Recruitment is a completely foreign concept for most if not all high school senior girls. It is something no one can fully prepare themselves for. In the same way, recruitment is an experience unlike any other that we will ever go through again after our four years of college. No matter how many moms, sisters, aunts, or grandmothers try to prepare you for it, you will never know what exactly to expect.The concept of walking into houses to be ambushed by a room full of strangers who know how many years you played field hockey and the name of your ex-boyfriend, is something no one can wrap their brain around. It’s unnatural. But in many ways it can determine your friends, your roommates, and your college experience as a whole. So what can make this experience even more abnormal? Planning recruitment for the fall.Who’s bright idea was it to force waves of freshmen girls into a circuit of fake conversations which results in the fate of their college career? The whole point of creating sororities and the recruiting process was to enable women to find their most compatible friends that are joined with the “bond of sisterhood.” Fall recruitment inhibits this purpose, in my opinion.

Disclaimer: I love my sorority and the people comprised in it. If I went through the recruitment process again, I would hope to be so lucky as to be a Tri Delt again. But that’s not to say that this is the case for everyone.
I’ve heard countless heartbreaking stories about girls who were mislead by sorority members into thinking they were someone they are not, or girls who were treated like royalty in recruitment and were ignored once they were initiated. These stories defeat the entire purpose of recruitment facilitating friendships on college campuses.
This is why “dirty rushing” and the long list of illegal recruitment processes exist. Some sororities can be so eager to hand pick their new pledge class that they don’t realize—or sometimes do—that they are taking away the potential happiness of these girls. 
My proposed solution is simple: TCU needs to employ spring recruitment. Sure, “dirty rushing” still exists in the spring and sometimes even more so than in the fall, but at least we give the girls a chance to get to know their peers before they make their decision.
An obvious refutation would be that maybe some girls will only hang out with one or two others and won’t see the full scope of the freshman class. But in that case, the responsibility is on them to seek out as many different friends as possible in their first semester. If they don’t, then that’s their loss. But with fall recruitment, the responsibility is on the current sorority members to accurately represent who they are and not lie, cheat, confuse, or mislead the freshman girls. 
As TCU braces itself for a new Greek infrastructure, TCU Panhellenic should also consider revamping its recruitment procedures for the sake of the girls. Some traditions are meant to be left in the past and for TCU this should be one of them.