Fire Up!!

It's about that time of year again.

Fraternity recruitment is coming up shortly (less than a week from now, in fact) & even as an alumni I'm still stoked about it. Events such as this bring up an enthusiasm that I can't keep bottled up, an enthusiasm that's so hard to keep tied down.

"But why is that?" you might ask.

Well, some fraternities have sworn to make a return to the core values which their founders lived by with a passion (& from the get-go). In order to keep their promise to live up to these values, they're looking for quality duders who aren't planning to go Greek solely on the premise that the house(s) of their choice aren't well-stocked bars which supply them with tons of booze virtually every weekend. And if there is something every Recruitment chair needs to keep in mind when looking for quality men, it's grades/academics. If there are duders who got awesome grades in high school (& again the Recruitment chairs for each chapter need to take this into full consideration) or if they decided to forego Rush during their freshman year & still ended up getting stellar grades anyway, chances are they'll excel for the fraternity (-ies) which they're planning to check out.

If that's not enough, our respective chapters need men who are willing to stay involved not only within their own chapters - & within the Greek community - but also outside both of the above areas as well. This is where words like "initiative," "networking," & "leadership" need to make their presences felt to give the prospects the pitch on what each fraternity is all about & eventually the hard sell on everything our chapters truly stand for.

One thing we cannot do is present our prospective members with a caricature of everything that Greek life in general is about. In other words, during Rush Week, we're all about giving these guys the real deal about our fraternities, not these obvious stereotypical notions which non-Greeks have of us. If the best we could do during Recruitment Week is present ourselves along the lines of Animal House or Old School, something's awfully wrong & we need to make an immediate assessment on where we failed these duders during Recruitment.

But Greek life isn't all hooey or anything stereotypical if we take a closer look into it.

This year, I foresee awesome things happening again, not based on statistical figures (the idea of Recruitment should always be quality over quantity) but in terms of quality individuals entering the ranks of Greek life not only as members-to-be but so much more.

My closing words for all the fraternities doing their respective things Recruitment-wise next week are: Fire up!!