Greek Recruitment Week is all about socializing and getting to know the organization that will be the best fit for you. The above picture (taken before COVID-19) shows one of the many events that Greek orgs. will hold throughout the course of recruitment week to get to know the new recruits.
Recruitment Week for Greek organizations kicks off with a few changes from previous years
Recruitment week for Keene State’s Greek Life chapters is now well underway.
As of right now, there are six officially recognized Greek organizations at KSC: three fraternities and three sororities, all of whom have been hosting open houses and activities for the past two weeks looking for new recruits.
Every student interested in joining Greek Life must have at least a 2.5 GPA and 12 credits from Keene State College, or 24 credits as a transfer student. Because of these requirements, first-years are unable to join before their second semester. Students must register if interested in Greek organizations so the minimum requirements can be confirmed. Once they are registered they are able to attend recruitment week events to begin the process of choosing the organization they’d like to join.
“They had two, what I would call open house nights, so the ability for students to come in and learn information about all the groups, right, and then on Friday they had a bowling night where, again, students could meet sort of all the groups that they wanted to.” Brandon Carta, the Student Center’s Program Coordinator and Advisor of the Order of Omega, Inter-Fraternity Council and Panhellenic Council said, describing what recruitment looked like for the fraternities. “Then they had invitation day on Saturday where it was invitation-only…And so at the end of that day, we get lists from the chapters that say ‘Here are the people we want to invite or give bids to.’”
The next day, students who received bids from an organization will be notified. This semester, every student who attended fraternity recruitment events got at least one bid.
While fraternities at Keene hold their recruitment events over the span of one week, the sororities do it slightly differently. In previous years the sorority chapters used the same one-week schedule as the fraternities; this year, however, they are following the recruitment schedule laid out by the Panhellenic Council which takes place over three weeks.
Sarah Brochu, Vice President of the Phi Sigma Sigma sorority, described it as “more of informal recruitment.” Sarah says that the decision to switch from one to three weeks was made by the Panhellenic Council. “Most other schools will do an informal recruitment in the fall and a formal recruitment in the spring, so it’s just a more of a lowkey, give potential new members the opportunity to see all the organizations in a different way rather than every single night, quick, fast-paced kind of thing. It’s just to make it a little more informal and to make it more similar to what other schools that follow the National Panhellenic Council would do.”
The longer period of time gives students more room to familiarize themselves with the different organizations before deciding which one is for them, as well as giving the organizations time to get to know them before bidding begins.
Although sororities have more time to hold their recruitment events, fraternities have the advantage of being able to place bids for new recruits at any time throughout the course of the semester. “They don’t have a governing body that sets specific rules around recruitment in the same way the Panhellenic sororities do, so they don’t have a limit that they can go up to or these time periods. They have really free reign and free ability to be really truly a free market where they can give out bids to people at any point in the semester if they wanted to,” said Carta.
For most, it seems that the draw of Greek Life is the connections and sense of belonging that come with the organizations. “I joined because I wanted to really find a place in my community and wanted to find an organization to be a part of where I just felt at home and I really wanted to get to meet people,” said Alyssa Lepan, the Vice President of Recruitment for the Delta Phi Epsilon sorority. “Recruitment is definitely a way to do that,” Alyssa continued. “I joined as a freshman and I
don’t regret it to this day.”
