Spring rush for the 17 participating Interfraternity Council fraternities will officially kick off with an exposition on Monday, Feb. 5, according to IFC President Michael Schottenstein.

Approximately 300 students have already paid the $5 fee and signed up to rush, he said. Though this is fewer than the 400 that signed up last year, Schottenstein said he is confident IFC’s new rush process will lead to a higher retention rate of potential new members – and in turn, a larger recruitment class.

‘Last year, over 400 signed up for recruitment initially,’ he said. ‘However, all said and done, less than 300 accepted bids to houses.’

Last year’s process split potential new members into groups on a Saturday and had them meet with participating fraternities in individual classrooms for 10 to 15 minutes at a time, Schottenstein said. The 9 a.m. start time and the six to seven hours it took for the potential new members to meet the fraternities may have been the cause of most dropouts.

This year, however, all participating fraternities will have tables set up in the Schine Student Center’s Goldstein Auditorium on Monday from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m., to give potential new members a chance to meet every participating IFC fraternity, Schottenstein said.

The following day, all participating fraternities will hold open houses from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m., he said, which will allow potential new members to visit as many houses as they like.

On Wednesday, potential new members will be asked to log onto the Internet and pick their housing preferences, Schottenstein said. The recruitment chairs for each of the houses will do the same and choose which students they want to invite the following night.

‘They are electronically matched up,’ he said. ‘Potential new members are then notified where they were invited back to.’

Thursday night will run much like Tuesday, when potential new members are free to visit as many houses as they wish – so long as they were invited back, Schottenstein said. By Friday afternoon, potential new members will receive their bids and go to their respective houses in the evening.

‘My goal was to get 500 people signed up initially,’ he said. ‘It may be a little difficult, but we think retention rate will be much higher than last year. We’re really on a great track,’ he said, adding that students will still be able to sign up at Monday’s exposition if they fail to do so before the start of rush week.

The IFC has spent the past week advertising rush, including tabling in Schine, starting a leaflet campaign and posting fliers in residence halls, said Matt Abbisar, recruitment chair for the IFC.

Abbisar called the 300 students who already signed up a ‘promising’ number, and said it is meeting his expectations.

Jay Fishman, a freshman broadcast journalism and Middle Eastern studies major, said he chose to sign up for spring rush because his father had been in a fraternity in college and told Fishman that getting into a fraternity house is the most important thing he could do.

‘It’s a close knit group of people,’ he said. ‘It’s an easy way to make good friends that will last a lifetime.’

Published on January 30, 2007 at 12:00 pm