Dynamic Recruitment
 

I was just curious if there were any groups who have heard of something proposed by some nationals of different fraternities/sororities called "dynamic recruitment". On my campus, a few of my friends from different fraternities have said that their nationals have been pushing for them to have summer pledge classes so as to "diversify" themselves. I have also heard of a few sororities in my state possibly doing this as well. I was wondering what people thought of this. It sounds like a good idea on the outside but I'm not too sure how well it would work out. One of the major problems I see possibly being faced is the fact that at least where I go to school, a lot of people leave town for the summer, which means that the new guys/girls (i.e. pledges or associate members) do not have a chance to meet more than like half of the fraternity/sorority members and therefore miss out on bonding etc...

If you take a class in the Summer, when do you have time for summer rush? I don't think this works for most schools. I think the down time in the summer is a good thing.

Aside from that, are members going to pay dues all summer? (rush ain't free)

I know a lot of groups are pushing for chapters to do "recruitment" rather than "rush" - that is, offer bids at any time during the school year rather than just one or two certain times a year. It's a good idea in theory, but in practice it can be a little difficult because some schools demand that pledging begin within a few days of a bid being signed. You may end up in a situation where you have pledging going on ALL the time, which is difficult. This is especially true for small chapters, who are the ones most frequently told to do this, but unless you have a very flexible or very short pledge program the manpower it takes up is too much.

Recruiting all the time does not have to equal giving bids all the time.

As far as taking people in the summer, how on earth could you vote on them if you didn't have enough members there taking classes? I would assume most groups need a certain number (3/5 or something like that) to vote on a member before offering them a bid. Unless you overrode that, and then I could see a LOT of issues when people come back in the fall to pledges/members they've never met or voted on...

Especially if the campus is such that attracts a lot of out of state people (my alma mater).