Rush 2006/2007 Thread
 

Forgot to mention this earlier, but since rush is nearly over hear at Nebraska...

I have been extremely lucky to have my little brother follow in my footsteps and join Beta at Nebraska. He signed his bid card about a month ago, and I didn't think to share the good the news. His pledge class is actually going to have SIX little brothers in it. Last count had 24 guys in his class, I believe, with a couple of remaining guys who may also sign.

He doesn't know it yet, but I even bought him a pink and blue tie that I plan on giving him when he moves into the chapter house August 17th.

Post rush results from this school year in this thread as they come in...

You're already doing Rush?! WOW... our university doesn't do any official Rush activities until September. We haven't even finished our planning phase yet, much less executing anything.

By six "little brothers", I assume you mean legacies... congrats and extending your families involvement with Beta. As the last child in my family to attend college (my little brother never finished high school), I won't be able to share that honor. My only hope is that my future children choose to join our wonderful organization.

Yes, we do all of our rush during the summer. I did a thread several years back about it. The guys who signed that summer are now heading into their senior years (...I've been on GC a looong time).

Here's the thread: http://greekchat.com/gcforums/showth...ht=Summer+Rush

There's a post on either the second or third page that explains about the process very clearly.

We are in the process of rush right now also down here at FAU in south florida. it is looking to be a good turn out and we have seen a lot of new guys that we thought were not going to join untill they saw what Beta Theta Pi had to offer. We have already seen a great number of people getting ready to come out and the number of people rushing is only getting bigger.

-Since we are talking about little brothers, my oldest brother was prez. of SigEp in new york before me moved down and they tried so had to get me to join but, during rush in spring 06 i looked at them right in the eye and asked where the beta theta pi table was and that was that-:cool:

And the rest is history....:)

My chapter has it's offical 'Rush' week next week. They all seem pretty optimistic about it.

It would be nice if they could pull 20+.

my chapter just started our two week fall recruitment. Ill keep you guys posted, we are doing something actually rather progressive this time, so it has potential to be really good, or really bad... we will see

ECU's formal recruitment is Sept 18-22 I think... why so late? I have no idea. The EA's definitely need to pick up some good numbers this year.

Good luck to everyone on your recruiting!

We gave out 4 bids, but we are a spring rush school, so this is to be expected. Well, low is to be expected, but we are in deep trouble in the recruitment department. If we dont get 15 in the spring, then we do not get our charter, and that is the only thing stopping us. We are in total troubled waters

So what's your number at now, and how much is the campus average? I might be mistaken, but I was under the impression that chartering requirements were supposed to be sustained over the course of a semester.

We have 16, most have 30-45, (12 being SENIORS)... so depending on how many of these guys accept tonight we need 12-16, in the winter, and we were told at convention, that that will do it for us!... personally, not to be a downer, but i don't think itll happen, no one usually recruits more then 10 in the spring, and we dont have a good rep on campus.

I think recruitment has become a MAJOR issue for newly formed colonies and/or newly chartered chapters.

We're very excited for Rush to be here, but foreseeing the loss of 6-8 brothers by the end of the academic year means we have to at least replace those men... and it's be awesome if we could recruit more than that. Time will tell...

What are your recruitment methods?

It sounds like you already expect to have a bad rush and just generally pessimistic. I was rush chair for awhile and I had a great time doing it. I learned a lot and I wish I could have done it longer because I have some new things I would like to try out. I saw rush as a competition, and the three semesters I ran it we had the largest pledge classes with the best guys. I focused more on quality than quantity-but that led me into bringing up all the quality guys who in turn did half our recruitment for us.

I think that is really true. I think one of the most appealing things about a fraternity is tradition and I think it is hard to grasp that from a chapter you heard was just starting. Also, I find that a new chapter sort of scares old chapters, so the fangs come out in the rumor mill and etc. Third, the chapter is still finding there place, not just with recruitment but with the brotherhood aspect, which can sometimes be really relevant to the possible recruit.

It is hard, and I just hope we can overcome it. Coramoor is right with staying postitive, if you defeat yourself before the game starts, well you never have a chance to see how the game plays out, its just hard though because this is our 4th recruitment period, and it just doesnt seem to be working right, and every recruitment we do our best to improve, and make it more successful.

Right now only time will tell

A big problem we ran into when we were first starting to come back was that other chapters/their alumni/the school still had the old image of my chapter in their mind.

Even though it's a different chapter/brotherhood other fraternities have a long memory and will hold things against you from way before your time.

Beta Psi (WVU) just finished up with recruitment and had the Pledge Ceremony.

They handed out 27 bids and ended with 24 guys, 2 deferments. I went to the first meeting to check them out and see what I though, and I was impressed. Pretty diverse group. Engineers, Pharms., Biology, etc. 2 black guys, 2 Koreans, and kids from all over the US.

Not to be picky but why even mention race? We do not need to keep this type of information. I would have left it at diverse group and the majors. I am guessing the blacks guys would have easily fit into "kids from all over the US" group.

This is of course unless I am missing some Beta first: first Korean to ever pledge, first Sudanese to ever pledge or African prince pledges Beta.

