SMU Moves Fraternity, Sorority Recruitment to Fall

SMU has moved its fraternity and sorority recruitment from spring to fall in hopes of improving the student experience and retention.

This change applies to all four councils: Panhellenic, Interfraternity, National Pan-Hellenic, and Multicultural Greek.

The university has had work groups examine the timing of recruitment and how it affects student experiences in the academic, social, and mental health realms. The most recent of these conversations was last fall.

“They reviewed all of those data points, particularly focusing on that fall semester student experience and retention data for the institution,” SMU director of fraternity and sorority life Ashley Fitzpatrick said. “Once looking at all of those key points, leadership unanimously agreed that it was time for us to try something new (and) that deferred recruitment wasn’t really meeting the expectations that we had hoped it would.”

After recruitment, the university will assess to see how the new timeline impacts students’ experiences.

“Deferred recruitment is more of a minority in terms of the number of institutions that do it nationally, so we’re one of the first to make this leap to fall instead of moving forward,” Fitzpatrick said. “We’re very curious about what the data will show.”

Fitzpatrick said that statistics show that a deferred recruitment process tends to support academic achievement by allowing students to connect with the university and other organizations first. However, that wasn’t the case at SMU.

“Students were engaging in those informal (recruitment) conversations as soon as they got on campus,” Fitzpatrick said.

The change will affect the four fraternity and sorority councils differently.

Panhellenic and the Interfraternity Council are holding two recruitments in 2024 — their former spring recruitments and the new fall one — due to the transition.

“They’ve been preparing all spring, working through trainings and logistics, prepping their members to come back and kick it into gear right away,” Fitzpatrick said.

For the National Pan-Hellenic Council and Multicultural Greek Council, member intake is on a chapter basis: “For many of their organizations, they also require a higher hour completion requirement to be able to join, so for some of them, this change won’t really have the same impact as it will for Panhellenic and IFC as they might continue to recruit in later semesters,” Fitzpatrick said.

The university is hosting Zoom information sessions this summer to give insight into what the fall process will look like.

“We know there are a lot of questions about this process and the why, and we encourage anyone interested to visit our website,” Fitzpatrick said. “We have an entire page dedicated to the move to fall recruitment and intake.”