By Nick Vasquez, Sept. 7, 2021
As the campus inches toward normalcy, Cal Poly Pomona’s fraternities and sororities will be rushing to recruit students in September through a hybrid model in which bid day and tabling will be in person, while other recruiting activities will be held through Zoom.
Sorority recruitment will be held from Sept. 10 to Sept. 13, and fraternity recruitment will be held from Sept. 13 through Sept. 21. Bid day for sororities and fraternities will be on Monday, Sept. 13 and Tuesday, Sept. 21, respectively. Tabling will be held outside of the BSC Monday through Thursday in cooperation with the campus’ health and safety protocols and safer return policies.
Office of Student Life and Cultural Centers Interim Associate Director La ‘Keisha Beard made it clear the office’s primary focus is “making sure that students are safe.”
Normally, recruitment week is the second week of the semester, but due to obstacles brought on by COVID-19, the process has been pushed back to ensure the safety of the students.
“We have been tasked with coming up with effective solutions in order to combat the things we’ve seen with COVID-19,” said Interim Coordinator of Fraternity & Sorority Life Brandon Palmore. “And the priority is to make sure our students are able to maintain a degree of safety with making sure that contact tracing orders are in place in order to abide by university guidelines and still able to give them the experience they are looking for in regard to building social relationships with the people that are recruiting them and their organizations.”
All in-person events will be held outside with mask and social distancing mandates. There will also be masks provided if needed, along with disinfectant wipes, hand sanitizer and temperature checks upon arrival. All in-person events will be held on campus.
The hybrid recruitment format means that Monday and Wednesday will be reserved for in-person events while Tuesday and Thursday events will be held through Zoom.
Evan Frisch, Interfraternity Council president, discussed the challenges to planning recruitment while contending with the pandemic.
“The planning, just thinking about meeting the LA County and the school guidelines, and thinking about what is ethical, reasonable, feasible,” said Frisch, describing his considerations when planning events. “As much as we would like to do stuff it may not be allowed. So just making sure we’re following as many guidelines and regulations as we can to make sure (our plan) gets approved as soon as possible.”
After 18 months of virtual instruction, Frisch discussed what he was most excited about with the return to in-person recruiting.
“Making sure we get quality time in person — whether it be five minutes or 30 minutes to chat with these guys and making sure we answer any questions they have and get to know them and making sure we make the right choices,” said Frisch.
Panhellenic President Lauren Ara was unavailable for comment for this story.
Feature image courtesy of Nathan Dang
Update: This article was edited on Sept. 7 to include the most updated dates for fraternity recruitment.