Quota and total are made to encorage a sronger greek system and aid individual groups. Otherwise, you might end up with only one group on campus that everyone belonged to. Usually Panhellenic will not invite another group on campus until the existing ones are strong and there are more women wanting to join than there are places available.

Agreed. Way confusing. But I am glad there are people outthere liek Barbara who do understand it and can explain it and enforce it. Kinda ironic dont you think? Its always been taught that men were better with math and algebra, and women were the verbal ones. I am stymied on this. I stand by ya'll gals on it, but am utterly confused. I will however print out this page for our new member educator when he is teaching on the greek systems and the inevitable question is asked, "how do we get more sororities on campus?" I'll have him throw this on an overhead, expain the differenceies, and let the thread and rule summation do the talking. It explains things far better than we EVER could...meaning, there are way more procedures in their system. Just because were all greek dont assume we operate under the same guidlines. I made that mistake when I joined. Just the way it is.

I still dont get it. On the KU outcome therad one sorority got qouta plus 10. Quota was 52 and they got 62. I thought you could only excede quota by 5% max. Whats the deal?

madmax - if they were under chapter total even after taking the quota for that rush, they can take more girls to get up to chapter total. If chapter total was 65 - and they had 3 sisters to start - they can take 62 pledges.

The 5% thing is for "quota additions" which are only usually used if there's something that guarantees all rushees get bids.

Just one more example of DAISM!:o

The deal is that the sorority that exceeded quota by so much was the second smallest sorority on our campus. Last fall, they had 108 members. Assuming 20 of them graduated in May, that left them with 88 going into formal rush. I believe total is 170 (but please don't take my word for it; all of my friends in sororities have graduated, so I'm kinda out of the loop). So, even with the 62 NMs, this sorority still has ~150 members - well below total.

IMHO, this worked out really well for everybody - 10 women got bids that might not have otherwise and this sorority is the largest it has been in years.

The whole thing doesn't make sense. If you can go over or under quota then what's the point? Just have total and take as many or as few pledges as you want up to total. The other thing that doesn't make sense is allowing sororities to go over total. Doesn't that defeate the purpose? You end up with some groups over total, some at total, some just under and some way under. Isn't that what you are trying to prevent?

The only way to go over total is by taking quota in formal rush. Usually groups don't get too far over total that way. They aren't eligible to COB then, so they can't get any new members until the next formal rush.

Groups can of course get far under total by any system! I'm sure you know fraternities that are much smaller than the others on campus. Of course a group can go UNDER quota if people don't want to join them! It's not like fraternities always get as many pledges as they want with their system either!

I totally agree that just having a total size (max size) would make a lot more sense. Straight forward, easy to understand, and even easier to follow.

I agree the whole quota thing doesn't really help to equalize the sororities on campus.... I mean think about it... at my school which has a small greek system quota this year was 18.. (HUGE FOR MY SCHOOL) My chapter got 7 women, AND since total at my school is 45 the other two sorors that DID reach quota STILL get to COB until they reach 45 girls AND even though if they reach that number they won't be allowed to rush in spring if they are still at 45 next fall they can go OVER house total and still take whatever quota is next fall...(as far as I understand, if I am wrong please explain) so the biggest chapters on campus can STILL grow... I don't see how it helps AT ALL !!!

But the problem is that it leaves too many Potential Members unmatched. If you enforce a chapter size across the board, it could be that only 150 PNMs could find homes during recruitment, leaving another 1000 girls unmatched. Not fair to the girls or the system.

In this example, forcing a chapter size across the board is exactly why it would be fair to the unmatched women and the system. If a chapter size is enforced, it becomes very clear when there is real need to add another sorority on the campus!

Thus, the bigger chapters would NOT get bigger because they could only go to a max size. There would be simple rules, less dirty rushing, and all groups would TRULY be on the same playing field! Plus, when there is a lot of women unmatched, then it is clear that another sorority needs to be added.

They had something like that at Arkansas when I rushed...quota was different at each sorority and it was set by how many actual bed spaces each house had left. It left hundreds of girls unbid. Everyone knew that adding more sororities wouldn't work because the Greek system at Arkansas is quite old--several of the sororities have been there for more than a hundred years--and if the girls didn't get 1 of those 5, forget it, they weren't going Greek. That didn't help the big sororities, the small ones, or the PNMs. In the South at old-system campuses, it just won't work to say "if they can't pledge the Big 4 or 5, etc., then they'll just have to pledge XYZ!"

Because... it won't work and the Greek system will miss out on many outstanding women. I feel the pain of the smaller groups. It's just that I've watched rush in the South for 30 years and I've observed various attempts by Panhellenic to entice the rushees into pledging groups they wouldn't have considered before rush started. Honest to heaven, the only thing I have seen work is a huge increase in PNMs, like they've had the last few years at UGa and Auburn. That'll get a smaller sorority up to size faster than anything.

Let me note that I'm not saying that a sorority can't do anything to increase its numbers. What I'm saying is that I personally have never seen an attempt by Panhellenic to increase the smaller sororities' size be successful.

Yes, having Panhellenic say to PNMs, "You should consider this other chapter you weren't considering," is like having a teacher say, "You have to be friends with Johnny because no one else is." It probably just means another person is going to beat up on poor Johnny.

I too think that enforcing chapter sizes across the board would be the best. At my school quota this year was 41+ 5%. In theory its great for the girls but it also completely screws over the smallest houses. Our greek system is set so for Third Sets you visit 6 houses and then only 3 for preferences. if a girl does not get matched to her top 3 she could still get matched to her fourth choice. sometimes the PNM wouldn't want the 4th house but there are also cases where the PNM would have liked to have visited fourth house. Ceiling at my school is 120 and often women in those chapters do not always know her sisters. So if house XYZ got 45 girls (when 41 is quota), those extra 4 girls are often just a number to them. My chapter is a newer house on campus so it is harder for us to get as many women. My chapter got 7 outstanding women but I believe that if chapter sizes had been enforced we probably could have gotten more women. We are not one of the bottom ranked houses on campus but rather our PNMs at preferences were going to our house plus 2 other very large and popular houses on campus. Often, girls will rank an older, larger house on campus before a newer house because they feel it is a "safe bet". Its hard to win over as many girls being a newer house without a set reputation on campus while also being comparablely liked as the most popular houses on campus. Some houses on my campus don't even have to try to rush because thier name is enough to get members flocking to the door. On my campus(out of 15 chapters), among the most popular houses are KKG, AXO, DDD APhi, ADPi, DG (those are also the houses that my non AGD friends are in!). 4 other chapters have awesome women but they recruit different personalities than the ones above and us. During preferences, most of the girls we had coming through were chosing between mostly us and ADPi and APhi.

So i think a set quota system would have been beneficial to us.

Also, our panhel set a rule that says if any sorority loses any pledges during the year, they can rush to replace her whether they have at least 85 women returning for the next school year or not. I don't think that helps the smaller houses who need women.