IFC formal recruitment at Iowa State
 

For the first time in many years Iowa State's IFC is doing a formal recruitment.

The bare facts:

Classes start: August 23rd
Students can move into the dorms: August 19
CPC Sorority Recruitment: August 14-19 (girls in Recruitment allowed to move in early)

IFC Formal Recruitment: July 10 & 11
Number of registered participants: 25
Number of fraternities: 29
IFC Formal Recruitment Registration: I want to say it was $50


Just curious based on these facts before the Formal Recruitment, what you think could be done differently in the future to increase participants at IFC Formal Recruitment.

I think it's going to be very difficult to increase participation and it's going to take a long time to become established. Most of the fraternities don't know how to do formal recruitment and, though I know it's not in the same sense as Panhellenic Recruitment, it's not always easy to be successful with something you don't know how to do. I know the majority of individual fraternity recruitment events are held during the summer but how is this structured? Is it just come and see as many houses as possible? What are the activities?

Iowa State's IFC has tried doing some type of formal recruitment in the recent past (5-6 years) and it's never been very successful.

From what I heard at the last Greek Alumni Alliance meeting, they weren't expecting many more participants than that.

I wasn't really clear on what was all going to happen either - it sounded a bit vague to me. Perhaps just open houses? Will you let us know how it goes? Or if they men end up joining chapters.

I'm not really sure what could be done to increase participation in IFC Formal. Informally recruiting over the summer seems to be second nature to so many fraternities at ISU. Depending on the respective chapters wants, many are very successful at this method. Unless they got rid of informal all together, which I don't think would be wise, I doubt that numbers for Formal will rise dramatically anytime soon.

I was a Rho Gamma for the Formal Recruitment today- seemed to me that it's more a fancy Housing Fair than anything else.
The guys I took around were only interested in the houses. The guys in the houses gave a tour of the house and then they watched TV (at every one I was at!) No questions about the chapter, just questions about the chapterhouse. No information about the chapter, just information about the chapterhouse.

The process:

NPMs checked in then watched a video on Greek life.
Fraternity Fair- table displays by all 26 of 29 fraternities that participated.
The lunch with the Rho Gammas.
Then the NPMs wrote down their top 8 choices on a sheet of paper. A schedule was made up and they had 40 minutes to visit each house, 10 minutes to get from one to the other. Dinner somewhere in the middle of that.
Then before they could watch movies or hit the sack they had to write down the 4 chapters of those 8 they wish to visit again in the morning.
After the visits in the AM the chapters must send an invite for the NPMs to come to an openhouse tomorrow afternoon. At that time chapters may give bid cards.

I ran into an SAE alum today that told me the same thing.

My only question is why is IFC recruitment so early if students don't move into the dorms for about a month? At USF, Panhellenic recruitment is the week prior to school starting (same as Iowa State) and IFC is the first week of classes. It seems to pull a good amount of people.

Fraternities do recruitment a bit different at Iowa State (and on some other campuses). Basically they use an informal recruiting process that starts (correct me if I'm wrong here IowaStatePhiPsi) as early as April. Basically incoming men receive informational pieces and phone calls from the different fraternities and often when they come up for summer orientation they will check out the chapters that they're interested in. Some guys check out tons of different houses, some look at just one or two. The fraternities do different functions, take trips, stuff like that and men are bid throughout the summer. From the two summers that I lived in different houses, I felt that it was a much more laid back process than formal. Guys are also generally able to move into the fraternity right away.

I'm guessing that there is an additional rush at the start of the school year? And if so, is it formal or open? Or from this point on, is it continuous open rush?

I guess a better way to put it would be this. Can the fraternities continue to rush after this or do they need to wait until the fall? And if they have to wait, what happens in the fall?

Fraternity rush at Iowa State (at least when I was there) was pretty much continuous throughout the year.

Bekah--where did you live? I lived at Pi Kaps one summer and Lambda Chis another.

yeah- Iowa State IFC is informal COB.

As for my Rho Gamma experience: was good. My advice for anyone reading this that works for a headquarters: when colonizing at a university that has some form of formal rush or "Greek Get-away" (weekend senior students who may be attending your university/college come up and check out the greek system)- have a member or 2 of the colony be Rho Gammas- good experience seeing aspects of other fraternities.

We were given evaluation forms over our experience of the formal recruitment so I made sure to take some time and give plenty of constructive criticism and point out as many positive aspects as negative aspects that I listed. If we do this next year we may as well learn from our mistakes of this year and gather suggestions for improvement not just comments of "this sucked"- right?

Are you kidding? That's too funny. I lived at Phi Kaps the summer of '98 and Lambda Chis the summer of '99. Lambda Chis actually ended up giving us a free month of rent because our first room had so many problems and they had to move us. The next two summers I lived in apartments.