sounds to me like you guys need another chapter - 6 chapters that are 10-30 members over total plus women who went bidless. To me that sounds like exact situation in which a panhel should open for expansion.

But I think you definitely have to explore why girls are seeking to start a new group. Inability to join another chapter, legacies wanting their chapter or girls seeking to start a chapter with a different "niche".

also, maybe we can explore why so many women went bidless.

was it because they weren't matched?
did many people "suicide" on their bid card?
were they cross-cut?
did they not like their options for pref night for whatever reasons and dropped out of recruitment?

It is possible that I am just not understanding in what context they mean when they are saying "X-amount of women went bidless" Is that before (meaning they dropped out of rush, and thus did not recieve a bid) or after (meaning they weren't matched, suicided, cross-cut,etc.) preference?

That information could also be very useful. I think I am probably over-analyzing this, as far as wanting to do a lot of research to see why the NPC is the way it is right now, but that is just the Operations/Supply Chain Mgmt person in me ;) We're trained to completely research all "symptoms" before coming up with a strategy to implement :)

Also - I can understand that legacies are wanting to join their legacy chapter, but there are so many more variables that go into that as well. (once again.. business analyzing is getting the best of me...)

* the DFW area is HUGE... with all the area schools (and the large population) it is almost hard to not be a legacy to any one group if you had family members go to TCU or SMU or even to schools that are a little farther south and join sororities there. I wouldn't be surprised if our school has legacies from half the NPC :p

* Legacies who go through formal recruitment may not fit into their legacy group. It could be any number of things like personalities, interests, or just general dynamics between the legacies and the groups. While many of them do end up with their legacy group here, not all of them do. What if in a hypothetical world the campus is able to bring XYZ after the expansion process. In the new XYZ colony, there are a few XYZ legacies... which is awesome because I know it would be great to share that bond with your sister, mother, whoever you're a legacy by... but what if they end up being miserable because the there isn't that "click" between the legacy and the rest of the colony? That would be a bummer :(

I'm rambling now, so maybe some of our resident GC rush/expansion gurus will chime in :)

Ok, UNT is not expanding, at least not soon, and instead the Panhellenic Council has voted to raise total from 75 to 85, which isn't horrible, because our average chapter size right now is 83.