Fraternities and sororities are important institutions that connect young men and women throughout their academic careers, forming close relationships that last into their professional lives. Fall semester is an exciting and busy time for fraternities and sororities as they welcome members back to campus and hold Rush Week events to hand-pick new members. Returning fraternity and sorority students have a big challenge for Fall 2020 — how will they adapt Greek Life and Rush Week for the coronavirus era?

Greek Life Living

Sorority and fraternity houses are often older buildings without a ton of space or modern amenities. Because of this, students will need to work extra hard to guard these houses against the spread of coronavirus as much as possible. MJ Sorority, a firm that provides insurance to chapter houses across the country, offers a guide to maximize house safety. Their suggestions include:

• Creating personal rooms, or erecting physical barriers between beds for shared rooms.
• Investing in an air filtering system to increase the flow of air and helpa neutralize airborne particles.
• Daily cleaning of high-touch surfaces in common household areas like the kitchen and bathroom.
• Arranging beds so that residents' faces are at least six feet apart, and alternating beds head to toe.
• Requiring that residents wear face masks whenever possible.
• Staggering meal and activity times in small groups.

MJ Sorority also suggests that all chapter meetings be held virtually to limit the number of non-residents that enter the house. Close communications with all members, the college and the chapter administrators are a must as well.

Fall Rush

The National Panhellenic Conference and the North American Interfraternity Conference agree that Rush activities this year should be as virtual as possible. Both organizations stress the importance of using social media to generate incoming student interest in Greek life, and using popular apps like TikTok or Instagram to celebrate Rush Week and Bid Day rather than hosting in-person gatherings. Students can let their creativity shine when adapting typical Rush Week activities to virtual spaces. Create fun virtual backgrounds for Zoom calls, organize specific outfit themes for virtual events, or design a custom geotag or sticker for new members to use on Instagram.

Greek life provides the opportunity for students to make close friendships for life, and those friendships will help students adapt to campus life in the COVID-19 era and face whatever challenges may come. Are you a fraternity brother or sorority sister? Let us know what your chapters are doing in response to coronavirus. And there’s still plenty of time to find scholarship and grant money towards your college education. Our free scholarship search includes scholarships for fraternities, sororities and more!

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