Fall Formal Recruitment - Help!
 

I have recently taken over the position of Panhellenic Vice President, and the task of Formal Recruitment is in my care. I am on a primarily commuter campus with a very small Greek system - 2 social fraternities (no IFC, though), 4 social sororities, a few NPHC groups... The university has, in years past, been little help with formal recruitment. My question to you is... what do other universities do to promote formal recruitment? Hanging banners in the student center and putting flyers up around campus just isn't going to cut it anymore. How do we promote on a campus that doesn't even know there is a greek presence?

Any help and ideas would be GREATLY APPRECIATED!

Sarah
DZ

My campus is somewhat similar to what you described in terms of Greek presence on campus. We're also a commuter campus and the university does little to even acknowledge our presence, let alone help us out.

Last year, our Panhellenic made numerous attempts to increase knowledge of students about Greek life, and especially to promote IFC and PH formal recruitment. They met with the director's of housing and made an agreement to have a "Greek Q and A night" in the residence halls (I don't think they ever actually did it though), where the IFC and PH officers (all disaffiliated) would talk to all the new students in the res. halls about Recruitment and Greek life in general. The res. halls also allowed us to post doorknob hangers on every resident's door about IFC and PH formal recruitment, how to register, dates, and other info.

In order to reach out to all incoming freshmen, they had the idea to send out a CD-Rom (see Greek101.com or talk to someone from USC- they do this yearly) about each chapter, IFC, and PH, with info about recruitment included. Unfortunately, the people on top of this project didn't plan for postage costs, so the CD-Roms were placed in mailboxes at the Res. Halls and commuter students were still left in the dark. We also didn't the CD-roms until the day before formal PH recruitment, so it didn't do much good for us either. It helped IFC a little though.

Hopefully this helps! Just be sure you get anything you're planning to do planned in advance or else you get issues like we had this year! Good luck!

The door hangers are a good idea - we were thinking of leaving little welcome bags for the incoming freshman... maybe with some pens/pencils/school stuff.

General question... aside from being creative, how does the general school population know about formal recruitment? Are there any type of promotion activities that work well?