By Rebecca Wrobleske
Reporter
For many men at Baylor, the last three weeks have changed and will continue to change their lives as they choose and are chosen by a fraternity. The Interfraternity Council and local and independent fraternities are coming to the end of their 2015 fall recruitment as Bid Day is just around the corner on Friday.
After rush week finishes, bid day is up next on the IFC schedule. Some distribute bids in more unique ways than others. Members of each fraternity will go out to find the new members at their dorm, apartment or house to hand deliver them their bid.
“Pi Kapp gets, like, a little armada of trucks to roll up with American flags and Pi Kapp flags. They’ll wear white wash jeans to hand them their little red card. They make a big deal about it in the middle of campus,” said Dallas senior Matthew Willis, internal vice president of IFC.
Accepting the bid is an intense process, IFC External Vice President Chase Hardy said. The new members will be required to accept their bids on the computers in the Bill Daniel Student Center where the IFC leaders will take precautions against any pressure of accepting a certain bid when helping them through the bid process.
IFC has two female independents that will come to the aid of new members that may have two or more bids, to prevent any pressures for during the acceptance process. After the bid acceptance there will be a celebration for the new members.
“Generally, a lot of the chapters will come out and meet the new guys when they come out, which is the Mingelwood Bowl tradition. Then they’ll have their first meeting together as a pledge class,” Willis said.
Events have been held in order to help the predominately sophomore men find their future brothers, including skeet shoots, shrimp broils, formal coffees and cigar lounge hangouts. Once fraternities have chosen who they would like as their newest pledge class, they will hand out bids. This is called Bid Day, where the new guys are extended an invitation to a chapter.
According to Baylor Student Activities, there are regulations for trying to rush. The student rushing in IFC recruitment must have a 12 credit hours. Transfer students must have 24 credit hours. Freshmen are not eligible to rush in the fall, and those rushing were required to fill out a registration form in order to be eligible.
At the beginning, IFC advertised events that were open to all. Posters were placed in the men’s residence halls and social media post were made to get the word out about the open events. Word of mouth, however, had a great impact on attendnce as well.
The way recruitment worked is as the events went on through the three-week period changing from open to invite only.
“Generally, what will happen is fraternities will have their four to five events and typically the first one or two will be open to everyone…then once you got past the initial ones, they started weeding it down,” Hardy said.
Around the third event, they become invite only. A certain number of invitations were extended and fraternities extended an even fewer and fewer invitations until the interview phase. Voting happened after that.
Each fraternity’s recruitment committee is in charge of selecting those who make it to the interview. All of the fraternity’s membership is present for the interviews of each potential new member. From there, the chapter as a whole voted on their new pledge class.
“I think the really great fraternities on campus look for men of excellence, which Baylor has a ton of those,’ Hardy said “You want someone that shows leadership experience through their actions and through their demeanor. Dr. Jackson, Vice President of Student Life calls Greek Life the ‘Laboratory of Leadership’ and that’s really what greek life is.”
Student Activities stated they require a minimum of a 2.5 GPA and a minimum 3.0 GPA for transfer students.
“The most important quality is just a good heart, and a willingness to go into a group and try and make it better then it was,” Hardy said.
Before any new member can accept a bid, they are required to attend an Effectively Developing Greeks meeting on September 23 at 6 p.m., in the Barfield Drawing Room. They will discuss hazing, alcohol abuse and sexual assault prevention.
