The Interfraternity Council approved a proposal to add an extra day to the formal recruitment process, which will give potential members more time to learn about each fraternity next fall, the IFC president said.

IFC president Evan Berlin said members voted on Oct. 22 to add an extra day. IFC members discussed the addition of the extra day for a few weeks before voting on it, he said. The new day will be a part of the fall 2010 recruitment schedule, Berlin said. The formal recruitment process will start on a Saturday and Tuesday will be bid day, he said.

Grant Gossett, IFC vice president of student recruitment, said that this year the IFC added an early signing option that gave potential members an opportunity to sign early without waiting for bid day.

Berlin said that after adding the early signing process, there were about 60 potential members who received a bid but did not sign.

Sigma Phi Epsilon president Bobby Weinberg said the early signing process was well received, but that two days did not give potential members enough time to gain an understanding of each fraternity. Potential members did not get enough information to make their decision properly, he said.

“It will just give the freshmen a better perspective of what makes each fraternity unique,” Weinberg said.

The biggest changes IFC members discussed during the meetings dealt with logistics to make the process more functional, Berlin said.

“We just moved some deadlines around in terms of when fraternities would turn their bid cards in,” he said.

The group also decided to give potential members more time to decide what fraternity they wanted to sign on for the early signing option, Berlin said. Instead of having them sign after the round on the first day, potential members will have an extra night to think about it and will sign on the second day, he said.

“They can go to other chapters, and see what chapters have cut them and which chapters are wanting them back,” Berlin said.

This procedure will increase the number of men who receive bids and accept bids because they will have an extra day to gauge the fraternities’ interest in them, Berlin said.

Further, the IFC wants to give out-of-state students as much of a chance of receiving bids for a fraternity as someone from the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Berlin said.

“Our biggest goal is to increase bids that are given to out-of-state students because they are at a disadvantage,” Berlin said. “They don’t always get to participate in informal summer recruitment.”

Berlin said informal events such as dinners where interested parties meet active fraternity members and trips to beach houses, typical informal summer recruitment activities, are much more accessible to those who live close to the university than those from out of state.