advice

OnePlus69Is70 · #1 10-17-2002, 02:11 PM

Alright, with fall rush over in most places, it's a good time to be asking this: what works for you and what doesn't? Here's the scoop: Next month I'm running for IFC VP of Recruitment, and I want to have a full proposal worked out for the next rush cycle.

Right now, there is no men's rush. IFC does absolutely nothing- no outreach or advertising, no formal rush activities, zero, nada, nilch. This is not working out- I don't have this fall's recruitment figures yet, but last spring a total of 48 men were initiated into IFC groups- 12 of those were SigEp's (who have a number of very serious advantages, but who also work damn hard and it shows), and the rest were spead in two's and three's across other houses. Five houses had no new members last spring. This is at a university with 19,000 undergrads. Clearly something is not right.

IFC should be working to drum up support and get men interested in recruitment. The individual chapters cannot and should not be selling the whole system at the same time they're selling themselves.

My preference would be for something incredibly structured a la Texas or Colorado, but I know we could never make that change in just one semester. What are some good places we can start? (Keep in mind, nothing is too simple or basic, because we're starting from absolute zero.)

AchtungBaby80 · #2 10-17-2002, 02:24 PM

Here, the fraternities do fall and spring rush. It's just basically a week that is set aside for all interested men to attend "parties" (not like keggers, just hanging out) at the fraternity houses of their choice. Each fraternity is free to decide how they want to conduct their rush--some do cookouts, some play a sport, some just have music, etc. For the fraternities who do not have houses, they usually ask the sorority of their choice to lend the fraternity the use of the ground floor of their house in which to conduct their rush. Our house gets used quite a bit, and we love it--the guys encourage us to come downstairs and mingle with the guys, and we get to eat their food, too.

Fraternity rush here isn't very structured, so I definitely think something like that would be a possibility.

OUlioness01 · #3 10-18-2002, 02:24 PM

here men's rush has 2 days of "formal" rush (advertised in the student paper), where men from the IFC take all interested members to all of the houses (or room if they don't have a house) for about 20-30 minutes each. Then the third day is "informal" where the men go back to whichever houses they liked. The next night is "pref" night where it's more formal once again, and then bid night is after that and the men go see if they've gotten bids from whichever houses they went to he rest of the week and at 9:00 they go to the house that they are accepting the bid from. i hope this helps

OnePlus69Is70 · #4 10-18-2002, 02:41 PM

what's "pref" night? does it mean they go back to the house they prefer?

KappaTarzan · #5 10-26-2002, 01:13 PM

its gonna be really hard to do this at a umass... greek life just isn't really important, the system really looks down upon it. good luck.