New changes to the Greek life rush process greeted recruits at the start of spring semester. While some changes were met with approval, such as the shortening of sorority recruitment from seven to four days, others did not earn high marks among members of Greek life. Director of Fraternity and Sorority Life Calvin Smith mandated a shortening of the pledge process for fraternities by several weeks in an attempt to reduce the stress felt by pledging fraternity members. And while the goal may have been to make the lives of these pledges easier, the Editorial Board believes the opposite effect will be achieved.
By shortening the pledge time from eight weeks to six, pledges would theoretically have two extra weeks to focus on academics and their lives outside of the fraternity. The issue that the new policy ignores, however, is that fraternity members will not scale down their pledge processes accordingly. In other words, pledges will now have to find a way to make it through eight weeks worth of pledging in just six weeks time.
The Editorial Board believes that Smith failed to recognize the deep-seated traditions of the fraternity pledge process and underestimated their willingness to hold to them. While the goal of reducing stress may have been admirable, the decision to implement these policies represents a clear lack of understanding on the part of the Greek life administration. Ultimately, the new policy is simply out of tune with the needs and actions of students involved in Greek life.
A similar policy was put in effect for sororities, whose members are now given less time to get to know their new members, find a little, and perform a series of traditional tasks associated with this process. This naturally places more pressure on sorority members who must complete their traditional tasks in a reduced timeframe. And while this policy certainly opens more free time toward the end of the semester, it only does so by condensing a very large number of activities into a much shorter period. It is, in effect, borrowing time from the present in order to save time in the future.
We believe that the system should have simply been left in peace. The cost incurred by these new rules greatly outweighs the minor benefit. Perhaps more importantly, an open discussion should have been had between the Greek life administrators and the fraternities and sororities they intend to help. Communication is absolutely vital before making such large decisions and the Editorial Board believes that in the end, this was the real problem. We acknowledge the reasoning behind the new policies, but we believe they are out of touch with the reality of how Greek life actually works and represent a failure of the administration to understand students’ interests. A small discussion would have gone a long way.
