Sororities and fraternities will both begin their fall recruitment, also known as rush, on Wednesday, Sept. 3.
According to Kirstin Leih, coordinator of fraternity and sorority life, six sororities and 11 fraternities will be actively recruiting in the upcoming week.
Leih said that almost 1,200 undergraduates on campus are involved in sororities and fraternities, which is between 17 and 18 percent of the student body.
These groups offer new students the chance to network, Liz Johnson, vice president of Panhellenic recruitment for the Panhellenic Council, the governing body for six sororities at Saint Louis University, said.
“It’s a good opportunity even if they don’t know if they want to get into Greek life to get to know people at SLU,” said Johnson.
For sororities, a “formal recruitment” process requires each woman interested in Greek life to register to participate. For the first time, registration this year is strictly online at slu.mycampusdirector.com.
Women who are interested must register by Friday, Aug. 29, at 5 p.m.
At press time, 135 women had registered. Johnson said that about 350 women participated in recruitment activities last year.
Another aspect of the sororities’ formal recruitment is the fact that current sorority members are supposed to have limited interaction with potential recruits throughout the week.
Current affiliated members are not allowed to speak to freshmen, add potential new members on Facebook, attend parties with freshmen or go to “SLU” bars. The purpose of these restrictions are to eliminate unfair advantages during formal recruitment.
Select sorority members join a group called Pi Chi, which aims to steer freshmen through the recruitment process. These women are free to interact with new recruits, but they are not allowed to associate with their sororities during recruitment.
“[Pi Chi’s] sole goal is to make the women going through recruitment’s experience as good as possible,” Johnson said.
“Girls . have to have a lot of structure,” Johnson said of the intricate rules and registration sorority recruitment entails. “We want to have things fair and level across the board.”
While the six sororities participating in recruitment have typically have memberships of 60 or more, Leih said that the 11 fraternities on campus “are a lot more variable in size.”
Leih said that while the structured sorority recruitment process tries to distribute new recruits evenly, fraternities employ a more casual process that allows each fraternity a unique identity as well as sizes that vary from five members in Kappa Delta Rho to 86 in Sigma Phi Epsilon.
Robert McGrail, co-vice president of recruitment for the Interfraternity Council, said that the fraternities’ more lenient rush practices give students the opportunity “to get to know people in a more informal setting.
“It [also] gives the individual chapters more flexibility as far as what they want to do.”
The IFC will sponsor its annual rush kickoff “barbeque” at SLUruba from 4-6 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 3. Free pizza will be offered. Any interested male student can attend.
Although freshmen make up the majority of participants during the recruitment process, Leih, Johnson and McGrail said that upperclassmen are welcome to participate.
