Auburn's Interfraternity Council is taking steps to make all recruitment events held by Auburn's fraternities completely alcohol-free.
An excerpt from IFC's new dry recruitment awareness plan reads, "Educating Auburn's fraternity men on dry recruitment, implementing attainable dry recruitment guidelines and acting as a constant resource for all fraternities are the primary recruitment goals of the IFC for the year 2011."
Johnny Blankenship, junior in finance and president of IFC, said the policy of dry recruitment has been overlooked nationwide for years.
"Auburn is unique in that we have summer rush," Blankenship said. "At formal rush, once the semester has started, there is never any alcohol, and we have never had a problem with that. It's the rush events held in the summertime that this policy needs to be for."
Several fraternities host weekends at a lake or trips to sporting events during the summer to jump-start their recruitment.
"Summer recruitment gives fraternities an opportunity to begin filling their fall pledge classes while things are somewhat slow and quiet in Auburn," Blankenship said.
The Office of Greek Life's strategy to address alcohol in fraternity recruitment says, "This policy strictly forbids the presence and/or use of alcohol during recruitment events. The use of alcohol in fraternity recruitment is an issue that continues to persist within the Auburn University Greek community."
Blankenship said filling a pledge class would be more difficult if fraternities weren't able to recruit during the summer.
"The goal of IFC is to assure the safety of both brothers and rushees while summer rush takes place," Blankenship said.
Bo Mantooth, assistant director of Greek Life, said enforcement of the rules is going to be challenging.
"If everyone followed the rules all the time, no one would go over 55 on the highway," Mantooth said, "but if you speed, you're going to get a ticket."
Mantooth said enforcement of this policy has been a problem at SEC schools for years.
"Not having dry recruitment is not a huge shock because of the Southern culture," he said. "But this is not a new policy."
Mantooth said the policy of dry recruitment has been in place at Auburn since 1987.
"This is just an IFC initiative that gives new guidelines for educating the fraternity community how to recruit without alcohol," Mantooth said.
Blankenship said IFC will be educating fraternity leaders about the liabilities and dangers of serving alcohol to underage students.
"I don't think some of these fraternity members fully understand that they may be held personally liable for this," Blankenship said. "There could be legal consequences, chapter suspension and pressure from their national chapters. I'm just going to be doing my job this summer--I'm going to be enforcing what the IFC constitution says I should be enforcing."
Education, enforcement and guidance will be the integral areas of focus for the initiative, according to the proposed plan.
Mantooth said he is impressed with the members of IFC for starting this initiative.
"Four years ago, if they had brought this up, they would've been laughed at," Mantooth said.
This will not be a quick change throughout all of Auburn's chapters, he added.
"It's not like ripping off a Band-Aid," Mantooth said. "It's going to take some time, but it's positive change, and that's all we're trying to do."
Blankenship said the Office of Greek Life will host a panel April 21 about the dangers of recruiting with alcohol, at which six members of each fraternity chapter are to attend.
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