Three days of rain may have discouraged some men from attending recruitment last weekend, but by the end, about 180 men were placed in houses.
“Most of recruitment takes place inside, but there is also a constant flow of people moving from chapter to chapter, so when it’s pouring out, people don’t want to do that,” Interfraternity Council Director of Recruitment Chris DeRoo said.
Sixty-eight percent of men who signed up for recruitment ended up joining fraternities, DeRoo said. By the end of the month, 20 or 30 more men are expected to join, he said.
After the last round of sorority recruitment, 75 percent of women who signed up were placed in sororities,
Panhellenic Director of Recruitment Beth Schmitt said the retention rate of this year’s recruitment was one of the best of the past few years. Last year saw 62 percent of women placed.
In past years, some sororities have not gotten enough women to make quota, or the number of women each chapter is allowed to take.
However, Schmitt said after the last round of recruitment this year, every sorority came very close to meeting or exceeded quota.
“[The sororities] just worked really hard and all the sororities were really appealing and they worked really hard to keep the girls in recruitment,” she said.
Tina Pizzuti, the graduate assistant for the Lewis J. Burger Center for Leadership and Public Service, said as of Monday, one sorority was not up to quota.
She said this year some of the smaller sororities made better decisions about asking women back after each round of recruitment.
“Then less girls get dropped and more girls get placed in houses,” Pizzuti said.
The amount of women each sorority can ask back each round depends on how many women the sorority has recruited in the past and how many women the sorority is able to retain.
Pizzuti said she didn’t see any big problems during recruitment.
“They do a lot of planning beforehand to make sure recruitment goes well,” she said.
Junior English major Sara Berg said she went through recruitment because she was never able to join a sorority before coming to Bradley.
She said she was excited and nervous on Bid Day to find out what sorority gave her a bid.
“I think [recruitment] went really well,” Berg said. “I actually enjoyed myself even though I was a little tired and it was a little time-consuming.”
DeRoo said the largest new member class of any fraternity is 25 men, while the smallest is two.
“The general type of students who, as freshmen, go through recruitment are the type of people who you would expect to go through recruitment and they’re going to join the bigger houses,” he said.
He also said larger fraternities do better during recruitment because they have the large numbers needed to recruit.
Smaller houses will host informal recruitment events to gain more men, DeRoo said.
He said the changes IFC made to recruitment to make it more informal benefited some chapters.
“[Some fraternities] hosted different events … they were able to bring potential new members to their house and actually show them around and talk to them and hang out with them on their own terms outside of formal recruitment,” DeRoo said.
