With new efforts by the Interfraternity Council, acting as a support system for fraternities, the formal recruitment week was a success Jamie Manuel, president of IFC, said.
"Our new recruitment procedures have improved the numbers from last fall through the formal recruitment week this year than in prior years," Manuel said. "I give credit to the chairman for the numbers being up."
The IFC wanted to give students an opportunity to feel comfortable about their decisions on which houses they might want to join, so it held an open house where men interested in joining a fraternity could meet all the houses and ask questions about greek life. Last year, the process was more informal and interested men would just visit the houses when they wanted during recruitment week.
Marino Solorio, the recruitment chairman for the IFC, did a fabulous job redefining what recruitment is and providing support for fraternities, Manuel said.
When the changes to formal recruitment were first discussed, fraternity members were hesitant about how the process would turn out, Solorio said.
"At first, some members in the fraternities wanted to keep the process like before and not have it be formal like the sororities had with their recruitment," Solorio said. "Now, members have been giving me positive feedback and the fraternities have told me more people have seemed interested in joining a house."
The increased public relations helped increase the number of people who seemed interested in joining fraternities, Solorio said.
"Last year the IFC didn't promote the events as much, but we wanted to make it a bigger deal this year and it has caused a bigger interest in the greeks," he said.
Going greek is not something that interests every student. Freshman art major Adam Huston said he did not want to rush because joining a fraternity did not seem like something he was interested in.
Unlike Huston, however, Cory Ray Ramos, a freshman who is rushing, wanted to join a fraternity because he lived in a female dominated family and wanted to have positive male role models.
"Everyone tells me not to go greek because they only see the stereotypical side, like the drinking and partying and the stuff they see in movies, which is all they have to compare to greek life and that is not how I see it," Ramos said. "I see it as the greeks are the leaders on campus."
Ball State's greek organizations only include about 7 percent of the men on campus, while Purdue and Indiana University's Web sites claim the schools have one of the oldest and largest greek organizations. About 18 percent of Purdue's campus is greek and about 7 percent of Indiana's campus is greek.
The official numbers on how many new students Ball State University fraternities recruited will not be known until next week.
Kellie Conrad contributed to this story.
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