By this, I do not mean “kill” in the sense that we should do a really good job! I mean that you should never ever want to hear, use, or see that word again. “Rush” is a terrible term that describes something in such a way that it completely bastardizes the true purpose of fraternity recruitment.

Every time the word “rush” comes out of your mouth, you are hurting your chances to recruit the men you want to join your chapter. Okay? Okay. Let’s get into it. Here are three reasons why this is a terrible, terrible thing that you should hate:

Connotation

The term “rush” carries with it a vestige of the past. A time when fraternity men hazed the gonads of its new members and when if there wasn’t at least one stripper at recruitment, you weren’t doing it right. Obviously, this is not what we stood for then and is not what we stand for now -- a few individuals (who loudly shouted that one should “rush” the frat) have misappropriated the fraternity for purposes that are in complete contradiction to our values. Every time you say rush, somewhere deep in the subconscious the Animal House-style wheels begin turning and it reacts to the psychological signifiers related to it. Say it often, and displacement begins to  subconsciously shift your mental conception from what you want to what I described above.

Limitation

Another fun connotation of the word “rush” is that it compartmentalizes the time period during which recruitment occurs. Is it Rush Week, Rush Month, or whatever? Your university might give you a set duration during which recruitment “can” occur. Every time you say “rush” you bring to mind this limitation. Well, if rush is only a week, why should anybody bother talking to somebody after that week is done? Hopefully you have realized how foolish my previous sentence was. By switching your terminology to “recruitment” you escape the notion that the time during which you get to know people should have any limitation placed on it. Even if you don’t need new members (and trust me, you’ll be wanting to get some new members) you can still have friends. Remember what those are? Or have you been too focused on getting to your rush events? There is no such thing as “rush,” it is a socionormative concept imposed on us by past fraternity members and by university administration. Just because you can’t issue a bid doesn’t mean that you can’t line up a potential new member for the purpose of establishing a genuine relationship.

Habituation

By switching from saying “rush” to saying “recruitment” you are switching from an event-based model of communicating your strategy to an egocentric model. What I mean by this, is that you are no longer using a word which means “we have a certain number of events that we get people to -- events which dominate our recruitment” to one that means “I am going to be as good a person as I possibly can be and will actually get to know the people I am meeting -- all day, every day.” This is the way recruitment should actually work: focus on upholding the values of the fraternity, learn to communicate those values, and leverage the relationships you develop based on that. By focusing on continuously recruiting, the emphasis shifts to constantly striving to live up to the kind of man our founders envisioned. You habituate the values of the fraternity and moves away from parties, women, and alcohol as mechanisms for recruitment.

If this is not enough to convince you, then please consider the following: if you recruit using primarily the men in your fraternity and their ability to genuinely make people want to join rather than buying as much food, booze, etc. to ensure that they have a fun time you will save a whole bunch of money. So guys, for real. For real. Cut it out.

While working on a plan for how our chapters and colonies could have a more well-rounded public relations plan, I discovered a need to not only address our relationships with other chapters on campus, fraternity and sorority advisors, and alumni members, but also our parents and families back at home. Being a first generation college student, it was uplifting to have Sigma Pi providing not only personal relationships, but also older members who could play an advisory role in my college experience. The chapter became my stand-in family. For a while, my parents will honestly say that they did not understand why so much of my time, money, and emotion were being put into the fraternity. It wasn't until my chapter provided them with programming and communication that they recognized the value of my fraternity experience.

It is for this reason that I would like my undergraduate brothers to think about the benefit of making parents and family members part of your public relations programming. My story is one in which parent programming brought my two families together and justified my reasoning for wanting to be part of Sigma Pi to them. This is just one perk of what to expect when you reach out to families. You might also expect more involvement from family members (assistance with housing improvements, programming, and service initiatives) or even financial contributions (assistance with dues, donations to a scholarship/housing funds, philanthropy donations). I would challenge you, however, to think beyond your dad swinging a hammer or reaching for a checkbook. How might being involved in the chapter benefit your family? How might it benefit your recruitment?

Below is the story of a good friend of mine, Jennifer Mullins. Jen is a 2012 graduate and an Educational Consultant at Alpha Sigma Tau Sorority.

