The University of Michigan administration has dropped it's push to move to deferred recruitment after a huge backlash from alumnae (big donators!).

I think how much it hurts the chapters depends on the campus. At the U of Mich, for example, chapters would have a very hard time filling their houses if they had deferred recruitment. Leases are signed in January and February for the following academic year for all of the housing in the area. Therefore, if a freshman was going through recruitment in January and February, they wouldn't be sure whether they would get in and be initiated, so they would sign leases for off campus housing for the following fall before they knew what their Greek affiliation would be, if any. That would mean that you would have no sophomores or freshman living in the GLO houses. That would hurt a lot financially.

Dee

i don't think it's a big deal either. we had deferred recruitment at my school, and while i don't know what it's like ot go through recruitment that's not, i preferred it. it gave me a semester to get used to my surrounding, get settled in classes, meet people, without having the pressures of a competitive rush put on me all at once.

I think the major issue is the housing factor. I think that it's very hard to make the switch from fall rush to deferred unless your school does not have houses. Here, the majority of leases are signed in November-January. If rush is in January and girls aren't initiated until March, you will lose out on sophomores being able to live in. In a school where chapters have a hundred women (after rush) and the house holds 30, this may not be so bad. If the houses hold 50, it could be another story. I remember reading an article about Northwestern where the sororities were forcing these girls to break their apartment leases so they could fill the house. I know you sign a contract saying you'll live in if you have to, but I don't think that's very fair.

That said, I don't really think that deferring rush will do ANYTHING to stop the alcohol problems that Colorado has been having. I spoke to one of the Colorado Tri Delts, and from what I've heard, it sounds less like hazing than just stupidity on the part of the new member ed and the pledges in question. I don't really see that being solved by deferred rush. Maturity does not increase that much in one semester. Even if it was hazing, I don't really see that being solved by deferred rush either. In my opinion, using deferred rush is a punishment* and not a proactive measure to counteract the risk management violations that are happening. It's an easy solution for the school to look like it's doing something when really it's not going to change anything.

* I realize that deferred rush is not necessarily a punishment and that many of you who experienced it liked it -- just saying that schools often attempt to use it as a punishment, as in "You were bad, so now we're not letting you rush until second semester."

Our deffered recruitment is for everyone. We run on a trimester year though (they call it quarters, but whatever). So everyone rushes/pledges through winter quarter (most go active the weekend before finals week). Girls sign their housing forms in spring quarter, so the houses are filled that way (except for the positions that are required to live in the house). My chapter only has 5 spots for the house, but others here have 19. What might be easier would be changing the housing cycle if deffered rush was implemented.

There is a great deal of discussion among university adminstrators (in general) that deferred recruitment allows freshman to get aquinted with college life before they jump into any time commitments.

As a Greek Life person I'm annoyed that they don't defer other groups from also allowing people to join. To me it seems as they they are sectioning out Greeks and saying only this subset of university life has to follow this rule.

In the mean time Frannie Freshman gets involved in Camera Club and Habitat for Humanity and other worthy time consuming organizations and by December / January / Febuary is all tapped out for time - because they've also taken this new required class called Freshman Seminar that tells them that they should limit their non-study/class time to x-amount of time per week. And then they hear that that a fraternity or sorority will take 5 - 10 hours a week and they've been turned away. The prime people we want are those that are joining Habitat and getting good grades and understand time managment.

But let us not forget that administrators have to report back to a board of trustees that want to see their grades improve and no other "college-aged" fun happening. So they push for deferred recruitment and who cares what happens to our organizations.

So what does that mean? It means that every sister and brother fulfill their outside activity requirement and join these non-deferred activities and become fun and happy and show that you can be a Greek and be involved in something else and recruit from those groups.

This is how it works for us as well. The fraternities are the week after sorority recruitment.

Camera Club is not a lifetime commitment.

Habitat for Humanity is not a lifetime commitment.

That's the difference. I would rather someone wait for a semester or a year and make a better decision, rather than join a semester early and get so burnt out or disillusioned that they want nothing to do with Greek life by their senior year, let alone as an alum. I'm not saying that's the norm, but it certainly seems to happen quite a bit (from a female perspective - I think for guys it's not quite as bad).

If they're taking courses that say you should only have x amount of hours spent on outside activities - that's stupid not just for Greek life reasons. That sounds like a power play by the athletic department to make sure athletes don't join any other groups.

As I said in the other thread, if that's how you feel, and your feeling is the feeling of the chapter, then your chapter should do that. It is wrong for an administration to force it or even try and push it onto you.

I have a feeling most sororities would downright accept any campus regulation like this but fraternities would put up a fight.

-Rudey

I'm just saying that freshment TYPICALLY get involved in other things fall quarter and are involved in them when January rolls around.

Why shouldn't Greek Life have the same opportunities as other campus organizations to recruitment members as those groups do? I think it should be an all or nothing deal.

If you're going to hold Greek Life accountable and hold them off until January, why not every organization?

i don't have as much of a problem with deferred recruitment, as much as i have a problem with fraternity and sorority rushes occuring at different times.

I agree with you SnowLady.

Administrators know that if they move to deferred recruitment more people will enter school and develop other time consuming first semester activities instead of joining greek life.

If that happens those people are less likely to join a sorority.

So in a sense it adresses Greek drinking by making less people drink.

When we had Spring recruitment on our campus (Minnesota State), multipul positives....

1.) Grades as a whole (for pledges and chapters) went up and stayed up.

2.) We had better retention rates.

3.) The ratio of those who had been pinned in to those who had gone through to initiation increased.

The one major downfall of Spring recruitment we faced was that it killed our overall greek population on campus. Our numbers across the board were cut in half in some cases. Fall is the best time for numbers.

Thats the whole point of why administrators like deferred Rush.

It hasn't hurt the numbers on my campus much at all, for the men or the women. We are a small campus, with a large percentage of Greeks.