Spring Recruitment vs. Fall
 

Our local college is contemplating a Spring instead of Fall recruitment for sororities--going through "rush" a few too many years ago- I remember the college tried both -(the professors pushed for the Spring) Being a smaller school the Spring one was terrible-numbers were extremely low--any imput?

My school holds formal recruitment for both sororities and fraternities in the Spring. The reason is that we want to let the freshman have an opportunity to establish themselves in the community of the school before they become a part of the Greek system. I think it's very benificial because small schools are a community. I know that one reason for having Greek life at larger schools is to give an outlet for community, but at small schools it isn't as necessary, and in fact the isolation to the Greek System could be detrimental. Currently I am a freshman at a small school, and I liked that I wasn't hurried into formal recruitment at the beginning of the year. I had a chance to explore all my school had to offer before deciding on Greek life. If rush had been in the fall, I probably wouldn't have done it.

If we believe a fraternity or sorority adds to a person's education and scholarship (and we have lots of studies proving that), it's better to start enjoying the benefits as soon as possible. Rush should mostly be conducted during the spring of the year for high school seniors, and during the summer too. The NM arrives on campus wearing a pledge pin, lives and eats in the house, and has an instant support group of members and fellow pledges.

This only works if the students are within driving distance to campus.

Just to let you know this would not be feasible for NPC sororities as high school students are not permitted to bind themselves in any way to a sorority. I'm not sure that fraternities can "officially" do that either. And as Taualumna pointed out above, the students who are local to the college have an unfair advantage.

I think that this type of thing would give the members incredibly bad tunnel vision. They would know no other way to be at college than being Greek. How do you relate to non-Greeks if that is the case? Then again, at a large (30,000 people) school you probably have a smaller group of friends period than at a small (3,000 people) school - at least that's been my observation with my friends who went to smaller schools and those who went to Penn State.

I agree with loggertheta - if rush at my school had been "pre freshman year or nothing" I don't think I would have done it, and if I had I would have made really disastrous choices. I know it works out well for some people that rush as soon as they get to school, but the problem is that it becomes MANDATORY to do that. It leaves out the people who aren't already socially poised and independent and sure of themselves - things that are often attained after being on your own at college for a while.

Jena, look at why the spring rush was smaller - was the change not publicized? Was it over winter break, or during a time that conflicted with drop/add of classes and such? It can work fine if everyone doesn't moan about it and assume it will be terrible. Also do not have the ridiculous "silence all semester" stuff - the first semester should be for the freshmen to get to know the sorority women outside of riush parties.

In the fall we have "informal recruitment" all the sororities participate it's just not really structured. The pnms going through in the fall have to be Sophomores or older.

In spring aka end of jan. we have formal recruitment open to all. #s are way bettter in the spring.

1 - No system is perfect, and no system eliminates all problems or objections.

2 - Many schools already have sorority rush the week before classes start. The ones who live a long way away seem to make it to campus for that.

3 - If a high school senior (HSS) gets a letter/brochure in Mar. or April says "congratulatons on being accepted ... there are XX GLOs on campus, and you may be invited to visit one or more of them for a weekend this spring ... and we're sure you will enjoy that visit."

A week later, the HSS gets a letter from a GLO member: "Great to hear that another guy from my hometown and my HS is coming to XYZ College. I'm a member of ZBT GLO, and would like to invite you spend a weekend at our house, especially the weekend of the Little 500 (April 29-31) or our spring house party (May 10-12). Hope to see you then, or when I get back home in June.

4 - Rush is year-round. Some pledge in the spring - fall - winter - spring. The freshman can pledge when he/she's comfortable.

5 - Pledging does not mean you never meet another student. Every campus has classes, sports, clubs, newspapers, student govt., etc. where you can meet and interact to your heart's content.

Simply arriving a week early for classes is far different than traveling to the school throughout the summer or your last semester of high school for rush parties.



Many schools have "greek weekends." They are a wonderful idea. What it sounded like you were talking about was giving someone a bid who was still a high school student and asking that person to attend multiple rush parties while still a high school student.



Yeah, theoretically. But read some of the LSU or UGA sorority rush threads and you will see that is simply not the case - either you receive a bid as a pre-freshman through fall formal rush, or you don't receive a bid at all. It would be great to see NPC do more than pay lip service to the "rush is 24/7/365" concept at some of these type of schools.

I think this is another boys are different than girls thread. :)

We have both Fall and Spring rush at my school.

In the past Fall was the Formal rush time. That's when you put the most effort and time into recruitment and that's when IFC payed the most attention to the regs and all that sort of thing.

