Strategies to Using the Incoming First-Year Student List

As you may know, each spring, Fraternity and Sorority Affairs is one of the very few departments on the entire campus to enjoy the privilege of receiving a list of names of all incoming male first-year students. Our office gets this list and has been directed to share the contents with you in the following manner in order to assist each of you in accomplishing your recruitment goals.

You may come to our office and COPY BY HAND names and addresses of incoming students. This sounds like a daunting task and if you do not do it right, I would presume it can be. Here is what I offer as a sample idea as to how to approach the copying of these names:

1. Assign 3-5 individuals who are here for the summer to engage in this process. If you have more guys down here to copy, then great.
   
   YOU ARE WELCOME TO BRING A DISK AND A LAPTOP in order to expedite the process of making labels for mailings.
2. Figure out a schedule where each of them could come in to our office for an hour a day. Here's an example:
   • Mike N: May 22, 23, 29 from 10:00 - 11:00 am
   • John S: May 22, 23, 29 from 1:00 - 2:00 pm
   • Chris B: June 4, 5, 6 from 1:00 - 2:00 pm
   • Matt A: June 4, 5, 6 from 3:00 - 4:00 pm
   • Dan B: June 11, 12, 13 from 1:00 - 2:00 pm
   A good system will permit the men who have been coming into the office to communicate with each other as to how far they got on copying the names (i.e. Mke N. will call John S. and say "I copied to page three. Matt A. will call Dan B. and say "I left off on page 22 and there are six pages left.")
   
   Our office is open from 8:30 am - 5:00 pm unless you make other arrangements with Lisa or Dan.
3. Have each person break up your chapter membership into hometown. For example:
   • Scott: Evanston, IL
   • Chris B: Naperville, IL
   • Mike C: Evansville, IN
   Knowing the hometowns of men in your chapter can be helpful in having them contact the incoming student to personalize recruitment. You can have Scott contact all the incoming students from Evanston.
4. When the guys come into our office to copy names, copy the names of guys who are coming to U of I from the same hometowns as members in your chapter. Hand copy those guys.
   
   The reason why we offer this is that the approach of recruitment is finding a common connection with someone and laying the foundation for becoming friends and possibly fraternity brothers. A cold mailing to several thousand people is much like a cold calling as a telemarketer, plus it is expensive and will yield minimal results. You could have a letter sent to all incoming students from Evanston signed by Scott and talking about how his experience in XYZ Fraternity helped him adapt to the campus after growing up in Evanston.
   
   We ask that you use this process of "cherry picking" to determine the names that you would want to contact. Again, an impersonal flyer to some first-year won't sell your organization, but communication between people from the same hometown or those who went to the same high school can be effective.
5. All mailings to any students should be in good taste, not promote alcohol, not invite them to parties, etc. Sell your organization with the idea that they probably already have seen the movies that present our "social" sides. Let them know something about your organization that they may not already know (service, campus involvement, grades, size of national organization).
   
   If it is determined that the privileges to the list have been abused, Fraternity and Sorority Affairs would be in jeopardy of losing this service. No one wants that. Any chapter determined to have violated the spirit of the list and its use will not be permitted to use it next year.

The use of the list is part of a holistic recruitment practice. I would hope that you are not counting on the list as your sole source of names for recruitment this fall. It is just one of the many points of contact that you have with potential members, but it is not the only one.

A note of reminder, irregardless of the time and place of recruitment events, the use of alcohol to recruit new members is a violation of governing council policies.