See my PM on moving forward with Alpha Phi Omega.

33girl's post is squarely on point. Perhaps it's best not to focus on the remote, unknown possibility of a local interest group either affiliating with or being accepted as a "colony" by any national/international GLO. Rather, the membership of the local group might be best served by continuing to develop and do whatever it is that they have been doing that has permitted them to exist to this point in time.

A caution: don't get spread too thin or have expectations that will result in burnout and disappointment.

(The more you know)

I am not sure how to phrase this, but “generally speaking”, UC Merced is now operating like most other campuses in that they no longer have to create most aspects of student life.

As sigmagirl10 noted, UC Merced is the newest campus in the University of California system. UC Merced opened their doors in 2005 and every student organization had to be created “from the ground up”.

The first GLO (Delta Delta Delta) was charted from an interest group in 2009. 2009 also saw four other GLOs (Sigma Chi, Delta Gamma, Kappa Kappa Gamma and Sigma Alpha Epsilon) charter from interest groups. So at the time, the “interest group” to an NPC/NIC organization was used to “jump start” the Greek Community.

Since 2009, no NPC sorority has chartered at UCM. Lambda Theta Nu colonized in 2012 and I not familiar with their chartering process so I do not know if they started as an interest group or not.

Two IFC fraternities (Kappa Sigma and Omega Delta Phi) charted in 2011 (may have come from interest groups) and there is currently an interest group for Gamma Zeta Alpha.

I would like to note that that forming an interest group is one of the ways some fraternities might colonize. Being that UCM is still a relatively new college, I suspect that fraternities may continue to form via interest groups for the time being.

For what it is worth, there are some groups at UC Merced calling themselves a fraternity or sorority. However they are not viewed as interest groups by the University nor are they recognized by the University.

I went to a very small liberal arts college on the East Coast for undergrad. It had a large commuter population. We actively recruited everyone from transfers to seniors, and some of those seniors were 22+. I'm not saying that we had 35 year old Moms in our group, but it wasn't all freshman, either. It was a really interesting mix of all kinds of girls, all ages.

But then again, the school was very small and not very competitive.

I was in Greek honor societies in college and grad school as well. They are very special, with their own ceremonies and rituals, too. There is definitely a place for you. Best of luck!!!