I'm going to bottom line my feelings: right now, we have the generation of the children of the 1970's parents (who did not go greek) going through Recruitment. How many of these parents know Delta Zeta from Delta Gamma from Delta Delta Delta? It's all Greek to them, and they're more likely to say, "See, I knew those snobby Greeks were nasty!" rather than "Which GLO was that?"

There's been some very good interaction, good ideas here. I really like AGDee's idea of a junior circle, etc - but that might not work on every campus, nor do I have the answer to all things NPC. But it's much more productive to circle the wagons, instead of pointing fingers.

AOPi are the ones renting "my house" (sorry, I lived there for several years, so I'll always think of it as "my house" :) ) - ADPi does not have a chapter at Michigan State.

AGDee has summed it up pretty well. The reorg at University of Michigan and Ohio State both seem to be going very well. (And, in both cases, involved making current undergraduate students alumnae.) However, I agree that the difference with the situation vs. the blow up surrounding the DePauw issue was the way IHQ handled things. Having been involved with Michigan State's chapter almost up to the closing, I think that the women of the chapter would have been receptive to an immediate reorganization/recolonization. (For the reasons AGDee mentioned - having been stressed out from trying to keep a small chapter afloat...alumnae status may have been a welcome break vs. the heavy commitment involved with a recolonization.)

But, I don't think the campus climate would have been as receptive to an immediate recolonization as perhaps OSU and U of M were. As AGDee mentioned, there were other chapters closing around the same time as ours did. Personally, I think that chapter total should have been lowered on campus years before it got to the point where we closed. We lost one chapter (Tri Delts) while I was an undergraduate in the 90s. Of the 16 remaining chapters after Tri Delts left campus, at least 6 were seriously under chapter total. (Chapter total was 110, I believe, at at least 6 chapters were around 60 members or fewer. And there was a stretch of time where only 3 of the 16 sororities had 100 members or more.) 3 chapters - AGD, Alpha Xi Delta, and Phi Mu - closed within a few years of each other shortly after 2000. That left a few other struggling chapters to be the "low men on the numbers totem pole." If chapter total had been lowered in the mid to late 90s, I firmly believe that some (if not all) of the chapters that closed could have been saved. (In retrospect, I wish I would have pushed a little harder to consider the chapter total issue - I served for a year on the Panhellenic Exec Board during a time when it could have possibly turned things around. However, most of the rest of the exec board and the chapter delegates were not receptive to the idea - I had the impression that many of them felt that their Nationals would not "let" them vote to lower total...for reasons I didn't completely know and/or understand.)

I'm for circling the wagons, but I want to make sure that the danger is outside the circle when we do. Unless there are some clear expectations about how a GLO should do the re-organizations the right way and an understanding that they are supposed to rarely be done at all, I think we will all end up looking (and being) worse if it happens more frequently.

I agree though with the sense that the DePauw situation could have blown up in the press with any re-organization. Theirs was kind of a perfect storm of what can go wrong, but most situations would not have played much better in the press.

I am pretty sure every NPC group is paying attention to the situation at De Pauw and re-evaluating how they handle these situations and taking stock. We can't make a clear cut way to do this because every situation is different.

I also want to add.. it's easy to criticize the women at the helm of an organization, but we need to remember, these women LOVE these organizations and volunteer unbelievable amounts of time to the organizations. When they make decisions, they make the best decision they can at the time with the information that they have and their number one priority is the well being of the organization as a whole. They are putting their hearts and souls into our organizations, even if they don't always handle something the best way.

My campus was much the same way. We had formal in spring and a structured informal in fall. In between times, some of the chapters held open bid parties. We had them about once a month. Usually, the women waited till the next big pledge class to begin pledging (until the dumbass who I referenced in another thread disallowed that).

If you've never done it and you're used to thinking rush = big parties, skits, huge effort, takes up every minute of your time - of course it sounds horrid. COB parties are usually nothing more than a light theme, girls over to the house or suite - kinda like a house party with no boys and no booze. It's NOT the same as formal rush and that is why so many chapters moan and freak out when they're told to do COB. They've never done it and think rush party = all the things above. Part of recruiting rather than rushing means knowing the difference between the two.

