The Interfraternity Council (IFC) and Panhellenic Council both held their formal recruitments last week.

However, this year, both organizations’ recruitments went through a few changes.

Last semester, IFC established a new rule geared toward freshmen boys.

The rule did not allow freshmen males to attend any registered bus parties or events for the first five weeks of school between Aug. 22 and Sept. 30.

To be eligible for recruitment, boys cannot have more than two alcohol violations in their first semester. IFC’s goal was to decrease the number of AVs to make more boys eligible for rush.

J.D. Mahaffey, a freshmen who rushed, compares the rules from previous years.

“I felt like I did not have the best opportunity in the previous fall semester to get to know all 10 fraternity chapters at SMU. The reason for this being that IFC did not allow “bus parties” to freshmen males the first six weeks of school,” Mahaffey said.

“However, the week was a success and everyone I spoke with is happy in their new houses with their new brothers.”

This also helped to get more guys interested in rush, since the policy required fraternity houses to be more creative.

Many houses held more in-house activities, which increased interaction and exposure to the different fraternity houses and members.

A combination of the new policy along with active advertising and emailing has increased recruitment numbers this year.

This year, IFC has “307 potential new members eligible for and going through recruitment, which is up from 234 males last year,” Brian Rose, IFC president, said.

These numbers have not taken into account the open recruitment numbers, which can range from 15 to 20 more boys. Finals numbers will be released this week.

As opposed to IFC, Panhellenic’s recruitment change took place during rush week itself. This year, recruitment was cut short by two days.

“Shorter recruitment is better because it’s a lot less stress,” Sophomore Chi-Omega member Anna Baxter said. “It’s a lot more fun for us because we get to find out faster who our new pledge class is.”

Last year, all the potential new members (PNMs) visited the eight sorority houses over two days.

This year, Panhellenic combined the days, and PNMs visited all eight houses on one day, known as open house day.

Preference round, which is the final opportunity for PNMs to interact with the chapters before bid night, was moved to the same day as bid day, where a PNM will meet her new sisters.

This year, PNMs started preference round at 8 a.m. and moved onto bid day at 3:45 p.m.

“I like the shorter recruitment better because it’s more exciting,” incoming Alpha Chi Omega President Devin Ryan said. “

We just talked to the PNMs this morning and now they’re running to the house.”

Numbers for Panhellenic Council recruitment have not yet been released.