Colorado IFC says No to deferred rush...

[DeltAlum]

Note: Since the University of Colorado does not officially recognize Greek Letter Organizations, the IFC can do this -- whether it is a good idea or not remains to be seen:

The Daily Camera
Boulder, CO
September 30, 2004

Greeks: No to CU rush plan

Fraternity rep says freshmen are vital parts of system

By Elizabeth Mattern Clark, Camera Staff Writer

Greek leaders say they won't ban first-semester freshmen from joining their
organizations next year, despite demands from University of Colorado
officials for a "deferred rush."

Nick Baker, president of the student-run Interfraternity Council, said
Wednesday that fraternity chapter presidents are unanimously against
deferring rush because of concerns about money and leadership development.

"We're still meeting with the university, but we're not on board with
this," Baker said. "We feel that it would cripple us."

Chancellor Richard Byyny is insisting that Greek houses delay their rush
period a semester or even a year so freshmen can adjust to college life
before getting caught up in the social pressures of pledging fraternities
and sororities.

Byyny announced the plan Tuesday, less than two weeks after freshman pledge
Lynn Gordon "Gordie" Bailey Jr. was found dead in the Chi Psi fraternity
house. Bailey died Sept. 17 after an initiation ceremony and a night of
heavy drinking.

Joseph Penta, president of Boulder's Alpha Gamma Omega chapter, said
Wednesday that the "vast majority" of fraternity pledges are freshmen
because they're looking for a group of friends and a support system in
their new town.

"I don't think I will ever agree with a deferred rush," Penta said.
"Freshman year is a time when you're especially ready to make those deep
friendships."

The university can influence the 27 off-campus houses but has no legal
authority over them. CU does provide support by allowing information about
the Greek system at its orientations, putting chapter contacts on its Web
site and housing a Greek Affairs Office with resources for members and
potential pledges.

The Interfraternity Council enforces fraternity rules, and the Panhellenic
Association oversees sororities.

Baker's sorority counterpart was not available for comment Wednesday, but
Baker said sororities are against the move as well.

Boulder fraternities are trying to grow and become more financially stable,
Baker said, and a mandatory waiting period would cut their fee-paying
membership and bottom line. Deferrals also would limit the amount of time
new members would have to grow into Greek leaders, he said.

"Some of our best leaders started as freshmen," he said.

Byyny's plan might win acceptance over time, Baker said, but not by next year.

CU spokeswoman Pauline Hale said Byyny has a "strong expectation" that
university and Greek leaders will work together on a plan to address
"several issues, including deferring rush."

School officials and Greek leaders also are discussing stricter
expectations about alcohol use.

Baker said fraternities will not ban alcohol from their houses as they did
briefly in the mid-1990s under pressure from CU and Boulder police.
Instead, he said, they are working on rules to ensure safety at parties and
new ways of holding chapters accountable when they get unruly.

"We can no longer have chapters that are worrisome to us," Baker said.

Contact Camera Staff Writer Elizabeth Mattern Clark at (303) 473-1351 or
clarke@dailycamera.com.

Copyright 2004, The Daily Camera. All Rights Reserved.

[valkyrie]

Good for them.

Has the university administration done any research to support their call for deferred rush? It seems like yet another knee-jerk reaction to a drinking related death that is lacking thought and sound reasoning.

[hoosier]

Chancellor Byyny has a background at Southern Cal, Columbia, and UVa, and he worships the Gods at Harvard, Yale, and the northeastern campuses - all of which have deferred rush - and all of which have terrible fraternity situations.

The death is a wake-up call for the chapters, and they need to supervise the freshmen more.

Point blank - this CU kid - and the five other known campus alcohol deaths this fall - drank themselves to death. No member of the chapter was pouring booze into them.

The Chancellor's email is public:

chanchat@spot.colorado.edu

[PhiPsiRuss]

Originally posted by hoosier
Chancellor Byyny has a background at Southern Cal, Columbia, and UVa, and he worships the Gods at Harvard, Yale, and the northeastern campuses - all of which have deferred rush - and all of which have terrible fraternity situations.

Yale does not have deffered rush, and Harvard has no sanctioned rush. Also, Columbia and NYU do not have deferred rush, and have supportive administrations.

[valkyrie]

Originally posted by hoosier
The death is a wake-up call for the chapters, and they need to supervise the freshmen more.

