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Switching to deferred recruitment can cause financial disaster in a chapter. If you're used to budgeting for 50 new members in the fall semester, then you expect those 50 members to be paying monthly dues for 7-8 months. With deferred, they will only pay dues for 3 months, which can be a huge difference.
The housing situation on some campuses can make a big difference too. In the case of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor has a serious housing shortage. Freshmen live in dorms and the rest of the campus lives in off campus apartments and houses. People sign leases in January which take effect in September. This would mean that freshman are signing leases to live in apartments or houses before recruitment is even done and long before they are initiated. This can pose a problem because that means the next fall, you'll only have juniors and seniors to fill a house. These are also the members who are most likely to qualify to live OUT of the house because they're studying abroad, doing internships, student teaching out of town, etc. When you have to fill a 50, 60 or even 70 bed house, that can be a real problem. Some sororities have 2 year live in requirements, which would also mean you had to live in both your junior and senior years. Typically, it would have been sophomore and junior years that women would live in.
But, I would agree that a part of it is the principle of the thing. Not all people who die of alcohol poisoning or hazing are freshman. There is no research to show that deferred recruitment leads to less risk management problems. In fact, the last person to be hospitalized at the U of Mich in a hazing incident was a spring '04 rushee who wasn't being initiated until September. Why do administrations seem so convinced the deferred recruitment will change anything?
Dee
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