Recruitment Requirement Changes

[ilovetheviolets]

kappasunshine,
I am a sigma at F&M and I first want to fill everyone in on the situation...

my chapter has been here for 25 yrs.
chi omega has been here for approx. 15 yrs.
KBG has been here for 1 year
there are 7 fraternities, one of which is celebrating their hundreth anniversary this year, and many of which are older than that.

that is three sororities total. as of right now formal recruitment only consists of the two panhellenic sororities (for many reasons). it takes place in the spring, and has been seeing declining numbers (when i went through there were approx. 80 girls, last year we were down to approx. 40...only 29 of which signed bid cards). that is a 50% drop in 3 years.
the president of the college has said that he wants F&M to have a "premiere greek system" to all the national orgs. and to the current presidents of the orgs. i would not say that the administration is trying to get rid of us at all. esp. b/c our fraternity chapters are so old and have a huge network of alumni (girls were only allowed in in 1969...so the sororities are younger by many years).
i know that many national orgs. are against a fall recruitment for sophomores, but i also know that at many schools it sometimes works out better for numbers and so on....i.e. dartmouth. with all the school is willing to allow us to do, and all the requierments we'd have to fill our visibility on campus would be raised incredibly. therefor more people would prob. want to join a greek organization. also, as stated before, we'd get more serious people. the timing would work out well, and it would be a great load off of everyones shoulders during the school year. i do understand the negative points of view, but i just hope that the greek orgs. at my school look at both sides. i mean, for all we know, the admin. could be thinking it's either this or nothing, and we are completely gone...and if that's the case, i'd rather keep my sorority and have to change our function a bit, instead of loosing my chapter completely.
i know this is kind of long, and a tangent, blah blah blah, and i'm sorry, i just have a whole lot to say about this situation (esp. b/c i am the recruitment director and deal with numbers and all that stuff on a daily basis).

[KappaSunshine]

Thanks everyone for your insight! I actually don't know how I feel about the proposed changes, because there's so much up in the air. I am really glad to hear first-hand experience from people about deferred recruitment though!

[squashfly3]

Hi! i'm greek at F&M too. And this whole process of rerec has been interesting. i think that if the greek system were to be recognized the whole greek community would just have to take things one step at a time...including deferred recuritment. but i don't believe that anything has been decided on yet, so i guess we will all have to see.

[FuzzieAlum]

I have to second 33girl's comments about deferred recruitment. My school has tried it both first and second semester, and the rush numbers were substantially higher with second semester rush. That doesn't necessarily work everywhere; my school was one not so much with first generation students as first generation Greeks who had to find out that Greeks weren't all scary, evil, snotty girls from a Lifetime TV or after-school special. (And yup, our retention was at least 90%.)

The biggest issue (as far as logistics) with either deferred or sophomore rush is the contact rules. You can't realistically forbid upperclassmen to talk to freshmen for an entire year! On the other hand you can't be running around promising bids, either.

I think no matter what you all decide to do, leave an out clause with your university. That is, if rush numbers go downhill, be able to change the timing of recruitment. Because it is a little bit of an experiment from school to school to find out what works best.

[deadbear80]

My alma mater, Washington University in St. Louis, does deferred rush 2nd semester for freshmen. It switched over from 1st semester Rush before I got to campus in 1998, and I know that it really hurt one sorority in particular who at one point in the mid-90s was the largest on campus, but closed its doors due to low numbers in 2000.
Pros: Freshmen have a chance to get situated and used to the college environment. They have a chance to make friends outside of the Greek system. They can get involved in other ways on campus first, and make sure that joining a GLO is right for them.
Cons: Girls get preconceived notions as to where they want to join before Recruitment. While some girls find that they really do fit better somewhere else, some girls drop out of Recruitment because they didn't get asked back to where they wanted to go.

While my chapter did not always make Quota during my tenure (even after the one chapter closed), I will say that we had one of the best retention rates and really used Fall COB (for upperclassman) to our advantage. This year, for the first time, the girls didn't do COB in the Fall--which may cause more upperclassmen to Rush (although they did get a new NPC chapter on Campus this Fall that is pledging 72 girls)...pledge classes had just gotten too big (we only had 5 NPCs for a while after the one closed...now its back to 6 and should lower quota).

To even further the 'narrowing' of girls going through Recruitment, Formal Recruitment (for women) is held during the last week of Winter Break before everyone else comes back. Women that don't want to leave the islands of Hawaii or the slopes of Vail don't come--those that do come are pretty serious. Very few women make it all the way through without a bid (maybe 2%).

Sure there's lots of room for 'dirty rushing' first semester...but most people on campus will tell you Deferred Recruitment made the choice to Rush easier for them