Explaining the difference between rush and recruitment

By Robert Bember

National Advisor

Backpack and bookbag.

Couch and sofa.

Pop and soda and coke and soft drink.

Same difference. All the paired terms are synonomous with each other. Suggest playing a game of soccer down at the field and your British friend may slap the taste out of your mouth for not calling it a pitch. It’s the same thing. Tomato, tomoto.

But rush and recruitment? Not so much. Some chapters have struggled to understand the difference between rush and recruitment. The tendency is to think that the terms are synonymous with each other. Though they’re similar with common goals on the surface, each element is a different vehicle and step toward the same goal: growing the chapter with a quality pledge class.

Let’s break it down with an analogy. Think of recruitment as an athlete’s offseason while rush is the season. During the offseason, the athlete is lifting weights, running, developing fundamentals and watching film. His goal is to prepare himself to the best of his ability for the upcoming season. Once the season starts, these remain key elements of the athlete’s regimen, but the focus is performing well in games. During recruitment, we are working year-round to set ourselves up for a successful rush.

Like the athlete, you can’t have a good season without a productive, disciplined and focused offseason. There are far too many chapters that use rush as their only intentional time of recruitment. We can’t approach recruitment so casually. Nationally, only about 40 percent of potentials actually accept bids. Waiting to develop a contact list until rush week can be extremely detrimental to your pledge class and fraternity. The fraternities that we recruit against are pursuing men throughout the summer. If we believe in the product we have, if we truly believe that BYX is a place where men’s lives are changed for the better, we must do the same thing.

Recruitment has to be going on constantly. Throughout the semester and summer, we must be intentional with potentials. Set up open events to showcase what BYX has to offer and seek out time with potentials through meals and hang outs outside of formal BYX events. Establishing relationships will keep them coming back.

Recruiting also comes as a by-product of having a strong campus presence. If people on campus are taking note of how well BYX is functioning, more and more men are going to hear about us and be drawn towards what we have to offer. The relationships we build, events we put on and activities we participate in affect our pledge classes.

Rush is the culmination of our efforts in recruitment. All the meals, parties, phone calls, letters and e-mails lead up to this one week in which we try to land as strong of a pledge class as possible. It’s the final push to prove to the potentials that BYX is indeed a product worth commitment and encourage the men to accept a bid to pledge Beta Upsilon Chi. It’s all hands on deck for Rush Week.

Rush and recruitment are not the same thing. They’re both crucial to the health of the chapter, and we need to begin seeing them as two separate and important entities. Without strong recruitment, rush week will fail. Without a strong rush week, recruitment was a waste of time. Work hard in the offseason to reap the benefits in season.

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This chart will help to explain the differences and similarities between rush and recruitment by showing what goes into each.

Recruitment

Rush

-Build contact list. -Prepare for rush. -Year-round effort. -Busiest during the summer. -Meet with contacts on “neutral ground.” -Meals, hangouts and open events. -More casual time together. -Build relationships with potentials with some push toward rushing BYX at a later date. -Image of BYX influenced by campus presence and word of mouth. -Need strong campus presence. -Full Chapter Effort

-Final push to seal the deal with contacts. -Culmination of efforts in recruitment. -7-14 day push to sell BYX. -Typically early in semester. -Bring contacts to BYX events. -Info sessions, open meeting and parties. -Intentional, well-executed events. -Sell BYX to potentials because it is a product worth commitment and it will benefit them. -Potentials see what BYX is through their own eyes. -Display excellence through events. -Full Chapter Effort