bit on campus before joining a sorority. But, I will say that January's in Charlottesville were cold. To get to one house, we had to go down wooden stairs, cross the railroad tracks and then go up the other side. One of the fraternities always thought it was a funny prank to pour water over the stairs so they'd freeze.

Worse than horrible weather! Always bitter cold, sometimes snow, sometimes ice. In the back of my mind, I always wondered if it was deferred to keep numbers down during the days of bed rush. If it was early August, more girls might be interested because they had not made friends yet in class or in their dorm.

Deferred isn't necessarily anything new, but it is gaining traction - from my experience working at a fraternity HQ on expansion.

It's mostly a responsive effort. If a fraternity/sorority community's grades drop or if there are risk management concerns, the standard among Greek Life professionals is to recommend deferred recruitment as a potential antidote.

My issue with doing so is two-fold:
- Deferred recruitment doesn't necessarily address the problem that students don't actually sell the real fraternity experience. There is too little clarity on the financial and time cost of membership, and without clear "pricing" (referring to time commitments as well) chapters can either overwork new members or find that many drop off shortly after initiation or their junior year because they never actually agreed to what was required.
- Deferred recruitment is another case of treating Greek Life different from other student organizations. Consider the Red Cross, an international organization. If they establish a chapter on a college campus, that Red Cross club basically has the liberty to do what they wish. Deferred recruitment makes the case that fraternities and sororities inhibit people, rather than that they help people excel (which goes hand in hand with the previous point).

So I think you'll see more deferred recruitment in the coming years because campus professionals switch schools every year or two and many just carry deferred recruitment policies with them. That said, it's always good to challenge the process, and deferred recruitment without appropriate recruitment training is not as effective as it is in theory.

What I don't like about deferred rush is that the PNMs are under a microscope that whole first semester, and few realize it. Many are away from home for the first time, and enjoy their own version of Girls Gone Wild their first semester. There's no chapter guidance as to "tone it down, Suzy!"

What is good about deferred rush is that the chapters get the PNMs' grades prior to recruitment.

Also, VTech is deferred.

I know MIT used to be deferred and now does fall recruitment - any other campuses change from deferred to fall? I feel like it's not very common to go the opposite route.

When I was at Arkansas, you couldn't rush until your sophomore year. They changed it to freshman fall rush in the late seventies.

Very few sophomores live in at Michigan. There's no room for them unless they are in a specialized live and learn kind of program. Dorm space is scant. Housing is hard to come by and extremely expensive.

I agree that it is crazy, but it's their reality.

The difference between joining a Greek organization vs the Red Cross club or whatever is, if you drop out of the Red Cross club you can join the Clara Barton club or another similar group with no problem. You also probably aren’t going to join an alumni chapter of the Red Cross club or be involved with it when you’re a senior citizen.

Fraternities and sororities AREN’T like any other club; let’s not pretend they are as an argument against deferred rush.