Rush Week began on September 5th, 2023 and came to a completion on September 9th, 2023.

The fraternity tabled from Tuesday, September 9th, until Thursday September 11th. Both days starting at 8am and running till 6pm. Throughout this span of 3 days, the brothers spent their  off time between courses towards our recruitment goals of 14 new members by the end of the semester. 

Tuesday, we held a dodgeball tournament on the tennis courts of our campus, having a pretty solid turn-out of potential new brothers. Following on Wednesday, the fraternity hosted a get together at the game rooms of Cal Poly Pomona. The PNB’s were able to shoot some pool and play some air hockey in a more casual environment. Thursday was one of our classic rush week events, alumni night! A total of 13 of our alumni were able to show up, truly setting the example that the brothers keep giving back and even after graduation, you will always be a brother. This acted as an opportunity for the PNB’s to learn some history of the chapter from another generation’s perspective, as well as get an eye into the various positions/jobs that our alumni hold. On Friday, the brothers had an outing to a nearby driving range with the PNB’s, where everyone was able to either learn how to golf (if it was their first time) or show some skill. Finally, to close off the rush week, the brothers sat down and had some voting to occur on who they would like to invite to Saturday’s preference dinner. At the end of the voting, a total of 9 PNB’s were invited to the dinner, hosted at our brother Nick Karle’s home, with food provided by brother Jeremy Major. It ended up being a successful hangout and the PNB’s were able to form tighter bonds both with each other and the brothers of Sigma Phi Epsilon.

In the end we were able to get a total of 5 new brothers. The 5 brothers include: Tito Valero, a third year and a mechanical engineering major, Mark Friedman, a first year with a kinesiology major, Brandon Manzanero, a first year currently undeclared, but thinking about going into the psychology field, Joey Paiva, a first year with a electrical engineering major, and last but not least, Oscar Alegre, a third year working towards a construction engineering major. On top of this, we currently have a total of 5 PNB’s listed for 365, a system exclusive to our fraternity that allows for recruitment throughout the entire year, hopefully allowing us to approach that goal of 14 new brothers for Fall 2023.

There is a lot of planning that goes into the rush week, so now that we have recapped the execution, let’s go over the amount of effort put into just the setup part of rush. The week was planned out by Cal Mu’s recruitment committee, headed by Michael Zermeno, our Vice President of Recruitment, and Andrew Hibbs, our rush chairman. They put in countless hours, along with the rest of the committee organizing the materials and equipment, booking reservations for locations both on and off campus for hosting, reaching out and organizing Alumni night, prepping the rest of the chapter for the recruitment procedure through workshops, and so much more. Overall, a big thanks to them and the recruitment committee for the setup, and thanks to the entire Cal Mu chapter for the execution.

To close up this newsletter, I reached out and got some words directly from our VPR, Michael Zermeno, on how he felt about the rush week experience:

“This fall’s rush week had its ups and downs. The events had a successful turnout and both the potential new brothers and active brothers were engaging greatly. My favorite event was the games room. Every PNB was interacting with one or more of the active members. Another accomplishment is the quality of these new brothers. I see all of them being rising leaders either in Cal Mu or in other campus organizations. However, the number we recruited is remarkably low, but keep in mind this is only the first week of our recruitment. This allows me and the brothers of Cal Mu to engage more and solidify our 365 recruitment process. I am confident that we will get more quality new brothers as this semester continues.”