Fraternity Recruitment at WSU

The WSU Fraternity Recruitment strategy has been changing from year to year without much success, it seems to limit Fraternities more and more as time goes on.
Every year for the past three years the Interfraternity Council (IFC) has changed its recruitment system and it only seems to get worse. Originally the system was similar to the Sororities system, which is one that uses formal recruitment. This is where anyone interested in Fraternity life arrived at school a week early and guest stayed in a Fraternity while they toured other Fraternities on campus, narrowing down their search as the week went on until they finally made their decision at the end of the week.
As numbers of incoming freshmen interested in formal recruitment began drastically falling, IFC decided to drop its formal recruitment and have Fraternities sign their members informally.
Fall 2008 was the first year without formal recruitment; it was hard for many Fraternities to adjust to this system. Therefore this made it hard to get the usual number of members in houses, thus making for hard financial times for many houses. At this time, however, through informal signing many Fraternities throughout the fall semester would sign members and would simply break the student’s dorm contract with the University and move them into their Fraternity.
Although there was not a truly formal system of recruitment, IFC organized events for interested freshmen and basically had a few days of open houses where freshmen could walk through Fraternities and get house tours. This was difficult however in that many freshmen had trouble walking up to an unfamiliar house of 40 to 80 guys and asking to be shown around.
Several members involved with IFC and the Greek system are not happy with the current system. “I’m not a big fan of the new system I feel we have lost the foundation of recruitment. I believe we need some form of formal recruitment, a mixed system of formal and informal signing,” said Chase Gunnell, Director of Greek Affairs and past President of the Delta Chi Fraternity
In fall of 2009, the system was once again changed; this time demanding that Fraternities sign their freshmen by Aug. 5 otherwise they would not be allowed to move the freshmen in until the spring semester. IFC continued to organize open houses where interested freshmen could tour Fraternities, but this was around the first week of school and if a freshman wanted to sign he could not be moved in until the spring semester. This made it hard for houses to sign freshmen early enough to move them in, which has put quite a financial burden on a lot of Fraternities.
“Personally, I feel the new system has been detrimental for some fraternities,” said Derick En’wezoh, ASWSU President and past student regent of WSU. “The new recruitment plan happened very suddenly and every house has not been able to prepare for the financial effects of it.”
Chase Gunnell, Director of Greek Affairs has said that he plans to look into possibly making changes to the recruitment system, and hopes that he can bring back formal recruitment because he believes it is a positive experience and should not have been discarded.
Many freshmen come into college not knowing anyone, the formal recruitment process was an easy organized way for these freshmen to meet people and look into Fraternities that they would otherwise not get the chance to visit.
Many Fraternities have suffered from the changes in the system and have had to adjust to the new changes that have come into place every year. While some Fraternities have not felt much effect by the changes because they have thrived in the past through their summer recruitment, some houses on the other hand do most of their recruiting through formal and/or during the school year and these are the houses who are really feeling the effects of these changes.