A few years ago (I'm at work so I don't have my binders in front of me to give exact dates), NPC came to IU to try and get them to move away from bed rush. As you can see, it didn't happen.

And yes, the AOII house IS huge.

NPC national offices =/= current chapter members and IU alumnae.

I agree. NPC cannot mandate the change. The NPC organizations aren't going to shut down the chapters that have been at this campus for up to a hundred years. All the groups will have to force a change because one group changing will not fix the problem. The tradition is strongly embedded. At some point it will have to be either forced on them because of a scandal or an agreement by all NPC inter/national groups forcing their chapters to make the change. When the PR gets too bad to handle, you might see a change, but at this point, starting non-housed groups seems to be taking some of the pressure off the situation. Until you can convince the people on the INSIDE that the system is broken, you aren't going to see any changes.

Okay, I think I am mixing up groups, here. I think you initially meant that the IU members/alumnae didn't want to change, even though NPC did. I read it to mean that NPC wanted to, and the University (administration) itself had some kind of problem with it.

I understand a strongly-ingrained culture, and I also keep going back to the housing situation. The same factors that prevent new groups from getting housing also prevent there from being desirable non-Greek housing for upperclassmen. When we visited Indiana my junior year, my VP was like "man, I wish our house was that gorgeous" and I was like "yeah, and you want to still be sleeping in a cold air dorm your senior year?"

So, if somehow someone magically built gorgeous, cheap apartments in a good location, I think that you'd start to have the seniors want to live out, and the housing-centric culture start to change.

Oh I didn't mean it was :) . I just meant in general that lack of housing is not going to prevent Theta Phi Alpha (or any future groups) from being very selective on this campus. The ever-growing number of PNMs combined with the stagnant number of spots available allows for mutual selection between sororities and PNMS to lean heavily in favor of the sororities.

Interesting read over there.

I don't know if I would necessarily call all of these bidless women special snowflakes. To be sure that happens. But when you have that many women go bidless because of a screwy situation, there are bound to be a lot of quality girls missing out simply because of the number game.

I totally agree. If every group would take 5-10 more women than their current bed quota, there could be potentially almost 200 more women given bids.

As we all know, it is rare that any chapter retains 100% of a pledge class for 4 years.

But, since NPC has tried to get this system to make some changes and failed, this will have to come from within their CPC.

Can someone link this infamous blog 'o' whining parents? I can't seem to find it.

Thanks. It's kinda funny that, for every parent complaining, there is an alum defending the system.

Also, comments like this:

"My daughter is in the midst of rush at IU and I received the heartbreaking call this morning that she didn’t receive invites from her favorites."

make me hate parents.

The bolded part leads me to believe that the daughter did in fact receive invites; and somehow I doubt the lovely parent encouraged the daughter to go to the houses for which she still had invites back.

I completely agee with your last part.

How many Chapters don't have house at IU?

The bed rush situation would influence how I counseled my imaginary daughter if she were deciding between IU and some of its nearby peers like Illinois and Miami. These are schools where going Greek is a big factor in taking full advantage of the campus experience. There are some unique programs at IU, like the conservatory (though I don't think many conservatory students rush). But if we're talking about a young woman going into liberal arts, who just wants the complete social life the school can offer...it's a meaningful strike against IU in that calculation.

Right now it's just Theta Phi Alpha, but all future groups to colonize will also not have housing. I believe Alpha Sigma Alpha is coming in the Fall.

Just one Theta Phi Alpha for now, but when ASA colonizes in the fall they will also not have a house. The remaining 19 chapters have houses.