Sunday evening in Baldwin Auditorium, freshmen will be introduced to a fraternity rush system that will require not only an adjustment for them but one for fraternity members as well.
As a part of the new residential plan approved by the Board of Trustees last December, fraternity rush was moved from fall to spring semester. As a result, the rush period, which starts on Jan. 12, has been reduced from two and a half months to five weeks, .
Trinity senior Lex Wolf, Interfraternity Council president, said the fact that the rush process no longer occurs throughout the fall semester may be a positive change for fraternities. "It will allow us to have a semester to take in new guys because we don't start rush again right away in the fall," he said.
Despite the dramatically shorter time frame, Trinity junior Chris Hester, IFC vice president for rush and pledging, said that the system may now actually work better. "Five weeks is enough time for brothers to get to know the rushees and for the rushees to get to know the fraternity," Hester said. "Two and a half months of rush is overkill."
Hester said that although the rush period has been shortened, it will still include as many of the features of the old rush system as possible. For example, fraternities will still have the time to hold several dinner rushes, a theme party and a semi-formal. After the final weekend of rush, fraternities will extend bids to freshmen Feb. 12. Once bids are returned to IFC on Feb. 14, the pledging process will begin the next day.
Sue Wasiolek, assistant vice president for student affairs and adviser to IFC, said she agreed that a shortened rush might actually benefit fraternities. "In the past, there has been a tendency at the end of rush for fraternity members to be somewhat burned out. That [burnout] has detracted from the overall purpose of the fraternities," Wasiolek said. "Now [the new system] will enable brotherhood to be established in the fall."
Some fraternity members, however, said that they were not quite as enthusiastic about the changes. Trinity junior Keith Cossrow, rush chair for Kappa Sigma fraternity, said the shortened rush period might hurt the fraternity system. "I don't like the direction we're heading... toward a state school-type rush where you really don't get to know the people who are rushing," Cossrow said.
"It worries me a lot that with a rush so short at such a good school, it puts pressure on guys to go out every night," he added. He said that the system was much better when there was close to three months to get to know people rather than just a few weeks.
Trinity junior Blair Greber-Raines, assistant rush chair for Sigma Chi fraternity, said the shortened rush period would make it more difficult to get to know rushees as well as fraternity members could under the old system. But he also said that, while he did not like the new system, it is something to which fraternities will have to adapt.
Wolf said he acknowledged such problems. "We know there will be some things that we will have to adjust, but I think we are well on our way to a long-term policy," he said.
One of the primary concerns during the development of the new system, Hester said, was the occurrence of "dirty rush" during the fall semester, when no fraternity is allowed to conduct any sort of rush function. In an effort to deal with that problem, IFC has held weekly "town meetings" with fraternity rush chairs to discuss and avoid any such problems, Hester said. "We didn't want IFC to become a police force and luckily that has not been the case," he said.
Hester said that right now the most important concern will be to inform freshmen about the entire process. For the first time, IFC will host two formal information sessions in Baldwin Auditorium on East Campus Nov. 12 and Nov. 19. Attendance at one of these sessions will be mandatory for any freshman or sophomore who wants to rush in the spring, Hester said. "We want [freshmen] to be on the same wavelength as we are," he said. "Most freshmen come in and don't even know what a bid is."
Following each of the sessions in Baldwin, attendees will be invited to the East Union, where there will be a representative from each fraternity. Hester said that this will be a time for potential rushees to mingle and ask questions.
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