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Recruitment Winter recruitment was by far the key focal point of December planning and the foremost activity in the month of January. It was decided that the goal would be to initiate 20 new pledges—without sacrificing quality. A daunting goal at a school where winter ‘rush' usually provides lackluster results, something new and different had to take place. We decided to turn to the way our original class was formed—pure recruitment. In December, we laid out a calendar—planning about 90% of our events to take place before the usual university rush period. We then asked every brother to collect names of guys that could possibly be Fiji material from everyone they knew. We added to this list by going to the chapter meetings of the top sorority houses, explaining our purpose, and handing out recommendation sheets. It was stressed that every remotely social event should be looked upon as an opportunity to meet new recruits—classes, club meetings, sporting events, etc. Our plans and goals were further emphasized by holding a sort of “recruitment retreat” with the entire chapter and pledges. Here, we did everything from stating the obvious recruitment facts (such as never leave a recruit without introducing him to another brother first) to reviewing selling points to practicing phone calls to potential recruits. At the university mass meeting for winter rush, we set up an excellent table, but rather than sit behind it passively, we actively engaged potential recruits, and stressed why we were different from every other fraternity on campus. From this, we received even more names and the vast majority of these men chose to attend our events. The events we planned were different too. Although they included open houses with tours and informal presentations of our ideals, we held many out-of-house events: pool at the university pool hall, basketball, dodgeball to name a few. Not only were they great ways to see the attributes/characters of the recruits, but they had an absolute blast. The final thing we did differently was broke the university tradition of waking up potential pledges in the middle of the night to offer them a bid. Instead, we scheduled formal interviews at the house with guys who had been voted on to receive bids, held the interview (which addressed any concerns they may have had), then, at the end of the interview extended them a bid. We then encouraged them to help us in our recruiting effort (which brought in even more names) and told them that there would be an official pledge initiation night coming up, where they would meet the rest of their class. The system worked. We have an active initiated pledge class of 22 true gentlemen.
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