Fraternity rush sucks because most fraternities don’t really know what they are doing during rush. Here are the typical signs of a fraternity rush that sucks:
1 – You turn into a used car salesman. You give every freshman you can get your hands on the hard sell, and you end up hating yourself for it.
2 – The never-ending events. Let’s face it, having event after event, night after night is draining. You find yourself thinking that you can’t wait until rush is over.
3 – Having to listen to your girlfriend complain. If you are stuck in never-ending events, then chances are your girlfriend is going to feel neglected and she’ll let you know it.
4 – Being forced to dorm-storm. Walking into a dorm of strangers, and bothering them about rush is brutal. No one likes that or likes to be that guy.
5 – The idiot in your fraternity ordered strippers. This subjects everyone to something they may not like, and does not put the fraternity in the best light to outsiders.
6 – You find yourself telling half-truths to get recruits to join. Rush turns you into the type of guy that will tell a recruit anything they want to hear to get them to join your fraternity, and that makes you feel cheap.
7 – You find yourself breaking university rules, and even though you don’t agree with them, you hate that you put your fraternity in jeopardy.
8 – It impacts your grades. If you are at rush event every night, chances are that you are falling behind on your class work. This is probably not the best way to start the semester.
9 – It’s expensive. Your fraternity will blow thousands on rush. Pause for a second a think of how much rush costs and how many new members you typically get. Your cost/new member is probably sickening.
10 – It is too hard to sell strangers on the concept of being life-long brothers. After all, what sane stranger would want to commit to a lifelong relationship to someone they just met?
If you feel like your fraternity has any of these signs during rush, then your chapter is doing it wrong.
It should be a fun time where you are inviting friends to join your beloved fraternity, not a painful experience of begging random guys off the street to join.
There are a lot of articles on this site on how to properly recruit. Also, I have a 26 pages dedicated to recruitment in my book – The Fraternity Leader. Regardless of where you get the information, you need to figure out how to recruit. The longevity of your fraternity depends on it.
To learn more, check out our most in-depth article on fraternity recruitment: The Complete Guide to Fraternity Recruitment.