Greeks Revitalize Rush

When freshman Sami Tahari first stepped foot on campus, he harbored the same stereotypes of the Greek system he saw projected on the silver screen: Fraternities haze and pressure new blood into doing things they don't want to do.

But when he met the brothers of Kappa Sigma, his stereotypes flew out the window.

"It's not about hazing and the drunken parties that get out of hand," Tahari says. "They were straight-shooters. They aren't what the stereotypes are about. They care about each other and building brotherhood."

Battling the ever-present Greek stereotypes-binge drinking, drug use, and not caring about school-plaguing their community and Berkeley police cracking down harder this year, the 12 sororities and 36 fraternities in the Cal Greeks system had to reconfigure their strategies to draw students to their houses.

The new game plan seems to have worked. IFC saw a 14 percent increase in recruitment numbers with 291 pledges, as opposed to 255 last year. Panhellenic reported the same number of rushees as the past two years.

Stereotypes of the Greek community are the number one damper on recruitment, says Matt Arkin, IFC vice president of recruitment.

"We worked to draw in a lot of people who wouldn't have considered joining a fraternity and sorority by tailoring the message to appeal to more people based on what we thought were the weaknesses," Arkin says.

Members of the Interfraternity Council and Panhellenic spent their summer months constructing a marketing strategy that hinged on facets of the Greek community that incoming freshmen often gloss over, says Stacey Sperling, Panhellenic vice president of membership.

Even before new freshmen arrived on campus, the fraternities and sororities were scoping them out.

New students received e-mails and postcards about the pluses of going Greek-involvement in philanthropic events and access to alumni networks, Sperling said.

Zeta Beta Tau took recruitment to another level, utilizing university mailing lists to distribute mass letters about their fraternity to incoming freshmen over the summer. The house saw a 40 percent jump in its recruitment numbers with a pledge class of 14, says chapter President Chris Neubauer.

The sororities sought new recruits through the Web, with an online registration program and an alliance with the Cal Athletics department, which gave Panhellenic name recognition on ads at athletic events, Sperling says.

Neubauer says finding members this year was more challenging because of increased UC and Berkeley police crackdown on fraternity parties at the beginning of the year. Both university and national fraternity policies require a dry rush, but the policy was loosely enforced in past years, Neubauer says.

The $50,000 state grant to Berkeley police to target on underage drinking on campus pushed fraternities to to abide by dry rush rules, Arkin says.

"Recruitment should be done sober so you get a chance to know the guys," Arkin says. "Drinking by its nature distorts a person's character."

Fraternities were compelled to invoke some "creative" thinking in event planning, such as replacing traditional kegs with root beer kegs and throwing sober parties, Arkin says.

IFC is also going to start "delayed pledging," a new continuous recruitment program that will start in the next few weeks to try to bolster members in the spring, Arkin says.

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