To: 33Girl and AlphaChiGirl. I respect your views, and you make very good points. However, I note that you are both in sororities, and sororities traditionally do not pledge large classes in the spring. Your membership intake is structured toward taking one class per year, usually in formal rush. We fraternities, especially those of us with residential houses to support, tend to pledge substantial classes in the fall term and then again in the spring. A dictate to eliminate freshman rush in the fall amounts to a major loss of membership and income for us. We might maintain a chapter of 150 men by pledging 30 in the fall and 20 in the spring. Realistically, we probably won't pledge 50 at one time in the spring if we get none in the fall. On campus, freshmen can be on athletic teams, and participate in other demanding extracurricular activities. The singling out of Greeks is wrong, and there are those who would say it smacks of a political agenda. There are university administrators who do not appreciate or value what fraternities and their alumni bring to the table. I'm tol that some of the problems fraternities are experiencing today are due to the lack of organized fraternity alumni establishing relationships with their universities. It is (now) against Federal law to punish any student for being a member of a Greek organization, or to punish the organization for pursuing their right to recruit and assemble freely. It is a new law, and as far as I've been told nobody has sued yet.
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