Recently though, the past two or so years, Spring has been just as big on recruitment as fall. Now the same Formal rushing process is done in both seasons. I does create a lot of added time difficulties, but it has been paying off.

I would like to start doing the Highschool recruitment stuff, but I've never done it and I 've never seen a good outline or plan and it's difficult to get that sort of thing going on top of everything else a college student needs to do.

Our Spring Rush was a disaster--mostly due to mismanagement and the fact that sororities had only been on campus a couple of years (inexperience)--One sorority rec'd only one new member--we have 3 sororities on campus--
Our college has about 300 incoming freshman--"dirty rushing" and disaffliation would be a problem unless some of the rules were changed--As long as they freshman did not feel so isolated from the sorority members --with the rules now you can barely speak to a freshman until recruitment happens--and panhellenic unfortunately cannot participate in a lot of the fun senior activities until after recruitment-any imput on what kind of "rules" would need to be in place so a Spring rush would be possible-and what type of fall activities they could all participate in?-

This is a big part of why it was sucking. Get rid of these rules. Freshmen should be free to talk to and hang out with sorority members as much as they want their whole first semester!! It's only "dirty rush" if you downgrade another sorority or promise someone a bid. Freshmen and sorority members should just be interacting naturally. This is why a lot of people hate deferred and it totally goes against what deferred is supposed to be about.

NPC has a new rule that rho chis or anyone cannot be disaffiliated for more than 30 days. The only time sorority women shouldn't be talking to freshmen fully is during the actual formal rush time.

UK does formal rush in the fall, a week before classes start, and apparently it works pretty well since that's the way it's been for a long time. I can totally understand the logic of waiting until spring to hold rush because students can "get to know" all the chapters, but I also imagine that it's pretty nice for a freshman just arriving at college to immediately have a group to hang out with. I think there's good points to either side of the argument.

I think fall recruitment is a great idea, and that's because of the experience with it at my school. Houses that don't make quota tend to avoid COB like the plague, and even houses that do COB ask the new members to keep it on the "down low" so it's not really known that more girls were brought in... crazy.

Having said all that (everyone knows I heart fall recruitment!) I agree with the same issues everyone else brought up:

If a house is going to hold recruitment in the spring, it should NOT be the spring before a potential member is beginning the college/university. (Keep in mind that summer is sometimes okay, but not while a PNM is still in high school... as 33girl addressed.) If spring recruitment will be held after the PNM has been attending the school for a semester, PNMs should be able to freely talk to sorority women and get to know them, which is sometimes not the case. (Look at some schools where PNMs cannot speak to women if they see them on campus or at meals...) Also, keep in mind that waiting until spring could possibly be detrimental to girls who may not have gotten the opportunity to know sorority women over the course of the first semester... will they still have an equal chance to receive a bid? Or will it be a situation where extending bids is merely a technicality, because you already know the girls you want?

I don't know about other schools, but I know that here, you are not allowed to be recruited/attend events that a GLO hosts until after Summer Welcome (our orientation for incoming freshmen) in July. Depending on the school, it may not even be an option...

I personnaly think that fall formal before school starts rush is nice cause you get it out of the way and at a pac 10 school where there is about 20,000 people its nice to have a group right away.

My only problem with this system is:

Some times women (cant comment on men) go away to school, don't think of greek life. However, they don;t find a place they fit in or maybe they see all the greek women and want to be involved so they go through informal in january.

Problem is that in January the sororities can only accept a small number of PNM (if they are at total) At my school if a chapter was at total they could take 2 PNM, if not at total they could take up to total. Now, the problem is that I think there should be some type of quote system set for informal like for formal in the fall. So lets say 10 sororities and 80 PNM, instead of saying, oh you can only take 2 women, set a quote so they PNMs have every opportunity. So in this senario each of the 10 sororities could take 8 new members. Or some type of system that would allow for the most number of bis being given out.

I like formal in the fall and for women who know they want to join its great, i just think that women should be given more opportunities in spring.I know that they women could wait until fall and go through formal, but if you are lonely or not making a lot of contacts you want to even 4 months more of school can be a long time to wait. I really think it would depend on each campus what is better, and this is only from my school and how we did rush.

I am an alumna of the same school LoggerTheta attends and we've been doing Spring Formal recruitment since I was there (1990) and it's always been quite successful. When I was there, it was pretty "frillsy" (I know that's probably not a word) and now it's pretty casual. Quota was 29 this year (4 sororities).

UPS is a very small school with about 2000 undergrads......

I pledged at a different school (transferred) and we had Fall recruitment and I liked that since I had moved halfway across the country and knew very few people. It gave me an instant group of friends. They have since moved to Spring formal.