The Panhellenic site for TCU states that 46% of undergraduate women are in sororities. I don't know if that is just NPC, or all sororities.

Haven't some of the fraternities lost houses at UGA due to growth of the university? A former coworker's son's fraternity lost theirs for this reason, and they weren't the only one. Michael Adams was not popular in their family for this among other reasons.

Thanks, Irishpipes. The TCU percentage is lower than I had imagined. There is room both to reduce chapter size and increase participation.

I don't think Mizzou should open for expansion right now, as there is a house on campus that has a tough time meeting quota every year and a few houses on campus that are constantly COBing to keep themselves total. I think Mizzou should focus on building up our current houses before we expand!

Total should be average chapter size. So, at every school there will be some chapters below total. That doesn't mean total isn't higher than chapters would prefer. Total at Mizzou is VERY high - one of the highest in the nation.

My understanding from reading the Panhellenic website that the 46% reflects just NPC. That also aligns with figures that I have heard that "over half the women at TCU are Greek." However, there would still be enough of a pool for a least a couple new groups.

I just read all the Panhellenic minutes, located here, from last semester. Nowhere in any of the minutes is there discussion about extension. I can't get the links for this semester to work.

Yes. They bought some of the houses on Lumpkin to expand the library and business school. I think it was one of those situations where the university owned the land and the GLO the house. Displaced fraternities were offered a new university owned house on River Road. I believe three fraternities are located over there. But the university owns the house and it is treated similarly to a residence hall. A fraternity member must be an RA, etc. So not all of the fraternities took the university up on the offer. They wanted more autonomy. I can't say I blame them.

Adams was a jerk. I'm so glad to see him gone. All he was interested in was building more sidewalks and fountains and raising tons of money. He wanted to cram as many students as possible into the university, but not invest in personnel. He never hired professors to keep up with the large increase in the student body. It was more important to build signs and green space. I swore he would never get a red cent of my money. And he didn't. I've only now just begun to donate again when the new president took over.

Agreed, but if there is a lot of variance among chapters, that could be a bad sign.

Virginia Commonwealth- we are still waiting to colonize. Originally we were supposed to colonize, in I believe, fall 2012. It was then pushed back to spring 2013. We still haven't colonized, which means the chapters who were scheduled to colonize after us have also been pushed back.

University of Arizona- one thing standing in the way with expansion there is the housing. All UA chapters have houses. Now it has been 4-5 years since I have been on the campus, but space for housing is a bit limited. Chi Omega and Sigma Kappa weren't housed on the same "row" as the other chapters. Chi Omega got a new house on the "row" in 1998. Sigma Kappa was located quite a bit farther than the other houses, I believe their new house was built around 2008-2009. Alpha Chi, well if they did what we did (renting their house to the university) had a house ready to go.

Now one thing that could possibly be done, if the university does open for expansion, a sorority could buy one of the fraternity house where the chapter has left campus and fix it up and now you have a house, but that is also expensive. ADPi spent a over 1 million to get our house updated for our recolonization in 2008.

Also, what is the deal with Arizona State. I haven't lived in AZ in 4-5 years so I'm out of the loop.

Agree with Irishpipes that VCU overreached on the pace of stacked expansions. .

It is still hard for me to even comprehend what sorority life would be like in a chapter of 200+. I know that it's the paradigm for many NPC women nowadays. They wouldn't know what it would be like to be in a chapter of 60 with new member classes of 20! Years ago I posted somewhere on GreekChat that I'd favor more, and smaller, chapters. Someone responded saying how exhausting it would be to go to 26 open houses! Just now I ran some numbers -- using my alma mater: if Mizzou has 15 groups and 288 total, that's 4320. Divide 4320 by 26 and get 166 so if a campus had the maximum number of NPC groups the chapters would still be large. (If chapter total were 60 it would take 72 chapters to absorb 4320 members. Yes, that IS too many open houses. <g>)

I third that emotion. It seems they were just super excited to be putting commuter college status 6 feet under. Kinda like someone who loses 25# on a crash diet, buys a ton of new clothes, and then gains all the weight back.

I'm sure some of these schools where Greek life interest seems to increase/decrease super rapidly is a result of new blood and new ideas in the admissions offices.

With Fall 2011 Zeta Tau Alpha colony and Spring 2012 Alpha Xi Delta colony, I can see where Alpha Delta Pi's colony was moved from Fall 2012.

Does Phi Sigma Sigma have absolute recolonization time of 2015, or can they (with ADPi, Kappa Delta, and Gamma Phi Beta) be pushed forward, too?

And when will birthrate numbers finally catch-up to the campus, causing lower CT and new member numbers? Will lower numbers even matter (housing/no housing)?

Wait, so VCU originally had them stacked like this:

fall 2011 ZTA
spring 2012 AxiD
fall 2012 ADPi
spring 2013 KD
fall 2013 Gamma Phi
2015 Phi Sig

Well that was just stupid. Each colony should be at least a year apart from the other one. They are already 2 years behind with the ADPi colony.

I wonder if ADPi or any of the other chapters will just "pull out" due to how long it is taking.

The VCU timeline does exhibit immense naivete. As a follow-on question, given the delays, can the CPC revisit the decisions in the future as being stale?

By contrast, when NCState expanded following DG's colonization, the extension letters (posted back when on the NCSU Greek website) explicitly stated that should colonization of one of the specific groups not occur by an outside date, the next group would move up and the vacant slot reopen. (None of the NCSU stacked groups have missed their assigned target dates thus far.)