About 250 students joined a fraternity this semester, an increase of about 100 students from last year, before the Interfraternity Council implemented a new formalized rush system.

In previous years, potential new members tended to only visit one or two fraternities and based their decision under the influence of alcohol and who threw the best parties, according to Jake LaRoe, the president of the IFC and a senior in textile engineering and political science.  

“It was prudent to make a switch,” LaRoe said. “We were getting pressure from the university to quit with the alcohol violations and dirty rushing.”

A lot of chapters did not succeed with that environment, and it did not help them in recruiting new members, according to Shelly Dobek, the director of Greek Life.

There are 22 fraternities at NC State. With informal recruitment, potential members did not have the chance to get to know the variety of the fraternities at NC State, which range anywhere from “camo to polo,” according to Dobek.

The goal of formal recruitmentwas to increase the number of new members in the IFC and expand recruitment opportunities in a sober way, according to David Wyche, a senior in agricultural business management and recruitment vice president for the IFC.  

In making the switch, the IFC looked both at how Panhellenic sororities did their recruitment as well as how formalized fraternity recruitment was done at other universities.  

“We started to pull bits and pieces from these universities about what we might be able to do at this campus,” Dobek said. “We liked the idea of introducing potential members to all fraternities, giving them that brief opportunity to learn who all the groups are.”

The IFC took into consideration that the smaller fraternities use year round recruitment instead of only a week-long rush. They are currently working with them to provide avenues to continue to gain members throughout the year.

“The conversation level was definitely elevated,” Dobek said. “I think they started to have conversations that mattered; they were more transparent about what are the expectations of membership.”

Fourteen chapters exceeded their three-year class averages for recruits, two chapters met their previous three-year average and five fraternities did not meet it . The last is suspended, and therefore does not have appropriate statistics.

“They got out of it whatever they put into it,” Wyche said. “Some of them really took advantage of the system, in a good way. They did exactly what we told them to do. They talked to everybody, they screened everybody, they brought them back. And then there were some chapters that didn’t do that. They either got what they normally would have or possibly one or two fewer.”

However, one standardized method of recruitment cannot satisfy all 22 chapters.

“You can’t ever develop a solution that meets everyone 100 percent,” Dobek said.  

The IFC is taking the first time errors of formalized recruitment into account in planning next year’s rush. In the future, the IFC is hoping to implement earlier training of recruitment counselors, a more enforced schedule and better organized transportation.

LaRoe said the administration is happy with the success of the formalized recruitment.

“I am pleased in the fact that we’ve grown,” LaRoe said. “There were some logistical problems and things we didn’t anticipate, but overall it was a huge success.”