Just one brothers opinion.

well, its nice to have a group with different backgrounds to bring to the table...

I agree
 

I agree it nice to have a good cross section or varied representation.

I just thoughth it was not needed to be identified. There are too many lawyers and judges that would use that particular posting to represent Beta Theta Pi as a whole and cost us money in defending ourselves needlessly.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't WVa coming down to Pirate country tomorrow for an ESPN-2 game?! GOOD TIMES!

Epsilon Alpha (East Carolina Univ) just finished formal IFC Rush last night @ Midnight. We got 4 guys through that. We expect more throughout the next week or so of informal recruitment.

Oldest Pledge,

If I made some remarks how I was pissed off that my chapter was allowing that to happen, then that would be bad. I'm happy that we have some diversity because often times non-white students (at least on my campus) never even consider joining a fraternity.

ECUJacob,

I'm hoping to make it to that game if possible. I'm in VA right now with the Army and I don't think it would be that far of a drive for me to go.

Coramoor,

If you (or your brothers) need a place to tailgate, party, sleep, etc, please feel free to let us know and we'll glad to help you. We're always willing to hang out with other chapters!

OK
 

OK. I am cool with this. I am happy that there is diversity as well. I grew up as the minority up to 7th grade (basically an 80/20 split in school) so I am sensitive to all the labling issues. I prefer to be called Euro-American rather than white (I am a pale tan, thank you).

Hm
 

here at San Jose State University, we had our lowest fall incoming pledge class in the past 4 years. We have 6 new pledges but already have guys who want to join in the spring. I am the recruitment chairman for the 06-07 yr and bust my butt and saw little results. So the new tactic is to rush during the fall and pledge a lot more guys in the spring. It would be cool to rush during the summer but we have too many commuters and that option is not available to us. If anyone has any ideas, let me know.

So, this thread is a little old, but I figured that you'd all be at least interested in finding out more rush results. I'm not a Beta (If I were male, I'd totally want to be though), but I'm very close with the Beta chapter on my campus, and since none of them post on GC I'll let you guys know for them.

The Lambda Kappa - Beta Chapter (Case Western) had a very successful rush this semester, I'm not sure how many bids were extended, but they wound up with six quality men in their pledge program. Two of the pledges are sophomores, the other four are freshmen. Since the semester is now coming to a close, the active chapter is starting to get excited about their trip to oxford and cincinati for initiation (they really do get excited about it, and I bet taking a trip like that is a great bonding experience). If all six pledges are initiated, the chapter will have 16 members, which seems small, but is stellar for them since (as I'm sure at least some of you know) in recent years they had gotten very small, as in at the start of the Fall 2005 semester there were four active brothers, and all of them were seniors. Through lots of hard work and dedication the members of this chapter are working on not only getting numbers up, but keeping their brotherhood strong, they aren't just handing out bids to anyone who shows up to stuff, in my oppinion if a chapter had to be almost 100% rebuilt by sophomores, you couldn't have picked a better, more dedicated group of guys.

Sorry for the amount of writing there, I love that chapter quite a lot so I get excited for them and want to share.

I do wish that the General Fraternity would dedicate more resources to Recruitment.

My chapter for instance went from 17 guys to 70+ in a very short time because we worked on recruitment all the time. If the G.F. really took time to spend time with chapters and work with them most of the problems we have would be worked out.

Recruiting Help
 

I whole-heartedly agree. When I was with the Indiana State Univeristy colony in '83, I felt we were on our own. I never met anyone from the three nearest chapters or national. No one ever came to our events (OK, they were only two social events that semester).

We were competing with a new Pi Kappa Alpha chatper and I think Tau Kappa Epsilon has just recruited a whole Freshman dorm floor. My mind may not have the full time-line with TKE coming to ISU.

If an equal amount of effort was given to helping chapters recruit as there is with the targeted expansion, I think our Brotherhood would be well served.

I will leave the details as to which chapters are "selected" for recruitment help for anther thread.

You can throw money at a chapter, resources at a chapter, alumni help and AO resources...etc. If you have a chapter that is apathetic, lazy or just plain old bad, no help will get them to recruit better. It starts from within. The chapter MUST want to recruit, and nobody but THEMSELVES can recruit for them. My chapter is a perfect example of this.

True. However, there can exist, at times, situations where a Chapter is honestly trying yet not succeeding.

It is these chapter that need to be identified and helped.

this is too true. A lot of times it is the campus that is lazy and apathetic. A lot of campuses are dominately GDI, and changing that doesnt happen over night. However, I will say that there isnt much the AO can do, when the AO come to help with our recruitment, we just end up re-explaining everything, and it all ends up redundant.

Personally, I don't agree with the GDI excuse.

Maybe 15% of my chapter ever actually came to college and wanted to join a fraternity. Quite a few guys outright hated fraternities before they even know what one was or who we were.

It takes a lot of work and experience to know how to rush guys like that, but in the end most of them are more likely to be good brothers than guys that had to join a fraternity.

Alpha eta just finished the year's formal recruitment session with 9 guys. A great number here at Denison's small greek community.

Epsilon Alpha is going to end up with 4-6 pledges for Spring '07. That's the average for our school.