New students arriving in Pullman will soon have to wait a semester before joining a fraternity or sorority, beginning fall 2027. This proposal is part of a broader initiative out of the Provost’s Office to promote community and a sense of belonging.
The new initiative, which the university is framing as an effort to support retention, seeks to set up first-year students with peer mentors, staff and alumni who can offer social, academic and professional guidance. For their part, Greek life also offers peer guidance and mentoring through the bigs and littles system.
The university will also be implementing stricter guidelines under this initiative for fraternity and sorority recognizition, though these guidelines remain unclear.
The push for deffered recruitment and stricter guidelines comes as Greek Row faces growing scrutiny over incidents related to drugs, alcohol and hazing, including the 2019 death of 19-year-old Sam Martinez.
Martinez died of acute alcohol poisoning following a “big-little” event at the Alpha Tau Omega house where pledges were pressured into consuming alcohol. After his death, Martinez’s blood alcohol content was measured at 0.372%, almost five times the legal limit.
Following Martinez’s death, his parents, Jolayne Houtz and Hector Martinez, filed suit against the university, alleging WSU had a duty of care to protect Martinez but failed to do so. The lawsuit is currently awaiting trial before a Washington jury.
Houtz, Sam Martinez’s mother, supports the initiative, though questions why it took so long.
“My first thought was, ‘why did it take them seven years to implement this change,’” she said.
According to Houtz, had the policy been in place earlier, her son may still be alive.
“If this policy had been in place in 2019, when Sam arrived on campus, he would have had more than six months within this framework to explore other campus opportunities and groups and learn about the history and the track record of Alpha Tau Omega and the other fraternities that WSU hosts,” she said in an interview with The Daily Evergreen. “That could have been life-saving for him.”
Instead of having that valuable time, Houtz said Martinez was recruited just days after graduating high school.
According to Houtz, she met with then President Kirk Schulz three weeks after Martinez’s death.
“One of the very specific reforms that we wanted them to make was to delay fraternity rush and recruitment,” she said. “I am really pleased to see them take this step, but it’s taken them an awfully long time to get here.”
On the issue of retention, Houtz said retention includes not losing students to preventable deaths, including those related to drugs, alcohol and hazing.
WSU already enforces a first-year live-in requirement, which requires first-year undergraduate students under the age of 20 to live in the residence halls during their first year. According to the university, this policy is based on data showing that FLIR improves student well-being, academic achievement and personal growth.
Dan Welter, director of the Center for Fraternity and Sorority Life, said the new initiative seeks to emphasize first-semester pathways focused on belonging, well-being and informed affiliation, among other things, within these first-year residential communities.
“The goal of this work is to strengthen the student experience while supporting healthy, sustainable fraternity and sorority organizations at WSU,” Welter said in an email flagged as 100% AI-generated.
Other universities have already implemented deferred recruitment policies for Greek life. Some of these universities include Baylor, Cornell, Emory, Indiana University, Syracuse and Villanova.
— Lucille Stutesman contributed to this story
