The Intrafraternity Council’s new recruitment regulations have limited aims: to shorten the recruitment calendar from three to two weeks and to require an IFC recruitment team to attend fraternity parties during rush to ensure that each chapter abides by IFC rules. Recruitment reforms like these are part of the historical landscape: past changes have included a 2005 refusal to recognize off-campus fraternities and, in the ultimate show of historical repetition, a shortening of the rush calendar in 1993.
Nevertheless, these rules rightly put IFC in charge of curbing its own excesses. But the group will have to extend this spirit of self-regulation if it wants to address the real problems that plague rush and pledging.
We trust that the IFC recruitment team will effectively limit some of rush’s most extreme behaviors. Representatives from a multitude of fraternities have a genuine interest in catching their fellows red-handed—the inherently competitive nature of rush ensures that members of fraternities will take every measure to ensure another group is not breaking rules to gain an advantage.
This ought to put a stop to extreme practices, like progessives. But the new regulations fail to address the primary problem associated with fraternity recruitment—the pledge process and hazing.
Zoila Airall, assistant vice president of student affairs for campus life, claims that the two new structured IFC rush parties—one at the beginning and one at the end—will signify pointed start and end dates and thus eliminate post-recruitment hazing. But this viewpoint is unfoundedly optimistic—this policy won’t curb hazing.
Ending hazing is not the sole responsibility of University officials—it will certainly require cooperation between administrators and students. But the desire to terminate the behavior must be student-led in order to be successful.
Why not extend the duty of IFC officers to monitor post-recruitment activities in order to reduce the incidence of hazing? Males within the greek community have the most information about when pledging and hazing might take place and are less likely to be fooled by efforts to conceal wrongdoings. Strong voices of dissent from within the greek male community are essential to move forward and eradicate hazing.
On the other hand, IFC leaders purport that the administration initiated these newest regulations. Make no mistake, we commend the University for recognizing the need to shorten and provide greater structure for rush. Similarly, we commend IFC leaders for collaborating with administrators and developing a plan that better serves all involved. But these policies could become mere sleight of hand—IFC needs to take more substantive aim at its most problematic traditions.
Finally, the decision to begin recruitment before the start of spring semester classes is questionable. International students—some who return to campus from the far corners of the world—may have a harder time arriving early on campus than their stateside peers. Historically maligned as exclusive, IFC needs to do all that it can to promote inclusivity, even if that means a rush concurrent with academic classes.
The new IFC recruitment measures tap into a valuable resource of enforcing moderation: fellow students. There is potential here—IFC is its own best weapon in the fight against its own excesses.
Correction: A previous version of this editorial incorrectly cited pledging, not progressives, as likely to to be resolved by the policy. The Chronicle regrets the error.
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