Junior political science major Kassandra Fernandez dreaded last Saturday morning, the final day of Greek Recruitment Week.

“I hate making decisions,” Fernandez said.

Fernandez came to Greek recruitment after hearing about how much fun it was from friends, and after her own fun experience bonding with the other young women during the week, she didn’t want the process to come to an end.

Sophomore political science major Andrew Kelly, however, couldn’t wait to make his final decision.

“I have to say that my favorite part was the part where you get your bids and you actually decide,” Kelly said.

Kelly wasn’t thrilled about the event being limited to campus but overall he enjoyed the experience.

“It was really fun,” Kelly said. “Everything was structured. They let us know about their organizations so we got information as well as had a great time. We just sort of hung out and played card games and stuff like that.”

The Greek recruitment process, which ran from Sept. 6 to Sept. 10, was redesigned this fall in order to get the six different Greek organizations on campus working together on the common goal of recruitment, said David Monge, coordinator of student organizations and Greek life. He pitched the new model after he saw the success of the model on different campuses across the country.

“I think it’s really nice to see them working together as a community towards a common goal,” Monge said. “Now they’re not individually recruiting for their own organizations.”

Monge believes that bringing all the organizations together resulted in a better turn out compared to having the groups recruit individually.

“This is the first year we’ve had a more structured recruitment period,” Monge said. “I think that we have a larger number of participates than any group would have gotten individually.”

He has been working to expand the Greek life presence on campus since the spring of 2016; this included inviting a new fraternity, Delta Sigma Phi.

“We were invited by David Monge to bring a new leadership organization to campus specifically for men,” Delta Sigma Phi national headquarters representative Cody Nagal said, “and also to enhance the Greek life system.”

Nagal and fellow Delta Sigma Phi representative Arthur White hope to develop a fraternity with a strong identity and can help contribute to make Wesleyan a better place.

“We would like to have around 30 to 35 members,” White said, “but it’s more about the quality of men and bringing together the best group that we can. That’s our goal – to make a difference here in a good way.”

Nagal and White began recruiting for Delta Sigma Phi on Sept. 11, one day after Greek Recruitment Week ended, but they plan for the developing fraternity to join in Greek recruitment week next fall.

“We’d love for DSP to take part in Greek Recruitment Week next whenever it happens again,” Nagal said. “We just like to let Greek systems run their recruitment in any school we go to first and, afterwards, we can come in and run our process, because our process takes usually about a month and a half to start a new group compared to recruiting for an existing group.”

Despite the late start for DSP, Monge believes Greek Recruitment Week was successful overall, and would like to start even earlier next year.

“Overall it was our first time doing a more structured program and so I think it went pretty well,” Monge said. “I think that certainly we could start earlier next year so that way the timing is within the first three weeks.

“At the very beginning of the year you’re getting your syllabus, your buying books, sort of getting settled into your classes but you don’t have a lot of homework assignments or like things going on of that nature so there’s still space for [Greek life].”

The largest sororities on campus are Lambda Tau Zeta and Alpha Xi Delta, while the largest fraternity is Alpha Kappa Order. Monge believes this is caused by several factors.

“There’s a lot of factors that come into play. I think that recruitment is a large piece of it,” Monge said. “Let’s say maybe they just worked a little bit harder to get out there and sell themselves to people. I think that what kind of resources they offer to members. You know like joins like. So maybe they’re just people that identify with some of the members more than members of the other organizations.”

Due to these factors, Monge is glad to see all the organizations working together on recruitment.

“I think it had a positive impact because they got to work together as a community to accomplish a goal and I think anytime you do that it’s good,” Monge said.

Lambda Theta Alpha recruited the most students, including Fernandez.  

“I chose LTA because we just clicked automatically and I can see myself being lifelong friends with them,” Fernandez said. “It was, like, the conversations we had. It was, like, ‘Oh, I do that too!’”

Kelly choose Kappa Alpha Order after initially looking at Lambda Kappa Kappa.

“I felt like it was the best choice,” Kelly said. “I got along with everybody the best there between the two that I had to choose between.”

While some groups like Lambda Theta Alpha and Kappa Alpha Order received more new members Monge doesn’t think that says one group is better than the other.

“I don’t want to put a value on it like they did the best,” Monge said. “It really depends on how you define success because yes if we’re speaking purely from a numbers game they got the most number of people as a result of that but I think as long as people found a home and a connection on campus and they’re happy then they get a win. I think everyone’s a winner in that way.”