For the next four hours, I am stuck sitting in a room on the second floor of the Marketplace, waiting to accept bids from students deciding to pledge one of the 16 Interfraternity Council (IFC) fraternities as a recruitment assistant for IFC. Thus, it seems only appropriate to pass the time with a little post-rush analysis:
This year, the IFC transitioned from a three-week long rush to a more condensed, two-week long process that began two days before the start of classes. This change was made so that the rush period would have less overlap with days of class, with the intended goal of allowing both rushees and fraternity members to focus more on school. As is often the case with administrative decisions at Duke, however, this ill-conceived idea completely backfired and led to a plethora of negative externalities.
In order to shorten the rush schedule by a full week, more events were placed on fewer nights, with fewer off nights between rounds. Ultimately, what the process lacked in longevity, it made up for in intensity. Last year, rushees were going to third-round events during the third week of classes. This year, they were trying to fit three events into one day, an arguably more problematic scenario.
Beyond this obvious oversight, the new schedule caused additional headaches for fraternities. In past years, the first round of IFC recruitment consisted of open houses, divided up over two nights, and one additional event. This year, all open houses were conducted on one night and there was no second event. Rushees complained of being exhausted by the time they made it to the last open house, and brothers found it incredibly difficult to make cuts after minimal interaction with rushees. Many chapters dealt with this issue by extending more second-round invites than usual, which only caused this same problem to reverberate through to later rounds.
After receiving a myriad of second-round invites, many rushees chose to spread themselves thin by attending fewer events at more fraternities. Combine this with a shortened second round, and several fraternities had no choice but to extend final-round invites to people that only attended one event following the open house. I was unaware of just how widespread the issue was until I spoke with rushees who had received as many as seven third-round invites, a phenomenon that would have been unheard of in previous years.
So that’s the recap. As the clock runs down and I watch various fraternity representatives frantically update Google Docs with the names of rushees that have or have not accepted their bids, it’s time for the predictions.
First, I’m predicting smaller pledge classes. We won’t know for sure until IFC releases recruitment statistics later in the week, but I’d be willing to bet that more rushees will fall through the cracks this year. Despite giving out more third-round invites, most fraternities probably did not give out substantially more bids, leading to a greater number of out-of-luck students.
Following from this conjecture, I’m expecting to see greater disparity in numbers among chapters. Through no fault of their own, it was simply more difficult than in previous years to predict where rushees would end up. Every year, there is a wide range of pledge class sizes, but this year I’m predicting there to be an even larger fluctuation.
I have a feeling there will be more snap bids than last year. Unfortunately, this is not a statistic that IFC releases, but if my two previous assertions prove accurate, it would stand to reason that some fraternities with smaller pledge classes will be more willing to snap the rushees that fell through the cracks.
The final verdict: a more imperfect rush overall. The changes instituted by IFC this year failed to correct the problems that the changes were designed to remedy. Furthermore, they created a less organized and more frenzied process that left too many students in the dust. In past years, IFC has used the large number of students without bids as evidence in support of the notion that Duke needs more fraternities. In reality, the issue is far more complicated. For all of its flaws and inadequacies, the Panhellenic Association has been able to devise a recruitment system that provides more guidance and equity to students going through the process. Although I would never want a fraternity rush as structured and inflexible as Panhel rush, I commend the Panhellenic Association for addressing issues that IFC has not yet touched. Something as simple as making open houses mandatory for IFC rush, and spreading those open houses over two days, would make for a more equitable process.
Here’s how I see it: Shortening a flawed rush process doesn’t make the problems smaller—it makes them more noticeable.
Scott Briggs is a Trinity sophomore. His column runs every other Wednesday.
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