In the weeks prior to Wildcat Welcome, students from the Muslim-cultural Students Association and Hillel were active on Facebook and the Northwestern directory, searching for students who might be interested in joining their groups. The main criterion they were using: names.
“I basically was a huge stalker,” said Aatifa Shareef, McSA’s secretary. “I tried to find all the Muslim names that I could.”
The Weinberg sophomore said she e-mailed a schedule of events to 50 incoming students over the summer. Forty showed interest in getting involved.
Nathan Abelman, president of First Year Students at Hillel, said he used similar tactics to contact about 120 incoming students over the Internet. Since Wildcat Welcome, 80 have signed up for a listserv.
“What we look for are Jewish names,” the Weinberg sophomore said. “Some people on their pages listed (Judaism) under ‘Religion.'”
Once the students arrive on campus, groups begin recruiting freshmen face-to-face.
Even after a summer news cycle dominated by mosque construction and Quran burnings and just weeks removed from the Westboro Baptist Church’s anti-Jewish protest outside of Northwestern’s Hillel building, it was business as usual for religious groups recruiting new students.
Cassy Byrne, president of Secular Humanists for Inquiry and Freethought, said while she disagreed with some of the tactics, she recognized the right of student groups to recruit as many freshmen as possible.
“As a non-believer, I don’t particularly like a Bible being pushed in my face, but…you have to accept they have that right,” the Weinberg junior said. “It’s within their jurisdiction to do that.”
Byrne said half of the 20 students who attended SHIFT’s first meeting were freshmen.
Some student groups said their publicity efforts were about cushioning new students’ transition to NU.
“It’s a lot more of…making people aware that there is this welcoming and loving community plugged in, more so than recruiting,” said David Young, a member of Reformed University Fellowship’s outreach committee. “A lot of these are just directed at getting freshmen connected to current students and letting them know that they’re welcome.”
RUF currently has about 60 active students. One-third are freshmen, the Bienen sophomore said, thanks to an increase in the volume of “informal activities” the group has hosted thus far this year.
Not everyone was bothered by the often forward recruiting techniques. Students from Campus Crusade for Christ knocked on Weinberg freshman Sophia Park’s door in Elder Hall to see if she was interested in a fellowship with the group. The visit was a follow-up for Park, who filled out an address card for CRU earlier in the week.
“I was fine with (them knocking). I honestly thought it was cool that they were taking the time out because I’m sure they’re really busy,”she said. “It wasn’t weird at all. It might be for other people.”
A laid-back strategy proved successful for some, including NU’s Meor chapter, which relies heavily on word-of-mouth. Since its creation five years ago, the Jewish student group has sent out two newsletters and only recently created a listserv in January. The group currently has around 250 active members.
“We’re not very aggressive. Obviously we don’t stand at the corners of streets and ask people if they’re Jewish or not,” said Rabbi Yehuda Polstein, associate director of Meor. “It’s not part of our agenda (because) we’re not selling anything.”
