Hundreds of male students are hoping to go Greek this week.
Recruitment for UF’s 26 Interfraternity Council chapters started Monday and runs through Saturday night.
Many aspects of the Fall recruitment process have stayed the same from year to year — potential new members checking out houses, meeting brothers and mingling — but circumstances are changing in some chapters.
All the fraternities are using an online registration system to contact and keep track of rushing students, said Jorge Sanchez, IFC’s vice president of membership. This will allow the chapters to work together and to later evaluate member data, which Sanchez said makes him optimistic for the new classes.
“I think this year we’re definitely going to be seeing record numbers,” he said.
Pi Kappa Alpha, which has been building its membership back up since its five-year suspension ended in 2011, is hoping so.
“We’re feeling really confident,” Pike President Zachary Ryan said. “Hopefully we’ll be able to monopolize the best guys and get the largest pledge class.”
Meanwhile, Sigma Phi Epsilon lost more than half of its members during the summer.
It went from 141 UF members in the past Spring to 57 members this Fall, according to the fraternity’s national website. Jimmy Clements, the vice president of recruitment for the UF chapter, declined to comment.
Zack Kandel, recruitment chair for UF’s Phi Delta Theta chapter, said his fraternity wants to stay on par with previous’ years’ numbers.
Phi Delt hopes to end up with about 35 initiates.
The Theta Chi chapter also wants about the same number of initiated brothers, said recruitment chair Dylan Goldberg.
But this year, the men are living off-campus at Collier Hall while a new house is built on Fraternity Row. To help with exposure, potential new members can be driven to the house in a limousine.
“Sometimes when freshmen are rushing, they never even hear about the off-campus houses,” Goldberg said. “We want to make it even easier for the guys.”
Contact Julia Glum at jglum@alligator.org.
Dimittri Delevry, a 20-year-old political science junior and Theta Chi brother, rides in a limousine with potential new members of the fraternity.