Although it's a nice, warm, touchy-feely idea to say that the chapters should supervise the freshman, the real responsibility here lies with the freshman themselves and their parents. Once you're 18 or so and going away to college, you're an adult who should have the knowledge and skills needed to survive -- at the very least. It sounds like parents have, on a rather large scale, failed to prepare their children for adulthood and independence.

[PhiPsiRuss]

Originally posted by valkyrie
Although it's a nice, warm, touchy-feely idea to say that the chapters should supervise the freshman, the real responsibility here lies with the freshman themselves and their parents. Once you're 18 or so and going away to college, you're an adult who should have the knowledge and skills needed to survive -- at the very least. It sounds like parents have, on a rather large scale, failed to prepare their children for adulthood and independence.

The students and their parents taking personal responsibility? What a radical idea!

[Munchkin03]

Originally posted by PhiPsiRuss
Yale does not have deferred rush, and Harvard has no sanctioned rush. Also, Columbia and NYU do not have deferred rush, and have supportive administrations.

Thanks for clearing this up before I had a chance to.

Personal responsibility is such a novel concept.

[DeltAlum]

Originally posted by valkyrie
Once you're 18 or so and going away to college, you're an adult who should have the knowledge and skills needed to survive -- at the very least.

Having now raised three children, my experience is that although we have set an age of majority at 18, by far not every 18 year old is smart enough or mature enough to take care her/himself.

Upperclassmen and alums, take a look at the incoming Freshman Class. Don't they seem like children to you?

In terms of parents preparing them, sometimes no matter how hard you try, kids just don't listen -- believe it or not. Sometimes parents are in the dark, too. My parents had no clue I was drinking in high school. I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian family where any drinking was highly discouraged.

I still believe, as I've said in other threads, that moderation is the key and that is probably only going to come with peer pressure. A young woman/man is much more likely to emulate and upper-classperson than their parents at that time of life, I think.

To get back to the IFC at Colorado saying no to the administrations, while I understand the reasons, I'm not sure that's wise on their part. As I've said before, Colorado has taken an interesting hands off approach, I believe in the hopes that the Greeks will get so outrageous without university governance that they will end up destroying the system from within. The university has already asked that pending liquor licenses in the campus area be denied. I can see them going to other government entities for legislation against fraternities and sororities.

[Tom Earp]

Fantastic, let us now allow the Acadamians rule on small business's such as Alcohol and Tobacco.

Anymore morality functional rulings buy schools?

Schools cannot seem to rule their own damn domain let alone anyone elses. Ergo the Scandal with the U. Co. Football team and their coach who by the way was rehired.

There seems to be a lot of problems within the gardens of Eden of College worldom.

They want to disassociate themself from Greeks when they cannot control their own.

Working hand in hand should be the plan, but it is not the case in Rocky Mountain High!

[DeltAlum]

Colorado State Greek Life Officials weigh in on deferred rush in this excerpted article from the CSU student newspaper:

Rocky Mountain Collegian
Colorado State University
October 4, 2004

CSU Greek Life: Postponing Rush won't solve problems

by Megan Read

At his annual "state of the campus" speech
Tuesday, University of Colorado-Boulder
Chancellor Richard Byyny announced that CU
freshmen will no longer be able to rush
fraternities or sororities during the fall
semester, or possibly until their sophomore year.

Byyny's announcement came shortly after the
alcohol-related death of CU student Lynn Gordon
Bailey, a Chi Psi fraternity freshman pledge.
Byyny's said that by delaying Rush until second
semester, freshmen students will be able to
experience college life for the first time
without feeling the pressures of rushing.

CSU's director of Greek Life, Mark Koepsell,
disagrees with Byyny's decision to postpone Rush
until second semester and does not think it will
solve various alcohol problems that are
associated with some fraternities and sororities.

"Deferred recruitment is only something to
consider if the fraternity or sorority chapter is
consistently underachieving academically. I don't
think deferred recruitment will have an impact on
alcohol culture because the situation in Boulder
could have happened first or second semester,"
Koepsell said.

Koepsell also said one of the potential negatives
to postponing Rush is that many of the best
freshmen students may get heavily involved in
other campus activities their first semester.
They might not have time to rush and contribute
to Greek Life their second semester.

Charles Huntsman, CSU's Greek Life vice
president, added that Rush in the fall gets
students heavily involved in campus activities
right away and postponing it until second
semester may discourage that.

