Author:
As a former Vice President of Women’s Recruitment for Greek Council, I would like to clarify some information that was written in last week’s article, “Week of Silence Removed from Informal Recruitment.” Informal Recruitment does differ from Formal Recruitment for two important reasons.
First, Informal Recruitment is for non-first-year students, while Formal Recruitment is open to all students on campus, meaning first-year students can participate in Formal recruitment. Second, Informal Recruitment has less mandatory sessions to attend than Formal Recruitment, thus making it more “informal” as the name suggests. There is no “different set of traditions and activities” that separates Informal Recruitment and Formal Recruitment; recruitment week is time for Greek organizations to showcase their chapters to the potential new members rather than enforcing traditions.
In addition, I would like to clarify the article’s statement that “pledges must perform [different sets of traditions and activities] in order to join an organization.” To begin, an individual is not called a “pledge” until he or she accepts his or her bid to join a fraternity or sorority on Friday. Individuals going through recruitment or “rush” are called “potential new members” until then. In order to receive a bid from the organizations, potential new members are not forced to “perform” anything. All they have to do is to attend a certain number of mandatory sessions as outlined by Greek Council bylaws, which were created so that potential new members could make a better choice when deciding which fraternity or sorority to join.
I personally appreciate The Oxy Weekly covering a story about Greek Life on campus, which is close to my heart, and I just wanted to make some clarification so that there would not be any misunderstandings about Greek Life or recruitment policies. If anyone would like to know more information about Greek Life at Oxy, he/she can contact Occidental Greek Council or visit Greek Life at http://www.oxy.edu/x5343.xml.
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