As of this academic year, first-year students at Occidental College can now rush fraternities and sororities during their first semester of college. This move comes with other structural changes to fraternities and sororities on campus.
Assistant Director of Student Involvement Steve Eulenberg, who works with Greek-affiliated organizations, said the change was made in order to increase recruitment numbers, foster a sense of community at Occidental and turn fraternities and sororities into a flourishing sector of campus life again.
“Especially with the class of 2028, the students are eager to get out and get more involved,” Eulenberg said. “We saw that one barrier was their inability to connect with the fraternities and sororities on campus.”
According to the President of Delta Omicron Tau, Willow Kaminski (senior), this change has been in discussion between the organizations for several years.
“We want these first years coming in to have communities,” Kaminski said. “We don’t want them to feel like they can’t join a club or a social environment because they are first-semester students at Oxy, so it was really more of a way to include more people on campus.”
According to Margaret Seaney (senior), the president of Alpha Lambda Phi Alpha, first years have expressed interest in joining past fall semesters but have been unable to, due to not being allowed to rush their first semester.
“We have so many people who come up and say, ‘Hey, I’m really interested in this’ and then we have to say, ‘Sorry, you have to wait till spring,’” Seaney said. “Then they get involved with other things, and it doesn’t happen and then rates are lower than they might have been.”
According to President of Sigma Alpha Epsilon Kincaid Fries (junior), the search for community drew him to join SAE.
“I had felt like I had found friends, but I didn’t necessarily feel like I had found community here at Oxy,” Fries said.
Fries said he joined SAE as a first-year in the Spring 2023 semester. Like Seaney, Fries said his fraternity enabled him to meet a diverse group of people.
“For me, as a freshman, I made friends, but most of my friends were primarily people who I met on the same floor of my dorm, so I didn’t have that much variety in the people that I was meeting and interacting with on a daily basis,” Fries said. “I think that the fraternity is just another space that’s open to people to make those friends and to build that kind of community.”
Seaney also said joining an organization enabled her to meet people who are already involved in other communities.
“Something that’s really cool is that I’ve met so many people in different years,” said Seaney. “A lot of my friends who are juniors now, I would not have met if it wasn’t for Alpha. We have athletes [and] people in Dance Pro who are really busy doing that. We have people who are involved in all these different pieces of campus life.”
Fries said he believes the change will allow the benefits of community and leadership in organizations to be bestowed earlier on. Kaminski, Seaney and Fries all said they are excited about the change and look forward to this recruitment season.
Eulenberg said the Greek Council, which consisted of various representatives from fraternities and sororities, previously served as a governing body for the different Greek-affiliated organizations and met weekly. According to Eulenberg, he and the presidents of the organizations, the only three on campus, changed the structure of these meetings to provide a more tailored representation of the individual needs of the fraternities and sororities.
“The goal is ultimately to be able to do more intentional work with the three organizations to support them and then still have them come together for areas where they have a common interest or common need,” Eulenberg said.
Kaminski said the new structure comprises one-on-one discussions between each president and Eulenberg, then a meeting with the three presidents and Eulenberg as a group. She said this structure helps the organizations coordinate on fraternity and sorority events.
“It’s nice that we get to have these one-on-one discussions and then bring what we talk about in these one-on-one discussions to all the organizations,” Kaminski said. “From there, we are able to do more collaborative events.”
Eulenberg also said the leading representatives of the organizations are shifting away from the title of Greek Council and Greek life as part of a nationwide shift to refer to fraternities and sororities on campus as Fraternity and Sorority Life (FSL).
“We are also moving towards the term Fraternity and Sorority Life (FSL) versus Greek life as part of a nationwide change in labels,” Eulenberg said.
According to The Stanford Daily, a majority of polled students held a negative opinion on FSL at Stanford University. Fries said the pledging process is much less intense at Occidental.
“Rather than having this three-month period where you see all these horrible things happening in big schools, we have rush week, and then two days later, we have initiation,” Fries said. “From that point on, they’re full members of the [organization].”
According to Eulenberg, his goal with these new initiatives is to highlight the work the students are doing and confront the misconceptions of FSL.
“I think there is obviously a lot of baggage with Fraternity and Sorority Life nationwide and historically, and a lot of warranted concerns campuses have,” said Eulenberg. “I think we have a really great group of students on campus, and I want to be able to highlight the positive work they’re doing.”
Contact Zarina Shchlegov at shchlegov@oxy.edu
