13 New Members Extend String of Strong Recruitment Years
by Garrett Barnes (’12)
The 2011-12 academic year marked yet another year of successful rush and recruitment here at the Delta Chapter. Between fall and spring rush, 16 new members accepted bids to the ATΩ house. Our events at rush this year were a mixture of old favorites, like our trip to Dominion Gun Range, and also some new ideas that we will surely continue in the future, like our Poker Night.
We attribute our continued success in recruitment to a series of information sessions we like to call “Rush 101” within the Chapter. Prior to the beginning of rush each semester, our senior rush chair gives a lecture on rush strategy and philosophy. With this continued focus on recruitment education, this past year’s result was just the latest in a growing string of double-digit incoming pledge classes.
While we certainly pride ourselves on the number of new members that we recruit from year to year, we especially like to focus on the quality of individuals that we recruit into ATΩ. The biggest indicator of the quality of members we attract is the fact that, year after year, many of the men who pledge our fraternity had no intention of doing so in a general sense. Brian Uosseph (’15) had this to say on joining ATΩ Delta: “I’m the last guy you would see rushing a fraternity, and every other frat house I visited that first weekend showed me how true that was. But when I stopped by the ATΩ house, a quick five minutes became a memorable two hours.”
We seek to recruit not only the cookie-cutter fraternity man, but also gentlemen who didn’t previously see themselves entering the fraternity system. First-Year Michael Nguyen (’15) said “I was pretty on the fence about going Greek – I was still unsure like ten minutes before we were supposed to be at the Chapel – but I’m extremely glad to have pledged and made new lifelong friends in the Brothers of ATΩ Delta.” The recruitment of men like Brian, Michael, and the rest of their pledge brothers is truly the lifeblood of the fraternity, and we plan to continue the incredible growth of our Chapter in the coming years.