A commuter campus is a school that is the opposite of a residential school. Most of the students don't live on or around campus. They drive in every day sometimes from great distances or they schedule their classes for only certain days of the week to cut down on drive time. So the campus atmosphere can be a little more like a "ghost town" when class isn't in session or on the weekends. It can make it hard for them to participate in extra activities like greek life or student government. These schools also often have higher percentages of nontraditional students.

There are many schools that are a mix of commuter and residential.

Commuter campuses get a stigma because they are often ranked lower on reports like Princeton and US News because the nature of communting also affects retention and graduation rates. Many of these schools try to fix this by building gyms, better recreation, a nice union, promote apartments, lure stores to the area --- to keep students on campus for more than classes. And they will build up their prominence in certain majors to lure more students and gain a reputation for excellence in that area.

To me, the concept is similar to a "bedroom community" -- where a town becomes a ghost town during the day because everyone is commuting into the city to go to work. The town tries to lure more businesses and entertainment to its own area to keep its residents' money and volunteer interests in the area.

I've found that AEPhi's national office has been pretty understanding of my chapter's situation. We were a local sorority with 10 active sisters, and we wanted to remain relatively small. Total was (and I believe still is) 80, and we didn't feel it was really possible to form a sisterly bond with 79 chapter sisters... we wanted to grow to around 50. AEPhi was actually cool with the idea of our wanting to stay below total. My chapter has faced pressure to grow (10 is just a little too small), but we haven't had our arms twisted to get to total this semester or else, we don't get nastygrams when we don't make quota, etc. Plus, a few area alums always turn out to help with recruitment, so the chapter has support.

Every school is different. For most GLOs, there are campuses where they're the only chapter there and campuses where there are tons of GLOs represented. There are chapters at commuter schools and at residential schools. There are big chapters and little chapters; there are little chapters where all the other chapters are big (indicating a possible problem) and little chapters where all the other chapters are also little (which usually means there isn't a problem, greek life just isn't all that big there). Every chapter has its own situation, and it's great when a national office is flexible enough to recognize that one size doesn't fit all.

I would consider Eastern Michigan (my alma mater) a mix of commuter and residential. There are large numbers of students who do live on and around campus, but there is a significant percentage of students who live at home (with parents) and commute to class each day. In the Greek system, we don't get a lot of commuters, but did get some from nearby cities like Saline or Ann Arbor.

Wayne State University in the city of Detroit is clearly commuter, even though they have built a couple dorms. The vast majority of students live at home with parents or are non-traditional students. Most of the students in campus apartments or dorms are international students.

UM-Dearborn is also clearly commuter, with most students living at home.

Commuter campuses definitely face different challenges and obstacles than residential do. Just finding places to hold meetings, sisterhoods and rituals can be difficult. Some of the women live an hour or an hour and a half away from each other. They are all on campus at different times of day. Greek life on those campuses can be key to feeling a sense of belonging and community with the campus though.

Dee

Commuter School= not many if any Dorms for Students. Students live Locally and Go Home at Night and so Donnt Do Much with Campus, or Organizations.:(

AXiD national treats all its chapters the same. We are all have the same goals and our nationals tells us what is expected of our chapter as a whole with the National organization.

AOII International Headquarters has always been fair and good to all of their chapters. I know Nu Beta (OLE MISS) is a bigger chapter and we do have a house but we are helped when we need help and treated fairly and we must follow the same rules and laws that all AOII chapters follow. AOII helps and aids all chapters of all sizes with houses, lodges, dorm suites, no housing, etc with the same passion.

Re: small vs big/dorm vs commuter/house vs no house
 

When I was at school (and I think its still the case) SDT on my campus is one of the few chapters that didn't have an official house (although they used several off campus houses), but they were either the largest or next to largest chapter at my school. The fact that they dont have a house makes their dues lower which probably is a deciding factor for some people. We are also not really a commuter school (we have a ton of commuters, but also a ton of people who live on campus). Greek life isn't all that great here (considering the fact that there are 600 women total in NPC sororities when the campus has over 30,000 students!!), but SDT never seemed to be struggling. I don't know anything about their relationship with National.

Its so weird to hear of struggling SDT chapters since it seems that everyone from my hometown is in an SDT chapter somewhere... but we're a bunch of Jews :)

astroAPhi:

We have a great chapter of Alpha Phi at SIUE (total is 65), and we are a mostly (2/3) commuter school. Though hopefully, we are getting housing in the foreseeable future!

For whatever it's worth, we always considered all of the state supported schools in Ohio (At least the ones in the Mid American Conference) commuter schools back when I was there -- with the exception of Ohio University and possibly Ohio State (Big 10) -- simply because the latter was so huge -- although a large number of those students were from the Columbus area, so even OSU was/is a communter school to some extent.

The reason is fairly simple in that all of the schools were reasonably close to cities:

Toledo and Bowling Green = Toledo
Miami of Ohio = Cincinnati and Dayton
Kent = Cleveland & Akron

In terms of O.U., the student body was larger than the population of the City of Athens in those days. Besides the kids from all over Ohio (particularly Cleveland and Columbus), we had a lot of folks from NY, NJ, WV and PA.

Wow, I'm from Chicago and I didn't realize that SIUE was a commuter school. But then again, one of my friends who is in the Air Force reserves goes there because it is the closest to the base.

Yep, most of our students still commute from the area, though our residential population has increased dramatically. Our new chancellor wants us to be at 50% residential in a few years, so that will be changing in the future.:)

Campuses (and chapters) may be classified as "commuter" simply because a large percentage of students live at home with parents or the percentage of undergraduates living in university housing is low even if it a large university.

I lived at home as an undergrad as did 90% of the chapter. That same chapter now has an on-campus house and the university has built dorm space sufficient that they are more residential. I still see a huge difference in the chapter traditions in that chapter vs. chapters who have always been housed. It isn't that one is better than another, they are just different (things like how meals are served, how members feel about living in). Expectations of chapters at commuter campuses do not differ but suggestions on how they fulfill those requirements will differ. For example, requiring proctored study hours is a whole lot easier when you have a house.