Yeah, I think that is right. DZ won't let a chapter stay on campus if the school doesn't recognize the greek system. It allows for too many problems since there is no university to oversee their actions. This is what I have heard anyway.

Ahhhhh thanks for clearifying. I am not sure if that is why AXO closed but maybe? I did go to the SCU web site and I read about the disbandment, their reasons etc... Do any other sororities have a clause that will not allow having a chapter at a university that does not recognize the greek system?

How would a GLO colonize if the Greek system isn't recognized by the school? Would they still publish it as the "XYZ colony at USC"? Forgive me for asking what I'm sure is a stupid question, but I haven't ever heard of this before. I thought that if a college doesn't recognize GLOs anymore that means that they shut all of them down.

Re: Re: phiMu
 

sorry, people are always 'oh little phi mu.' being so old, we're pretty big, maybe not necesarily at uwo the past few years, but now. i didn't think everyone was at cap. before.
spring 02 we have 2 spots open for basically- so when we have 2 more lovely ladies, we will be at 50, cap for the fall. plus no grads.
didn't mean to come off as terrible as you thought! sorry ZZ-kai

Okay, gotcha! :) Thanks for clearing that up.

I know exactly what you mean, too. On my campus, it's a LOT more difficult for a sophomore to get a bid, but juniors hardly ever rush - it'd be next to impossible to get into a sorority during formal recruitment (I don't know anything about informal or COB) after your second year in school.

The GLO can still colonize and be a part of the off-campus InterGreek Council and the off-campus Panhellenic. The only thing that is different is that there is no formal tie to the campus, no rules coming from campus, no quotas, etc.

We still are members of XYZ Fraternity at Santa Clara University, of course. Our chapter names are all still the same. The only difference, is since the school cut ties with us, they lost all authority to tell us how to run our organizations. We support ourselves now, the way it should be.

The results are interesting. While the administration thought that ending Greek support would phase our the system by 2003, the exact opposite is happening now that they can't check our growth. The fraternities have doubled or tripled in size, and the sororities have done the same, all in a one-year span.

This school is ripe for expansion. We just need some help from the outside to bring in some new houses.

I know AXO used to have a chapter, and it would be very nice to have them back, considering they already have some existing history on our campus. I'm not really sure why they closed (back in 96 I think), but if there was any bad blood it is definately gone by now.




I Believe...

AEPhi recently colonized at a school where the Greek system is not formally recognized. I don't know if there are any other sororities there, but if there are, I imagine they'd set up a Panhel and institute a formal rush without involving the college.

Whether or not a GLO can colonize without recognition depends on state law, the GLO's bylaws and constitution and whether the school is a state or private college or university.

Florida State University
 

At FSU the sororities are very old, and strong. The largest have had as many as 150+ women each. The biggest seem to be Tri-Delt, Pi Beta Phi, Kappa Delta, Alpha Delta Pi and Delta Gamma. But those are not exclusively the largest or best. There are many very, very good, large sororities at FSU.
The fraternities are hampered by poor housing, but a new greek row is scheduled to open in 2003. The Pikes have about 165 and are the largest. Other big/strong fraternities are ATO, Sigma Phi Epsilon, Sigma Chi, Pi Kappa Phi, Phi Delta Theta and Lambda Chi Alpha. All have over 100 members.

Here at Iowa I think all soroities are 100+ with most being around 120. The fraternities vary. Mine has around 50 members. We're the middle of the road. I don't get why house pride themselves on being large or why the would want to be. To me being in a fraternity is about the brotherhood. how close can you be to 100 other people.

Maybe this is difficult to understand unless you've lived it, but you can be really close to a large percentage of your chapter even when your chapter has 130 + members. A lot of how close you are depends upon whether you are living together, eating together, taking classes together, partying together and staying up all night studying together.

I lived in a chapter house with 56 other women for 3 years. I changed rooms and roommates every quarter. In the course of those 3 years I lived with more than 20 different sisters. I never lived with my best friends in the house (we thought we might kill one another).

Now that I've been out of school for 6 years, I keep in close contact with all but one of the women who I lived with and a large number of the women who lived in the house at the same time I did. We live all over the world (my little, Jane, lives in Paris with her husband and daughter), but the ties that we formed through those long nights and fights over closet space will last forever.

I don't think that size is vital to your greek experience unless you have membership recruitment problems and you spend all of your collegiate years recruiting new members. If you are at a size that is competitive on your campus then that is what is important.

I don't doubt that have lived with a bunch of girls, but I guarante that you couldn't list the first and last name of every girl in your chapter. You might be able to recognize a girl in your class but just because you wear the same letters doesn't mean you've built some great bond.

Sorry, but you are so wrong. I can name the first and last names of most of the approximately 300 women who were active in my chapter during the 4 years I was there. These were the women who shared in my life every day. When I ran for student government, they were the women who were out wearing sandwich boards on campus, when I broke up with my boyfriend they were the ones who picked me up and put me back together.

I think that it is difficult to understand that you can be really close with such a large number of people until you experience it. Even now as an advisor, I struggle to explain this to chapters that take pledge classes the same size as their active chapters. They always tell me that they like being small -- that they share something that large chapters don't have. After a semester they usually come back and tell me that I was right.

It is not wearing the same letters that creates a bond of sisterhood -- it is the time you share together, the experiences that are common only to you, and the growth that we all experience in college.

I can't imagine being in a chapter with 130+ members, but I know that chapters of ours that are huge have great sisterhoods. I just think it's hard to fathom having so many sisters. I had a friend who was Alpha Phi at Villanova and she honestly told me she wasn't close with a lot of sisters b/c they were so big. But that's just one example.