Phi Sigma Kappa Consults U Penn Sorority Girls On The “Perfect Fraternity Man” Before Recruiting Its New Members

BlutarskyTFM12 years ago

I’ve always felt bad for new chapters on campus. They’re in a shitty situation, but of course, everyone has to start somewhere. Obviously, recruitment for these new organizations can be difficult, to say the least. Subsequently, headquarters usually sends down some expansion coordinators to find the Founding Father class for the new group.

Now, my understanding of this process is limited, but from what I understand, it’s fairly ubiquitous across the country. The members of the expansion staff hold interest meetings, set up a recruitment booth at a student organization fair, and maybe even take out an ad in the school paper. Pretty simple stuff. Nothing over the top that would seem out of place or weird to anyone. However, some expansion coordinators from Phi Sigma Kappa are using some unconventional means to find new members.

By unconventional, I mean creepy and weird.

Ryan Budke and Joe Kern, two expansion recruitment coordinators for PSK, are spending a full five weeks at the University of Pennsylvania as they work on the fraternity’s recolonization there. Right off the bat, some of the methods they’re using to find potential recruits seem a little strange.

The Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life has also given the recruiters office space and provided lists of transfer students and students who did not join or were unmatched to a fraternity last semester as potential new members.

They’re looking for the new kids without friends or the losers who couldn’t get bids. That’s a bold strategy, Cotton. Let’s see if it pays off for them.

That’s not all, though. Budke and Kern have another trick up their sleeves. They’re using sorority girls to find potentials. No, they’re not having some sort of bikini car wash, though that’s not bad marketing. They’re doing something far less conventional, and with far less exposed skin. Budke and Kern have been meeting with women from four sororities, Chi O, Zeta, Tri Delt, and Sigma Kappa, in order to gather what you could call intelligence or inside information regarding fraternity men on campus.

They asked women to describe what they like and dislike about current fraternity men on campus and describe their view of the “perfect” fraternity man.

Okay, so that’s not too weird. They’re just trying to figure out what the local ladies are looking for in a guy. Nothing wrong with that, I guess. It doesn’t hurt to recruit guys the chicks are going to dig, right? A little weird, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s probably not a bad idea. Well, it gets worse and it gets weirder.

After they compiled a list, the sorority women were asked to scroll through their phones and recommend unaffiliated men that fit the criteria.

Wait. What? They asked the ladies to look through their phones and provide the names of independents that met their criteria for being the “perfect” fraternity man? Where’s the logic in that?

I mean, I feel that it’s safe to assume that any man who met those criteria would probably already be in a fraternity. Furthermore, how many independents do these girls even know and talk with frequently enough to have their digits? Personally, I like to think that as these girls scrolled through their phones, they thought to themselves, “Hmm. Who’s someone I don’t talk to whose name I can put down so I can get out of this stupid meeting?” I feel like that’s a pretty realistic representation of went down.

Seriously, is it just me or does it seem like this plan is essentially going to bring out the weirdest possible candidates? Yeah, it’s obviously not designed to do that, nor is it the intent of the two expansion coordinators, but that’s probably going to be the overall outcome.

In all, and I hate to break it to those two nerds sent down from headquarters, I don’t think that this is a good recruitment strategy. In my experience, large parties with superfluous amounts of alcohol and scantily clad women usually bring out good potentials, but hey, what do I know?

[via The Daily Pennsylvanian]

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