Focusing on greek life as a whole, Panhellenic and Interfraternity Council have chosen to run sorority and fraternity recruitment simultaneously this year.
“It’s great having schedules matching up,” Brett Bruner, director of greek life and health education, said. “It gives (the greeks) more opportunities to do some all-greek programming during the first couple days when students are here.”
A greek life ice cream social and block party was held Sunday for potential new members with formal recruitment beginning Tuesday, the men’s running through Thursday and the women’s concluding Friday. However, Bruner said the fraternities will not issue bids until 12:01 a.m. Saturday to coincide with the sororities issuing bids late Friday night.
“The thinking behind this is to really allow potential new members of fraternities the opportunity to reflect and think on the chapters that they’ve visited and really have some time to think about where they fit the best,” he said.
The number of men going through recruitment has almost doubled from last year with 63 men registered as of Tuesday. The number of women interested in recruitment remains steady at 78, down only two people from last year, Bruner said.
With this many participants, some organizations could see their number of members almost double. Ruben Lara, vice president of recruitment for IFC, said having both sororities and fraternities recruiting at the same time gives the greek community a better chance of retaining new members.
“Last year we started off strong, but then I don’t think our retention rate was that strong,” he said. “I think with the changes we’re making this year we have the potential to have a really good rush.”
Bruner said more communication with new students took place over the summer, as well as making registration available online and not requiring photos.
“We really (wanted) chapters to be looking at their registration and their qualifications based upon their activities, their involvement, their grades and not so much about the pictures,” he said.
Lindsey Sanders, Panhellenic vice president of recruitment, said pictures being optional improves the recruitment process.
“If a new member didn’t leave an impression and you can’t remember them from conversation, you don’t need a picture to spark that,” she said.
Bruner said he hopes to work on member development to improve retention.
“The focus is to really engage all of our members of the fraternity and sorority community and help them find a niche and keep them through graduation and beyond as a member of a chapter,” he said.
Zeta Phi Beta sorority and Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity follow an intake process and therefore don’t participate in formal open recruitment, but were present at events prior to Tuesday.