Author: Martha Carol & Mirin Fader
In accordance with decisions made by Greek Council’s former recruitment vice presidents, Fall Recruitment proceeded last week without the traditional “Week of Silence.” In conjunction with the increased Greek visibility the week prior to Recruitment, an estimated 75 students attended Rush with 57 pledging – an uncommonly large number, Recruitment officials said.
Traditionally, the “Week of Silence” served as a period of time during which potential new sorority or fraternity members could contemplate their decision to rush and pledge without the influence of any of the Greek organizations. Greek Council’s official rules stated that no sorority or fraternity could discuss Greek matters with potential new members to ensure room for objective reflection. This way, if students did rush and pledge, they would have had copious time to contemplate the potential commitment.
However, Greek students felt that potential new members would not have adequate exposure to the sororities and fraternities to have any meaningful deliberation.
Last year’s Recruitment Vice Presidents, Drew Hansen of Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) and Sarah Cantor of Delta Omicron Tao (Delta), decided to shorten this period of silence to extend only through the weekend prior to official Recruitment.
“We decided to make that change in order to give all organizations an opportunity to have ‘open house’ events before Recruitment Week. Instead of having a week of silence, we felt that having a Promote the Greeks Week would be more beneficial for both potential new members and the Greek community,” Cantor said in an e-mail interview.
This year, during the week of the 19th, Greek Council programmed several events to promote all of the Greek organizations. Students joined members of the Greek community for mini golf and an ice cream social later in the week. Several organizations held open houses for interested students to attend and learn more about their individual attributes.Greek members still maintained the traditional silence on Sept. 25 and 26, the weekend prior to the official start of Recruitment.
“I think it’s good to not have it be a week of silence where all things Greek can’t be mentioned because we should be using that week to remind everyone and pump everybody up about joining Greek life,” Vice President for Women’s Recruitment Katherine Carey (sophomore) said. The Men’s Recruitment Vice President was unavailable for comment.
However, current Recruitment officials may reexamine their approach to the week before official rush activities begin. “I’m not sure we are going to keep the organizations having open houses that week just because there were some thoughts from people that it is more divisive to have the organizations competing for [potential new members to] come to their houses or to their functions,” Carey said. “So we may turn it into more Greek council led stuff so that it’s all of Greek life. Either way I think we are not going to go back to ‘Week of Silence’ because we would rather utilize that week to recruit more people to rush.”
Although Greek Council is considering adjusting this policy once again for Formal Recruitment in the spring, this recruitment cycle – Informal Recruitment – brought in an unusually large number of recruits and pledges. An estimated 75 students attended the events organized for Informal Recruitment during the week of the 27th.
Informal Recruitment occurs every fall and serves as an opportunity for Oxy students who have attended the school for at least one semester to join the Greek organization of their choice. Informal Recruitment, as compared to Formal Recruitment, incorporates a different set of traditions and activities which “rushees”, potential new members, and pledges must perform in order to join an organization. The traditions featured in Formal Recruitment are geared more toward the rushing first-years, who are only allowed to participate in the spring.Recruitment opened on Monday, Sept. 27 with a meeting for all interested sophomores and upperclassmen led by Carey and Vice President for Men’s Recruitment Evan Chang.
Over the next four days, students were invited to various activities on campus held by the different Greek organizations. Each organization had an allotted space of time on Monday and Tuesday to present their particular policies and goals to give prospective members insight into the principles of each organization. Wednesday and Thursday held host to preference dinners during which recruits attended the dinners of organizations they were most interested in.
Recruitment culminated on Friday when students accepted bids from the fraternity or sorority of their choice. Several of the organizations – fraternities Phi Kappa Psi (Phi Psi) and SAE, sorority Kappa Alpha Theta (Theta) and the co-ed fraternity Zeta Tau Zeta (Zeta) – have a closed bid process in which they only offer bids to select potential members who they wish to accept as pledges. The remaining sororities, Delta and Alpha Lambda Phi Alpha (Alpha) operate with open bids in which any prospective pledge is accepted into the organization.
A total of 57 students, joined the various Greek organizations, with Delta receiving the most and Zeta accepting the least. For the remainder of the semester, these students will go through the pledging process – learning the songs and traditions of their respective fraternity or sorority.
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