Rushing around

True, it's midsummer but when it comes to Fraternity recruitment, no recruitment chairman should go on vacation.

But why is that? you may ask.

Fraternity Recruitment is a big deal, especially with incoming freshmen shopping around for the right house to join as well as to delve into the whole truth about Greek life in general. The worst we could do is go to sleep & not give these duders a point of reference which they can turn to when it comes to making a wise, valuable decision on accepting a bid from Sigma Chi or Delts, etc.

For those recruitment chairs who have Fall 08 Rush Week groups up on Facebook, I commend them for their efforts since they've got some of their groundwork done in advance. Not only can incoming freshmen (as well as other undergraduates) get a chance to do their research about our chapter & the accomplishments it has achieved but if we stop to think about it we're giving them an opportunity to look at what makes Sigs/Fiji/SigEp such an awesome fraternity to begin with. And if our chapter has an impressive track record (not only in its social aspect or in intramurals but especially from an academic perspective), duders will be convinced, duders will want to ask questions, duders will sincerely want to consider going Greek. True, the Activity Fair & Rush Week are perfect occasions for incoming freshmen to delve into Greek life & what makes it so amazing but when we've got Facebook groups which are dedicated to Fall Rush 2008 & duders should happen to stumble across them, we've made our work a bit easier (if not exponentially) & all this by planning ahead.

This isn't to say that we should discount the old-fashioned way of finding duders to go Greek; we shouldn't BTW. If we know of any duder whom we went to high school with who is quality material for this house or that, we should let them know about not only Rush Week & the events associated with this whole timeframe but also the Facebook groups devoted to Fall Rush while we're at it. If we know of men who want to rush, but are a bit uncertain or leery about taking that major step into going Greek, we should give them a firsthand experience on why we went Greek to begin with as well as other points of reference to turn to (e.g. our fraternity's main website, not just our chapter's!!).

Either way we look at it, recruitment is a yearly process. And what time we should devote to vacay is time where we should be laying the groundwork, making formulations for Fall Rush '08. For those who have got their work ready to go or at least well underway, God bless them, because they know what's up.

As anyone worth their salt knows, recruitment doesn't happen once a semester; it's all year long.