The Fraternity Way

Fraternities have been around since the early 1800s, and if you are a guy going to college, chances are you've probably been asked the question "are you going to join a frat?" Joining a fraternity can open many doors for men on campus looking to find a community, but before they can find the organization they have to go through the recruiting process. 

Matthew McConaughey's fraternity composite as a 
 brother of Delta Tau Delta at University of Texas at Austin

On college campuses, most social fraternities, and the ones that will be discussed in this blog, are members of the North-American Interfraternity Conference. There are 70 organizations that fall under the Interfraternity Conference, with the earliest, Chi Phi, being founded all the way back in 1824. Fraternities have been a popular part of apart of American culture since the 1820’s, and many famous men wore Greek letters across their chest while in college. Delta Tau Delta calls Academy Award winner Matthew McConaughey a brother, and former US president Ronald Reagan was a member of Tau Kappa Epsilon. If you’re interested, you can learn about all of the famous fraternity men here (hint, there’s a lot!)  Joining a fraternity helps give men many different opportunities during college, and allows them to have a brotherhood for life, I mean who wouldn’t want to call Steven Spielberg, a member of Theta Chi, their brother?

In order to get to the brotherhood, men first must go through recruitment. For fraternities, recruitment is really quite simple, and tends to be very casual. While the specific recruitment process can differ from school to school, the idea is similar: it is all about finding the people that YOU like to hang out with!

The first step to recruitment is registration. In order to be able to register, students must have a minimum 2.5 GPA requirement. Schools like Longwood may also require that a student has at least 12 university credits before they are able to join any organizations. Part of registration includes paying a small fee before being able to attend the different events. The link to sign up for recruitment is usually on your school's IFC page. 

Usually, chapters will spend the week hosting different events the potential members are open to attending. At some schools, like Longwood, the Interfraternity Council (the governing council that oversees all fraternities at a school) will also host a week of events that all chapters and potential members are welcome to join.  This is typically held before the individual chapter events, in order to give those students who know little about the fraternities a chance to meet more organizations. To get a more extensive breakdown of a typical recruitment week might look life, check out this article!

At the end of the week, the fraternities will have bid session, a meeting where the brothers come together to discuss who they would like to extend membership to.  After coming to an agreement, members will find the interested students, and hand them a bid card, therefore inviting them to join their brotherhood. 

There is no limit to how many bids a fraternity can extend, as it is up to the chapters disclosure. Every chapter also has a different amount of length for which their bid is available to the members. There are some situations where potential members may receive multiple bids for different organizations. At the end of the week to celebrate, there is the most exciting day, which is bid day. At Longwood, potential members make the decision of which chapter they would like to join when they have the opportunity of "running home" to their chosen chapter at an event known as Men's Walk . 

Men's Walk is quite possibly one of most exciting parts of the recruitment process. It is a culmination at the end, filled with excitement, screaming, and lots of crazy costumes. It is the moment where there is brotherhood bursting at the seams, and when the chapters get to finally welcome in their new members. It is often a very popular event where a lot of the Greek organizations come together to celebrate new additions to the community. To catch a glimpse of the craziness, check out this video. 

After Men's Walk and all of the excitement of the recruitment process is over,  the new member process begins, which is the time where the new members learn all about their organization before officially becoming brothers. It is during this time, before initiation, that new members are still able to drop out of the organization if they decide it is not the one for them. 

As soon as the men are done being recruited, and have become members, it is then that they become the recruiters, finding the people that they believe will make their brotherhood better and stronger. Recruitment is always in process as a member of Greek organization, because without gaining great new members who love and appreciate brotherhood, the organizations cannot make it. The process of joining a fraternity is a chapter of life, and it gives you a chapter for life.