In the winter semester of 2008, Jen Mullins was a freshman at Grand Valley State University. She joined the Gamma-Xi chapter of Alpha Sigma Tau during her second semester of college without knowing about the lifelong journey that was in store for her. She fell in love with the sorority because of a connection she felt with some of her older peers in the chapter and the work they had been known to do with Habitat for Humanity.

That semester, as a new member, Jen had signed herself up to participate in the campus' annual Relay for Life event to support The American Cancer Society. She says, "I relay every year for my mother who died of breast cancer while I was still in elementary school. I invited my sorority sisters to attend because I knew that nearly everyone's family is affected by cancer and that they could all relate to Relay's cause."

It was for this reason that the sorority extended that same invitation to their member's families to attend and participate alongside Alpha Sigma Tau's Relay for Life team. The sorority's team consisted of parents, grandparents, cousins, and siblings. Jen's two sisters, who were still in high school at the time, attended and had witnessed the sorority living out the values that Jen had claimed they did. The following Sunday, the sorority heard a motion to change the chapter's local philanthropy to American Cancer Society because of the effects cancer had on so many of its members. A week later, the vote passed, and to this day Jen carries the honor of knowing that her sorority cared about what had happened to her family and to the families of AST's membership.

The story doesn't end there. In the fall of 2009, Jen's sister, Jaclyn, enrolled at GVSU. Her interactions with the women of Alpha Sigma Tau at Relay for Life led her to believe in the experience a sorority could provide. She went through the formal Panhellenic recruitment process and joined Jen at AST. Jen takes no personal credit in her decision but rather claims, "Jaclyn saw us actively doing what we say we do."

She also mentions some of the other family programming that they do in the chapter including their annual Women's Weekend, "We have an open ceremony that we do with the important women in our lives. It's great because Greek life has some negative connotations around our rituals and this helps rid our family members of that ambiguity. Afterwards we go shopping, have deserts at the house, and showcase everything else the sorority does."

This October that same programming benefitted Jen's chapter again when Joy Mullins, the third and final Mullins sister, accepted a bid to Alpha Sigma Tau. "Right now I'm home for the holidays and last night Joy had her lavaliere on at dinner. It was so cool to see it. She now knows the secret things I did that I couldn't tell her otherwise. We live by the same creed, but by our own individual choice."

While Jen notes that family outreach has assisted her chapter with recruitment she says, "The most beneficial thing of it is knowing that my little sisters are with good people even though I have graduated. They are learning valuable life lessons outside of class. They don't have to find that on their own; they can get it with the women in my sorority."

What would Jen recommend for a chapter considering family programming? "It's the basics. We say we are a brotherhood or sisterhood. A lot of people need connections and bonds because they don't have that relationship in their family. But if they do have those people in their lives, we should invite them into our bond that we have created."

Do not be alarmed by the radical nature of what you're about to read. After all my visits to chapters, after all I've seen, after all the hours I have spent learning from my brothers and from others in the fraternity and sorority community, I have arrived at a point of singular conviction:

It is time to find a new way to educate the people we bring into fraternities.

The time for small, quantitative changes is passed. At most every chapter I visit, I see the quiet desperation in the eyes of the one man in the chapter who has realized how fundamental our problems are, but who has no idea how to change it. I say to him now, take heart and be strong. I have thought long and hard on the answer because, as a member of Sigma Pi's Executive Office, and as a man, I cannot allow us to continue down the same road we are currently traveling.

So change lanes with me and let's take the exit toward some new highway. Dynamic recruitment works. Accept this fact. You can read about it elsewhere if you're curious about what the specifics of dynamic recruitment are. The question arises, when I go to chapters, of how the men are supposed to bring the people they recruit into the fraternity using the model of member education they currently have; i.e. the one pledge class per semester model. The answer is: you can't adequately do dynamic recruitment unless you break out of this model.

We need a delineated recruitment structure. The lessons are not designed to be comprehensive, they do not build upon each other in most of our new member manuals -- so why should we design our education process as if they are? We can easily design our education so that new members can be brought in (at least) three different times a semester. Here is an example of what this could look like:

In this way, when new members are brought in, what they are learning overlaps with the previous new member class so that teamwork and discussion-based learning can still occur. For a given 15 week semester, this new member education process consumes an entire 14 weeks. There may be the need to redefine how long a single education period lasts, but the concept is a sound one.