At places where there isn't huge Greek interest, it's really the better way to do it, I think - rather than put all your eggs in the formal rush basket. There are women who would be great members who just don't want to go through the hype of formal - not to mention the upperclassmen who know "I want to pledge ABC or nothing" and IMO, they've been there long enough that if that's what they want to do, they should be allowed to do it if the chapter has spots.

I do agree with you that this campus needs to lower total if no one is at it, but I've heard of regional/national officers making a stink about that or saying things like "you don't need to lower total, you just have too many sororities. Get rid of one and you won't have that problem." :rolleyes: susan314 also referred to this in her post above.

I believe that's called an "expansion rush" - the national comes in and basically runs rush but keeps the current girls. They probably get some special dispensations from the CPH as far as recruiting, etc.

There's other things to consider where people are talking about the successful recolonizations. Ohio State, Michigan, Georgia Southern - these are big schools. There's a wide pool of women to choose from. The Greek system is prominent, but it doesn't "run" things, nor is it reviled.

I know that on my campus chatper "reputations" lingered for a long time. We had several fraternities (PKA, ATO) and sororities (KKG, AGD, AZD) close just before I started and their reputations lingered on campus throughout my 4 years there.
All of the fraternities closed because of risk management issues, therefore socially they remained well thought of- I remember older sisters in my chapter speaking of them fondly & lamenting that we lost "good" houses to be have mixers with & be matched up w/ for Greek Week & Homecoming. KKG closed because of risk management issues & had been a top chapter. This reputation also lingered- they rented & eventually sold their house to KAT- allowing that chapter to take a bit of the KKG aura.
All of the fraternities closed because of risk management issues. While I was on campus PKA successfully re-colonized & shortly after I graduated ATO did the same. Both re-colonized chapters came back onto campus very strong because of their old reputations- their legends had lived on if you would. Other fraternities colonized at Maryland, but never reached the status of ATO & PKA. While I was on campus a few fraternities closed always from risk management issues, some of them have come back since then as well.
I don't know if it's campus or chapter policy, but if a chapter closed because of RM issues they could not try to come back for 4-5 years until all of the old members were off campus.
AGD & AZD closed because of numbers and this information lingered as well. AZD's (lovely) house still sits empty (they had rented it for a year to PKA during their re-colonization, but PKA could not have parties there, they still had pink carpet, etc.)

Maybe my campus has a very strong collective memory of chapters, but I think it would be very tough for a chapter to completely/immediately re-org/re-colonize there- espeically with deferred rush. According to Wikipedia ADPi closed 1985 and recolonized 1986- ADPi got AGD's house after AGD folded and I am sure that this helped them.

what I am saying is I don't know how successful an immediate re-org/re-colonization effort could be? How could nationals sweep in and re-program how everyone on campus thinks of a chapter?

Didn't Alpha Phi at Duke do this too?

Alpha Phi did at Virginia and it was very successful. One of the alumna of the chapter also purchased a different house for the chapter (or so the rumor mill says).

I don't know that we could have a single defined way, but I think we could define a few acceptable options.

Although every situation has its differences, I think you could categorize them and know what your options were.

Why wouldn't expansion rush work in any situation where re-organization or closing/quickly re-opening would work?

I think sometimes the current chapter members really aren't motivated to work as hard as an expansion rush would require. Not that they don't care, but it is a lot of time and effort and if you've been COBing for the past 4 years straight you might not have the energy anymore. It probably also depends on how set in their ways the Greek culture is. Is it the members or the chapter itself? How will the other sororities react to the recolonized chapter vs. the current members working harder?

It's very much easier said than done. The pool of women who are at all interested (or can afford it...very many are on financial aid) is small. Many times during COB all sororities are interested in the same 30 women. I know we all attempt to pull from different areas to avoid this, but it's usually these same 30 or so that end up accepting bids somewhere.

And I think we ALL agree that none of us is willing to take quantity over quality...that has just caused so many problems and so much heartache that we don't.

Actually freshmen classes have been progressively declining...as I understand it the decline of applicants to both NPC and IFC recruitment/rush has been decreasing accordingly. Only 30-odd guys rushed last fall.

Maybe eventually. Right now even those that are very significantly smaller are not in danger of "losing the game". They are very strong chapters with just the women they have right now. There's just not much to be done and we all know it. All our HQ would like us to make total...some are pushy. Some are very, very pushy...but what they sometimes don't realize is if these smaller chapters choose quantity over quality they WILL lose out to the three larger chapters.