This coming fall, Sacred Heart University’s Fraternity and Sorority Life (FSL) will introduce a new fraternity to campus. This is a response to the increase in registration numbers for fraternities on campus in the past couple of years.
“We looked at the recruitment numbers for the past two years, so fall 2022, we had our highest registration number of students trying to join a fraternity, that was at 244 students, and we were only able to place about 50 % of them,” said Nick Frias, Director of FSL.
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“Fall of 2023, we reached a higher registration pool, by one, so 245 students and we did a little better placing them, we placed 60% of the students who had registered. So that still told us there was a need for the fraternity experience on campus,” said Frias.
The increase in registration led FSL to their decision to introduce a new fraternity to the campus.
“When I brought that data to our Interfraternity Council, the governing body that oversees all of the Sacred Heart fraternities said ‘Okay we understand, we agree with what you are saying. What can we do about it?’ and I said, well we can look into the process of adding another chapter,” said Frias.
The process of adding another chapter to the university has been a long road leading up to where they are today.
“We started with deciding what the fraternities do well on campus, what we don’t do well, and just generally speaking what are strong attributes of a fraternity everywhere. Once we had those three lists identified the committee went off and did their own research of chapters that they felt fit the molds of each of those lists,” said Frias. “That brought us to a semi-final list of 11 chapters, and then from that 11 we gave them more homework, to look more into those chapters and then narrow that list down to everyone’s top three.”
The three remaining chapters after this process are Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Tau Kappa Epsilon, and Sigma Nu.
“Once we finalized those three chapters, I made outreach to their national headquarters, explained our process, and invited them to campus for an exploratory visit this semester,” said Frias.
After a semester of exploring Sacred Heart and having table times with representatives of each of the chapters, the final decision on which fraternity will be coming to campus is upcoming.
“We are hoping to make our final decision by April 5, that is the deadline I have set for us to inform the three finalist chapters who have been chosen. Whichever chapter is chosen we would invite them to join Sacred Heart as early as this fall,” said Frias.
In 2022, the university went through a similar process when introducing Sigma Chi to campus. Although Sigma Chi is the newest fraternity on campus, there has been no struggle to gain members.
“As a founding member of Sigma Chi, I know the future members of whichever fraternity they choose to add will find the process extremely rewarding,” said senior Dominic Petrocci.
“It’s really a referral system, and one-on-one interviews to start and then once they have a core group, depending on the size for whatever the chapter looks for, then they will use those students to recruit in the more traditional sense of what the other chapters are doing,” said Frias.
A new fraternity coming to campus can be beneficial for the university and students who want to have an FSL experience.
“I think adding a new fraternity is great for the university. I think it brings more school spirit and allows people currently not in a fraternity the chance to join one that is completely new,” said junior Isabella Abruzzo, a member of Chi Omega sorority.
