After a year of Zoom calls and social distancing, fraternity recruitment held in-person recruitment for the first time in over a year, which ended Sept. 16. 

Fraternities at Simpson College are brotherhoods that encourage and help students become efficient leaders, make lasting friendships and be upstanding parts of their community. 

Riley Dykstra, Frank Cruz, Chase Henry and Cam While shared their thoughts on this year’s recruitment experience for them and those that have decided to join their houses.

Cam While, Master of Recruitment for Kappa Theta Psi (KOY), said the fraternity became gender-inclusive last spring after seeing an increase of other genders interested in joining.

“We’ve had a lot of people that just hang around at the house, and a lot of women who were interested in being in KOY, but since we were a fraternity and only took male-identifying, we saw it as a big change to change how Greek life looks and acts, and just make a better step forward for Simpson’s campus,” While said.

KOY is still identified as a fraternity, as they follow the Interfraternity Council (IFC)’s rules and guidelines, but now take members of any gender identity.

While said that KOY sought to recruit anyone passionate about diversity, equity and inclusion and wants to see change on Simpson’s campus. 

These requirements seem to have impacted their recent recruitment positively.

“We had a really good recruitment season,” While said. “We gave out 11 bids and had nine people accept them. We still have recruitment events going on for the rest of the month, and then we’ll pick up informal recruitment events starting in October.”

The other fraternities and IFC as a whole saw a positive formal recruitment season as well.

Lambda Chi Alpha (Lambda) member and IFC recruitment president Riley Dykstra said it was his first time on the house side of formal recruitment. 

“Recruitment was as close as we can get to normal,” Dykstra said. “It’s been two years since we’ve been able to have recruitment like this, and this is honestly my first time behind normal recruitment, and in my eyes, it’s as normal as we could get. I wish it could be a little bit more normal because we saw some COVID procedures, but it looked really good.”

The recruitment process is planned by IFC. 

“Basically, the idea is we set forth rules, and all the fraternities have to follow us,” Dykstra said. “Fraternities have a little bit more leeway than Panhellenic – the sorority side of things, but it’s the idea that we do kind of oversee the whole formal process.”

Chase Henry, Alpha Tau Omega (ATO) member and vice president of recruitment, also spoke about how IFC’s recruitment process went this season.

“We sent things out over the summer,” Henry said. “We hit it pretty hard once the students arrived on campus, about a week before school, which is when a lot of athletes can come. Then we did certain events, including house tours, which was also an IFC introduction night.”

Dykstra said he had a positive outlook when talking about this year. 

“I think the people that I counted at walk night, I think we had around 20 or so, a little bit more,” he said. 

As for individual chapters, each leader was happy with the members they were welcoming to their houses

.

“Our goal was five to six guys, and we got five and we’re still working on a couple of them,” Dykstra sa

id of Lambda’s recruits. “Obviously, we can always do better, but I’m really happy with the five guys that we did get and a couple of guys we’re still working on. I feel like it turned out really well. We hit our goal, and that’s all that we could really ask for.”

Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) member Frank Cruz said he was overall happy with how SAE’s formal recruitment went.

“This year was a lot different from last year, of course, because we had a lot of restrictions, but I think with the whole yellow phase and more leniency with masks outside, it was a lot better,” Cruz said. “I mean, of course, it’s going to be hard after COVID-19. Things are not going to be 100% back to normal, but we tried the best we can.”

Henry was similarly optimistic about the new ATO recruits. 

Greek life was able to welcome back many of its activities that they weren’t able to have due to COVID-19 last year.

“I think the future is bright for the young gentlemen who are going to hopefully get to experience a normal four years here, especially the middle of this semester, beginning of next,” he said. “Then we’re going to hit informal recruitment, which is where we always strive. ATO recruits 24/7, 365 days a year, so hopefully, we can get a couple more.”

“It’s things that we’ve had before, but we haven’t had since my sophomore year,” Dykstra said. “We’ve had kickoff, which had house tours, even though we weren’t allowed to come into other houses. We had Walk Night which isn’t unique, but it’s still the fact that we could have it, which was so great. The idea is that a lot of houses can have in-person events as well. Which again, it’s not unique, but when last year happened, it’s very unique.”

The doors to all four fraternities are almost always open and ready to welcome new members into the brotherhood. Informal recruitment will run for the remainder of the year.