"Deferred recruitment might get students more
familiar with the campus, but students who join
Greek Life always get involved immediately,"
Huntsman said.

© 2004 Colorado State Collegian

[phikappapsiman]

At Stanford, we did, and still do, have deferred rush for freshmen-rush is spring quarter, and I thought that it worked well for me. All freshmen are required to live in a dorm freshman year-yes, even Chelsea Clinton and Fred Savage and Tiger Woods all lived with other freshmen in either all-frosh or four-class housing. This really allowed myself, and I hope others experiencing life away from home for the first time, time to adjust to their new surroundings, and to actually get to see houses before rush-which can sometime paint an artificial view of what greek life is really about. I know that in my case, I was so geared up to join "the right house" on campus because of the parties they threw during fall quarter, but when rush actually started, I had met many of my future brothers around campus, and so I knew that I wanted to be a Phi Psi. So for me, rush was pretty easy. Maybe it depends on the size of the college/university, or if the population is more in-state rather than national. And I just think that even in those few months from high-school senior to college freshman, the more time a student has to actually become a college student can't hurt.

But hey...Stanford isn't exactly Greek U., and never will be. Greek life is such a small part of the social life at Stanford that deferred rush makes no difference-those who will join a GLO will do it, and those who don't care (which is the majority of the students), will not.

[Munchkin03]

Originally posted by phikappapsiman
At Stanford, we did, and still do, have deferred rush for freshmen-rush is spring quarter, and I thought that it worked well for me. All freshmen are required to live in a dorm freshman year-yes, even Chelsea Clinton and Fred Savage and Tiger Woods all lived with other freshmen in either all-frosh or four-class housing. This really allowed myself, and I hope others experiencing life away from home for the first time, time to adjust to their new surroundings, and to actually get to see houses before rush-which can sometime paint an artificial view of what greek life is really about. I know that in my case, I was so geared up to join "the right house" on campus because of the parties they threw during fall quarter, but when rush actually started, I had met many of my future brothers around campus, and so I knew that I wanted to be a Phi Psi. So for me, rush was pretty easy. Maybe it depends on the size of the college/university, or if the population is more in-state rather than national. And I just think that even in those few months from high-school senior to college freshman, the more time a student has to actually become a college student can't hurt.

But hey...Stanford isn't exactly Greek U., and never will be. Greek life is such a small part of the social life at Stanford that deferred rush makes no difference-those who will join a GLO will do it, and those who don't care (which is the majority of the students), will not.

This is pretty much the same situation at my undergrad, which is probably more like Stanford than it is CU or CSU. The only people who are pushing for traditional fall-semester recruitment are the national representatives, many of whom are familiar with large state schools.

I've always felt that traditional recruitment puts less emphasis on going to college for an education, and more on getting into "the right house." It puts a lot of pressure on 18-year olds, and sometimes gets in the way of their academic performance.

[PhoenixAzul]

We defer rush till winter quarter. Winter quarter tends to be the least stressful academically for almost all majors, and a lot of people stay on campus due to the weather. Also, it allows houses to use college grades, not high school grades and test scores, to recruit people. The first quarter, the houses have to be VERY hands off on the freshmen, lest we get called for dirty rushing. But freshman boys still go to the fraternities, so do freshmen women, I know I did. But at the same time, I think deferring rush to winter or spring might not be a bad idea...it's one less foreign element in a person's life, they will have developed (hopefully!) time management skills during first quarter, and hopefully have gotten an impression (Good or bad) on greek life on campus. Greek life here is a HUGE deal. So many people (30 % Is what Princeton Review claims, I think it could be more) are involved with it...it's hard not to know someone who is greek.

[SirHornyToad]

Whatever you do, DO NOT defer rush/pledging.

It is a delayed death sentence to any system.

My school experimented with my fraternity doing Deferred rush and pledging in 1990.

We were successfull, but that was because the system didn't have time to take full effect. Due to our success all of the Fraternities and Sororities at my school switched over to winter pledging.

We went from averaging 10-20 people pledge classes and 30-40 actives in each organization, to having one organization with over 20 actives now, and last year all of the fraternities total had 12 pledges.

A key reason for having rush be early in the year is that you can get the freshmen before they have formed thier own cliques and social groups. If you already have a ton of friends it makes it tougher to want to join a frat or soror because all of your other friends will tell you how bad of an idea it is etc etc etc.