Sounds like a panhellenic-style recruitment! Have other IFCs adopted this model?
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IFC Recruitment Changes are Successful
posted by Colin McNamee on August 20, 2007 @ 12:53 PM
Columbia, MO -- By Luke Miller. Released in the July, 11 2007 issue of the Maneater. Available at (
http://www.themaneater.com/article.php?id=26955).
The Interfraternity Council made some drastic changes to Formal Recruitment this year. After years of failure, I realized that something had to be done, so as I began running for office last fall, I started thinking about what could be done to make it better.
Formal Recruitment had traditionally been held every August in the week prior to the start of classes. The program ran for several years with disappointing results: low number of recruits, low quality of recruits and limited participation by chapters. I believed that on a campus dominated by informal recruitment, the one group of people that could benefit most from a quality Formal Recruitment were students from other states.
Traditionally, students coming to MU who are from Missouri simply hear about fraternities through the grapevine via friends and family, but what do students from Maine, California or Nebraska do? Formal Recruitment. It is the one chance for those students to meet, greet and tour all 28 IFC chapters. But when students from other states start planning their flights and longs drives to MU they think about two things: Summer Welcome and the start of classes. There were multiple problems with August recruitment, but two big problems: chapters had already reached quota and recruits would have to return home to retrieve their stuff if they did indeed join a chapter, which is a costly endeavor.
By moving recruitment back in the summer, we invited recruits to attend recruitment before or after they attended Summer Welcome, allowing them to make one trip. As a result, we saw a drastic increase in numbers and quality, especially out-of-state students. The number of recruits who enrolled in recruitment this year more than doubled to 137 percent of last year’s number. Of those recruits, about 40-50 percent were composed of out-of-state students.
As a result of moving Formal Recruitment back, chapters were more apt to participate and, indeed, did so.
But moving recruitment back was not the only change we made. In previous years, Formal Recruitment was a five-day process, and this year we cut it back to three days and hosted it over a weekend. This was not only easier on chapters, but easier on recruits, too.
During the five-day process recruits would visit all 28 chapters during the first three days, then they would cut it down to their top eight and top three on the final two days, respectively. This year all 28 chapters were introduced via a college fair-style exhibition. I feel that this was better because it cut down on wasted time and allowed both recruits and chapters to be more productive. Considering all the changes made and few issues with the process, I would say Formal Recruitment 2007 was a great success.
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