Following the end of fall recruitment on Oct. 8, the Interfraternity Council is reviewing the changed fraternity recruitment process that led to more men receiving bids but also problems with recruits showing up to all the houses.

A total of 135 potential new members participated this fall in the recruitment process, said Justin Tasolides, the IFC vice president and chair of recruitment. Ten of them did not receive bids on Bid Day, compared to 55 men who did not receive bids last fall and 150 who did not receive bids in the larger spring recruitment.

The main change that affected the number of recruits was in the open house portion, in which the potential members visit every fraternity house.

This year, recruits were led to all of the houses by brothers called Rho Chis from the various fraternities on campus. This is a change from last spring’s process, in which men did not have to visit every house, and the main job of Rho Chis was to inspect chapter houses to make sure they were sticking to IFC’s dry rush policy, said McGhee Cost, the president of Phi Gamma Delta.

The structure IFC used in the past did not support the large greek system on campus, said Eddie Banks-Crosson, director of the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs.

‘The changes were made because we had a large number of men not being placed at the end of recruitment,’ he said. ‘The structure in the past has mirrored a smaller community, and we are a large greek community, and we had to change the structure of the recruitment process to mirror that.’

The system was successful overall, but it does have a few areas for improvement, Tasolides said.

‘We ran into a few errors and a number of things have to be worked out, such as how long each potential new member gets at each house and issues with Rho Chis,’ Tasolides said. ‘However, the issues are definitely workable.’

Though Cost’s chapter, Phi Gamma Delta, had more recruits visit the chapter, it experienced problems on the third night of the open house, Cost said.

‘Our house didn’t see any Rho Chis or potential new members for almost an hour and a half, and when they did come, they were off schedule,’ Cost said. ‘It’s not exactly clear why the groups didn’t show up.’

Phi Gamma Delta is investigating the issue within IFC, Cost said. But Cost said he is hopeful there will be measures put in place next semester to ensure this does not happen again. He would like to see more accountability for anyone involved who does not follow the guidelines set out by the IFC, he said.

‘When the system changes so that everyone must visit all IFC chapters and we still don’t see all the potential new members, there is a problem,’ Cost said. ‘In the future, I’d like to see these rules enforced so that things go the way they are advertised, instead of being adjusted on the fly.’

IFC will keep working on these problems to make sure the system is solid for spring recruitment, Tasolides said.

‘We’re going to take the successes and failures from this fall recruitment and figure out what worked and what didn’t,’ he said. ‘Then we will apply it to the spring to make it as successful and as efficient as possible.’

The changes put in place this semester yielded one of the more successful processes IFC has seen in years due to the large increase of bids received and accepted, Tasolides said. He has hoped for a continued increase in semesters to come.

‘We really want to increase our numbers across the board and make our greek community stronger and stronger,’ he said. ‘Anyone who wants to be involved in greek life should have the opportunity, no question, and hopefully with this system, they’ll find the right places for them.’

medelane@syr.edu

 

Published on October 20, 2010 at 12:00 pm

Contact Meghin: medelane@syr.edu | @meghinwithani