I know that at Southwestern in Texas, Sigma Sigma Sigma "released" their chapter to Delta Delta Delta. I don't know why that happened - if it had anything to do with national mergers.

Phi Omega Pi at Auburn did this—nationally they were absorbed by Delta Zeta, but the local chapter decided to affiliate with AOPi instead.

Didn't that have to do with Sigma Sigma Sigma and the AES sororities deciding only to be at teacher schools ("normal schools")? I think Alpha Sigma Alpha also closed or released a chapter or two.

At least, that's what my impression was.

You're right - AOII has chatered at Ramapo and TPA at Nebraska so we're at 4. That is the least overlap AOII has with any NPC.

There are a lot of issues with chapters across the border. It's not as easy as it may seem.

I think it's an interesting question, albeit one with pretty much no real world impact. So here's a follow-up. Were this hypothetical merger to occur, would this be one (probably larger) org absorbing a smaller org [AAA and BBB "merge," all are now AAA] or two org actually merging [AAA and BBB merge, become ABC]? Is there anything in NPC bylaws allowing/forbidding this? Why would this ever happen?

My thoughts on the last would be if one org simply can't expand on a level with others, or if the Greek system suffers another large population drop (such as apparently happened in the '60s and '70s) and 26 orgs shrink to 13 SUPER GLOS. So I guess I answered my own question a little bit -- the first scenario would be an "absorption" (probably still called a merger for PR reasons), the second an actual merger, although I don't know if names would change or not.

I like hypotheticals, sorry about the slight derail.

Not entirely hypothetical. In 1959, Pi Kappa Sigma was absorbed by Sigma Kappa. I was told during the new member period that SK opted not to incorporate any of the elements of the PKS ritual into the SK ritual.

I know that Delta Sigma Epsilon was absorbed by Delta Zeta in 1956 - but whether they co-opted any ritual, I know not.

I see a cape involved. It could be a really cute halloween costume or something.

DG and AST are both at IUP.

Re: ASA chapter absorption
 

In my experience living through corporate mergers, there's really no such thing. Somebody wins and somebody loses. I highly doubt that if a big NPC sorority "merged" with a small sorority there would be any combining of ritual, colors, whatever. They might take that opportunity to change their logo or mascot or something, but that would really just be to update or get rid of something nobody liked anyway. Or as in the example of a certain bank I used to do travel for, they took a perfectly good logo and made it into a godawful one, even though it STILL didn't accommodate any of the other bank's image.

And I believe they share one other campus.

I determined that it was definitely the AST/Pi Phi combination that I had discovered a couple years ago, with Pi Phi recently colonizing at NYU.

And AST only shares 1 or 2 campuses with ADPi, AEPhi, and Theta as well.

Corporations and sororities are two vastly different things.

If giant NPC group XYZ merged with teeny regional group ABC and basically screwed ABC over, the ABC alumnae (in this day & age of the internet) could really make XYZ's name mud.

In the case of the bank you cited, most people, even if they don't like the new "image" probably stayed with it just becuase it's more of a pain in the ass to change than it is to stay where you are. Sororities aren't like that. If someone goes into rush and has seen a zillion things about how XYZ is a bunch of jerks, it's going to affect her opinion. If it effects enough people's opinions, XYZ will suffer in membership numbers and revenue.

Based on what 33 said, there have been fraternity mergers in the past which have done a lot to try to keep aspects of both alive. Lambda Chi Alpha comes to mind.