Though fall rush for fraternities and sororities is known to be a less-formal affair than its spring counterpart, it is no less important to chapters looking to increase their numbers.
The Office of Student Affairs/Fraternity Sorority Life not only monitors groups seeking to recruit new members during the fall semester, but encourages all chapters to keep recruiting efforts going continuously throughout the year.
Though fall rush is less rigorously regulated by OSA/FSL, according to Stacy Kraus, the office’s associate director for programming, groups that rush in the fall still must follow the guidelines for the new member process. This includes initiating new members within six weeks, holding no more than 10 hours of weekly new-member programming, ending all events by midnight and completing bid cards and submitting them to OSA/FSL.
Kraus also noted that there are many advantages for chapters to recruit members during the fall. The benefits, she said, include adding quality members that exemplify the organization’s values, cultivating new relationships with prospective members and increasing the recognition of a group’s name and brand on campus.
Kraus added that there is more to the process of recruitment than simply adding new members during rush.
“Recruitment or intake should be a 365-days-a-year process,” Kraus wrote in an e-mail. “Recruiting members to your chapter is about introducing them to the values, beliefs and honorable traditions that make your organization important to you.”
According to Christopher Neuman, College senior and president of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, or Fiji, the fraternity will conduct its second fall rush this semester.
Neuman said fall rush gives students who are already familiar with the Greek system the opportunity to find a good fit.
“Fall recruitment is more personal in that we know most of the candidates before the process,” Neuman wrote in an e-mail.
He also mentioned that OSA/FSL is less formally involved with fall rush than it is in the spring. There is less “top-down management,” he said.
Rebecca Heller, a College senior and president of the Delta Delta Delta sorority, also claimed that though OSA/FSL is active in regulating fall rush, it is much more “informal.”
According to Neuman, OSA/FSL’s “hands-off approach” to fall rush is appropriate given that participating groups “have much smaller targets for their fall class.”
“OSA/FSL sets broader guidelines built on a higher level of trust with each of the fall rush chapters,” he wrote.
Despite the many incentives to hold fall rush events, not all Greek organizations find it helpful to do so.
Josh Lieberman, president of the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity and a College senior, said Pi Kapp prefers limiting recruitment efforts to the spring.
“There’s a more cohesive class of mostly freshmen and a few sophomores when they all pledge in the spring,” Lieberman wrote in an e-mail.
Echoing these sentiments, College junior and Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity prior Rob Zambito said it was harder to integrate new members in the fall.
“Historically, it’s been something that’s been a little bit of a challenge,” he said.
