Fist of all, let me congratulate you on being a founder! That's quite an accomplishment!
Second, to answer your questions...
Let me ask one of my own:
Do you have a room or other facility available on campus. Is it exclusively for your chapter's use, or are other people using it as well?
(At my school, none of the chapters had houses, but the universities provided chapter rooms in a couple of the residence halls, and these rooms were exclusively for chapter use.)
I'm going to wait on your response before I answer your questions about pledging, rush, or other events.
As far as getting your name out there..
- One of the easiest and best ways to do this is to wear your letters. A lot. And you might want to pick a day of the week for everyone to wear them.
- Contact the editor or other member of the campus paper and ask them to do a special interest story or student life story about your new chapter. Or you might want to have a brother write an article and submit it.
- If there are any published events calendars (ours was in the weekly campus paper, actually) contact whomever is in charge and ask to have your events added
- Signs and banners. In the student union, up around dorms, on kiosks, anywhere and everywhere you can think to put them (although you will want to check with the university to make sure you're allowed to post them in certain places)
- I've seen people post tons of really ambigous signs, that are interesting, and then a week later post something that gives you a little more of an idea of what it's about, and so on, for 3 or 4 weeks. And then you finally post the signs about your chapter. This helps to get people talking (and you know how rumors spread at college!)
- If there are a lot of sidewalks on campus and/or your fraternity row, etc. get a bucket of sidewalk chalk and go to it.. write your chapter's name, announce upcoming events, etc.
Um, that's all I can think of right now. Like I said, if you can tell me a bit more about your current situation, I'll be more than happy to help with ideas for rush, pledging, etc. Or go ahead and email me if you want!
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SilverTurtle@greekchat.com
Phi Beta Fraternity
Phi chapter
