Although drinking may be a trend on college campuses, said Megan Hechler, a junior English education major and Sigma Kappa member, some NIU greeks agree pushing back recruitment will not solve the issue.

The North-American Interfraternity Conference criticized a University of Colorado plan to push back recruitment to the second semester of freshman year following the alcohol-related death of a pledge.

To his knowledge, no Greek member at NIU has ever died from alcohol, said Chris Juhl, activities advisor for Greek affairs.

The NIC said it is unconstitutional to defer recruitment because potential members should be able to join whenever they want, Juhl said. The NIC also said deferring recruitment doesn’t address potential issues on campus dealing with drinking.

“Colorado is catching some flack that they’re being reactionary,” Juhl said.

Stephanie Moy, a junior history and anthropology double major and Alpha Phi member, said universities should address an issue such as drinking personally.

“Pushing recruitment back wouldn’t prevent it from happening again,” Moy said.

It has been proven that freshmen who join Greek chapters their first semester perform lower than students who wait until the next semester, Juhl said. In theory, this method would work well on NIU’s campus, but the university doesn’t have problems with the way recruitment is currently run.

Hechler said deferring recruitment could be a good decision because it would allow freshmen to become acclimated to the college experience before joining a chapter.

However, deferring recruitment could be problematic in the sense of “dirty rushing,” the act of trying to promote certain chapters more than others to potential members, Hechler said.

“If you have a whole semester to hear those things, it might make it worse than if you only had a few weeks,” she said.

Hechler also said Greek chapters have recruitment all year-round for a reason.

“We don’t want to not be able to extend a bid to someone who would be an asset to a chapter,” she said.