Yep. It's my understanding that's one of the reasons (though not the only one) that we haven't sought membership in the NIC. With 242 active chapters (as of the last count I have), we'd be one of the largest fraternities in the NIC (chapter-wise, though not collegiate member-wise, as our chapters tend to be smaller) and the cost would be very high.

If you look back over the history of the NIC, there's actually quite a bit of fraternities withdrawing and (usually) coming back eventually.

One of the things KSig was concerned about, among others, was that there seems to be a movement coming with trying to eliminate pledge periods and having immediate initiations, it was based on some schools trying to eliminate hazing and forcing fraternities to not have the opportunity to haze pledges and just have all persons members. At the time of the shift NIC was considering such legislations and working with schools who wanted to do this.

I do not however know if anything resulted in this at any schools or if the NIC ever eliminated pledge periods or not.

I do know that at the end of my college life in the 1990s, our pledges had 60 days to be initiated. It was becoming a real hot issue with chapters, especially the older ones.

BG

Small changes they may be, but they matter. Very cool!

NIC doesn't dictate what we do. It's not a governing body. That said, I'll bet those policies are something our insurers might have been pursuing through an umbrella like the NIC.