Hello nighthawks my name is Aubrey Frazier and I have the pleasure of serving as the Director of Fraternity and Sorority story life at the University of North Georgia. UNG is a special community for and sororities while we have a very large community in the Dahlonega campus, we have also been expanding fraternities and sororities to our Gainesville campus. That way any student at the University of North Georgia has an opportunity to join a fraternity or sorority regardless of what campus you're on. We do practice what is known as deferred recruitment, meaning that first-year students are not eligible to join a fraternity or sorority until the second semester. So if you come in with dual enrollment credits we still need you to complete a full semester on a college campus at the University of North Georgia before you're able to join. If you transfer in from another institution, and you have completed a full semester of college coursework, then you are able to join a fraternity or sorority in the fall semester. Because we pride ourselves on academics, however we do want to make sure that you have achieved at least a 2.5 GPA before joining a fraternity sorority. So make sure that you focus on your academics in the fall so that you are able to join a fraternity or sorority in the spring semester. Fraternity recruitment happens at the beginning of each semester and it takes about two weeks to go through, and through that time you're going to have a chance to meet and greet all the different fraternities and find which one might be your home. First semester freshmen do have to wait till deferred recruitment, but we do allow you to go through fall recruitment to meet and greet all the different fraternities so you can start to get to know them and they can start to get to know you. With COVID-19, we might be doing that a little bit differently this semester but you're still going to get that same opportunity to meet everyone get to know them let them get to know you and find where you really belong. Regardless of whether you are interested in joining fraternity or not, I highly suggest that you go through the process. It's a time that you can get to know everybody and decide whether it's something that might be right for you. If you're interested in joining a sorority there are a few ways for you to do so. For our upperclassmen, you’re eligible to join a sorority starting in the fall semester and through a process that we call informal recruitment. Not all of our sororities recruit during informal recruitment, but you'll know which ones are during the first week of school. In order to get involved they'll host different individual events around campus. If you're a freshman, we suggest that you get to know different organizations on campus during the fall semester. If you're eligible to go through sorority recruitment, the process is usually a five-day period where you get to meet all of our sororities on campus and find out which sorority will be the best fit for you. For more information about panhellenic sorority recruitment, you can always check out our panhellenic sorority recruitment info sessions that we will host in the fall semester. In regard to how you join some of our fraternities and sororities, we have gender inclusive fraternal organizations that are not currently represented by the governing group such as IFC and Panhellenic. These groups include our culturally based organizations, our professional fraternities and sororities, and our service sorority. For those organizations, they will host individual recruitment events throughout the fall semester and the spring semester depending on when they're taking new members. Obviously for our gender inclusive fraternal organizations, they also cannot take first semester freshman in the fall however they will recruit upperclassmen in the fall, so definitely pay attention to their websites and their social media to get more information on their events throughout the fall and the spring semester. When joining a fraternity or sorority, we know that the financial aspect is something that you definitely want to think about when considering going through the recruitment process. Our fraternities and sororities at the University of North Georgia are relatively low cost because we don't have fraternity and sorority houses that we have to pay for to sustain. So on average a chapter's dues are going to range from about $300 on the lower fraternity side to about $600 on the higher sorority side each semester. Last but not least be willing to push yourself a little bit outside of your comfort zone so you can truly explore all that UNG has to offer. You can find your home at the University of North Georgia.