It’s been nearly a year since college students were sent home all over the country to be put into lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In light of the unexpectedly long life of this pandemic, many universities, Drury included, decided to allow their students to come back to campus for the 2020-2021 school year. As a result, many aspects of college life had to change in order to properly adapt to the era of COVID. One of those aspects is Greek life. The Greek chapters here at Drury are currently gearing up to take on Spring Recruitment and are doing so with COVID safety measures in mind.

The sororities are tackling Spring Recruitment a little differently than they have in the past. Spring Recruitment started out with the first ever Recruitment 101 event put on by Panhellenic Council. Lindsey Kollmeyer, the Panhellenic Vice President of Recruitment,
said about this new event: “This just allows the girls going through recruitment to meet all of the chapters they’re interested in, get to know some of the active members, and see which chapters they want to continue going to for future recruitment events.”

After Recruitment 101, each chapter held their own different, individual events at the same time. Despite these events being in person, both Panhellenic as a whole and each individual chapter are taking COVID safety seriously. Kollmeyer says, “All necessary
precautions are being taken for COVID. I was honestly super excited that we’re able to host spring recruitment in-person given everything going on and I want to make sure everybody going through knows we’re being safe and doing everything we can!” Madison Chittenden, the Vice President of Recruitment for Pi Beta Phi corroborates this. She says, “Because of COVID we are only allowing 5 other chapter members along with the PNM’s to attend the events. We will also be taking temperatures, sanitizing, practicing social distancing, and staying masked the entire time.”

The fraternities here at Drury also put on in-person events for Spring Recruitment. Each chapter had their own individual events, such as game nights and shrimp broils, but each still did what they could to make sure they were staying safe. “Each fraternity is still going to have in person events registered through school, each of which includes a safety plan approved by the executive committee of the DFC that adheres to Drury’s strict COVID-19 policies,” said Recruitment Chair of the Drury Fraternity Council (DFC), Eli Fearn. As with sorority recruitment, masks, temperature checking, social distancing, and disinfecting of areas and surfaces was expected and enforced during fraternity recruitment events.

No doubt, tackling college in the time of COVID-19 has been hard. But one bright spot in all of the darkness is that some of the typical college things, such as Greek life, can still continue when we all do our part to keep each other safe. If you are interested in getting involved in Greek life, consider contacting Panhellenic Council through their Instagram page @drurypanhellenic, or for fraternity recruitment, you can contact Eli Fearn at efearn@drury.edu.

Article by Sammie Ellis