I am of the belief that this kind of new member education structure would change the way each chapter recruits by providing a fundamental structure necessary to switch to dynamic recruitment. Moreover, it will diminish the possibility for hazing related incidents because it deconstructs the dichotomy between new member and active member. There is not as clear cut a difference between the two -- which is the goal. Instead they form a spectrum of membership in which the line between initiated and uninitiated is blurred.

And let's talk about that for a minute. Across the country, every year, men are demeaned and told they have to earn our letters by doing whatever the active brothers tell them. It is time to stop now. We are not organizations, moreover, this is not a world in which action should be followed blindly. This is not a world in which a man should be broken before he is built back up. Each person has worth, it is not granted to them by any number of tasks accomplished or hits from a paddle. It is time to wake up and start acting accordingly as fraternity men. Respect can be earned and value can be proven by the member taking action and demonstrating the values they hold. Give them the chance to grow and accomplish, and you will see if they are worthy of your organization. What you need to ask yourself is are you worthy of them. The days of hazing are over now. If you feel uncomfortable about that last sentence, please ask yourself if you are the one standing in the way of Progress.

Finally -- most importantly -- I hope that you join me in rejecting the idea of "new" member education. What we should have is simply "member education." The lessons of this fraternity do not stop after an eight week program. Our ritual is a life-oath and if you allow your knowledge and understanding of it to stagnate and stop in its growth, then you are failing yourself and failing your fraternity. Please embrace the fact that there is nothing as important as the need to strive to make real the fraternity's ideals every day. This is the most central lesson of this fraternity movement -- and to being a man. We can't be perfect, but we can try. So let's try to make this experience more perfect now. Let's make a game changing play and try something new.

All too often I see chapters of Sigma Pi suffer from having housing that is "off the grid." What I mean is they are either off campus or so far away in some distant corner of campus that no one knows where the house is. I then get told that the house holds the chapter back during recruitment because potential new members either can't find the house is or they just don't want to make the hike out to recruitment events. Fraternity housing comes in all forms and each comes with its own challenge during recruitment. The chapter may have a floor in a dorm building, several apartments next to each other, or not have a house at all.

I come from a chapter whose house is a block of six townhouses that is a twenty minute walk from campus and it can be an expedition when you are battling ice and snow along the way. I understand the frustration. We rarely have the ideal housing situations, however, and if our chapters never adapted to their circumstances, our fraternity wouldn't have succeeded in adding members and we wouldn't exist.

In a series called 31 Days to Better Fraternity Recruitment, Patrick Daley says, "getting guys to the house is 95% of the battle." While I agree that the best recruitment event is one that people actually attend (both brothers AND potential new members), I disagree that a recruitment event requires a house. If recruiting at your house is difficult, do it somewhere else!

It's a simple business model really. Hundreds of thousands of the fast food franchises in America are located on freeway exits. Why? Because no one is going to venture into unfamiliar territory to get a cheap bite to eat. They want to get what they came for, maybe fill up their gas tank or use the restroom, and get back on the most direct route to their location. Let me assure you, that college students are the same way. If I planned my freshman courses according to how far I had to walk from my dorm, I am definitely not going out of my way for hot wings and video games.

We call it dynamic recruitment because we have to change the dynamic of our relationship with potential new members from how we have been doing it for years. We have to stop expecting potential new members to come to us; rather, we have to meet them where they are. Most college students typically converge upon college campuses. They either live there or they go there for class or food. How convenient if all your members do is make excuses about your house (or lack thereof) anyway!

Imagine this, if you will. Hundreds of non-Greek men are walking between classes or their dorms and seeing Sigma Pi having an absolute blast. They are on an empty intramural field or just some sort of quad bowling with frozen turkeys and empty soda bottles. Everyone stops to watch or asks to play, sorority women are stopping to crack jokes, and most importantly everyone sees Sigma Pi enjoying a great time with their brothers. The whole event cost $20 and no one had to coordinate advertising or rides to the house.

Sound a little too easy? Our colony at Keene State College nearly doubled their membership this semester in large part by meeting free agents at intramural sport matches. Our Xi Chapter at the University of Iowa lost their house a year ago and came back this school year with 27 new men. Be creative, yet avoid overthinking recruitment. The whole process is more about the relationship that transpires when the potential new men are exposed to the chapter and the chapter whole heartedly gets to know the next generation of their brothers.