By: Katherine Waters, Staff Writer
With the switch from fall to spring recruitment, Wofford’s sororities and fraternities also saw changes to the typical recruitment processes. Because approximately 50% of Wofford’s student body participates in Greek life, the Greek village was crowded through the entire recruitment weekend. Some issues are expected when so many students are in the exact same location, but officers for both IFC and Panhellenic Council said that the processes went relatively smoothly.
“All in all, this was the first time to ever to have houses for sorority women to hold recruitment in, and the first time to have recruitment simultaneously with the boys,” says Laurel Weber ’18, president of Panhellenic. “It was definitely a trial period. Cate Griffin and I kept calling ourselves the ‘guinea pigs’ because we didn’t how this was going to work out. But I think it went as smooth as it could have.”
In the past, sororities and fraternities have held their recruitments both on the same weekend as well as on different weekends, but they never held recruitment in the same place.
“Men’s recruitment and women’s recruitment have, many times in the past, been on the same weekend,” said Pearson Lewallen ’19, vice president of public relations for Wofford’s Interfraternity Council. “However, fraternity rush took place at the row and sorority rush in various other locations. With the new Greek Village and the inclusion of sorority houses, our women’s organizations now share the same general location as the fraternities for rush.”
But the new schedule might actually be better. Cate Griffin ’18, vice president of Panhellenic, says that having all Greek life members go through recruitment on the same weekend condenses the amount of time that the row would need to be reserved.
“I think there were a lot of advantages to having smokers and recruitment on the same dates,” she says. “It allowed the row to be closed for the least amount of time and impacted the least amount of people. That way, we didn’t feel like we were putting the fraternities in a bad position to where they felt like they couldn’t use their houses.”
In addition, Weber says that having all of the Greek-affiliated students in the same place at the same time made the group feel more like a community.
“I think it was a really neat experience to hold it all on the same date. For it being the first time we had recruitment in the new Greek village, it was cool to experience how the boys do things and for them to understand our process more,” says Weber. “I think it added a sense of togetherness among all Greek organizations during the stressful, yet exciting weekend.”
When Wofford held fall recruitment for fraternities and sororities, the students would go through around three weeks of classes before ever reaching recruitment weekend. For spring recruitment, the weekend was pushed after interim, so that students would only attend spring semester classes for one week before recruitment began.
Lewallen says that the time change is the primary reason that both recruitments are held on the same weekend, and that to reschedule them to separate weekends would cause time conflicts.
“Holding two separate recruitments, in my personal opinion, would do far more harm than good,” he says. “Now that Wofford has converted to strictly spring rush, time is extremely limited. To push one or the other back one week in February would have many negative effects on both the campus morale and the rush experience for potential new members as a whole. Likewise, the rules and regulations regarding rush, for both men and women, would inevitably be tested during this time due to the impatience on both sides of the process.”
Besides the time and effort that it takes up for Greek-affiliated students, recruitment weekend affects the typical schedules of many other students on campus. When fraternities and sororities are busy with recruitment parties, the Greek row must be closed down and houses do not hold their regular weekend parties.
Griffin says that separating the two recruitments would take up the space that non-Greek students might want to use. “I think that if we had done it on a different weekend, then we would’ve had more pushback from the student body who were not going through recruitment at that time and who would like to utilize the Greek village,” she says.
While there were a few issues with noise levels and overcrowding, Wofford’s first spring recruitment ran smoothly. The switch to spring recruitment and usage of the Greek village for all events means that these problems will present themselves, but the Panhellenic and IFC officers all agreed that communication between the two councils helps all Greek organizations to cooperate and make the weekend a success for everyone involved.
