U of Texas President first for now against deferred recruitment

[TxAPhi]

The Daily Texan
Top Stories | 2/4/2005

U of Texas should continue to support fall recruitment period for Greeks
Task force suggest students should postpone Rush, develop experiences

By Melissa Mixon



UT President Larry Faulkner endorsed a report today, saying the University should continue to support the fall recruitment period for Greek fraternities and sororities.

The report was written in response to recommendations from the UT Task Force on Racial Respect and Fairness, which said in January 2004 the University should encourage entering freshman to postpone pledging to Greek organizations until their spring semester. The task force said the delay would give new students a chance to "develop a broader range of experiences and contacts that may otherwise be limited by their participation in these often closed societies."

In May, after reviewing the January 2004 report, Faulkner said in a written statement he believed "it would be better for our first-year students if fraternity and sorority rush were deferred until January."

He also assigned a committee, under Vice President of Student Affairs James Vick, to explore the effectiveness of the recommendations and draft a report on the findings.

Faulkner received the committee's report last week and reversed his decision, but could not be reached for comment by press time Thursday.

Vick and nine other committee members began in the fall, talking with fraternities and sororities about what effect deferred pledging would have on their organizations.

"They pointed out that they have fixed costs, particularly true for ones with houses, covering mortgage, insurance and staff salaries," Vick said. "Those kinds of costs don't drop when you lower your membership. By deferring the time when people join, you give up the financial contributions that those would bring."

The group surveyed other schools with deferred pledging as well as schools with the traditional fall recruitment. Vick said they saw no difference in student academic performance or evidence showing that deferred pledging was more effective in creating diversity and tolerance among students.

"We started to look for ways that the organizations themselves can work with other more diverse parts of the campus, for instance student organizations outside the Greek societies," Vick said.

Task Force Member Edmund Gordon, director of the UT Center for African American Studies, said he thinks Faulkner's objectives are the same as the task force's, as far as diversifying the campus, but Faulkner is interpreting their objectives in his own way. Gordon said one of the concerns of the Task Force was that "Greeks in general are not very diverse."

Kevin Robnett, a law student and member of the task force, said he opposed the recommendation to defer pledging, and he thinks Faulkner made a good decision.

Robnett said incoming freshman could be exposed to diverse organizations through older fraternity and sorority members.