See if people look at the new chapters, just starting up, etc. as 'II' no matter what, then there's no options and everyone's just going to have to deal with a quota of 250 eventually. Something on the campus culture will HAVE to change to support new chapters until they get to a point where HQs feel comfortable expending $millions on a house.

What's the position of the administration at Arkansas? Are they supportive of expansion? (From the outside, it looks like Alabama is -- giving prime land to chapters to build new, bigger houses.) Is there any chance they could support the new chapter somehow, with a favorable loan or something like that?
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Campus culture doesn't have as much to do with it as the perceptions of PNMs. Even women who've never set foot on the campus before will look at these sororities with the gorgeous houses and compare them to living in the dorms/having meetings in the Union and which do you think that a teenager will prefer? And then if they end up involuntarily in an unhoused chapter, most are not going to think, "I will now lead my chapter into such glory that we'll be up there competing with the Awesome Alphas!" Most are gonna have serious second thoughts about Greek life.

And even though the members of the housed chapters will pay lip service (sometimes) to the unhoused chapters, do you think they'd trade their membership for one in an unhoused chapter?

I wish it were different because some of my daughters had great Greek experiences on campuses with no sorority housing.

I don't know any member that's going to want to switch her membership to another chapter besides trolls here.

But I maintain, that if there's "no solution" then removing RFM isn't the answer either. Those campuses will either have to find a solution or deal with the pledge class size.

ETA: and no, I don't think PNMs are unavoidably dazzled by houses and such either. Some dazzle yes, complete inability to consider anything else no.

I think what carnation means is that no matter how much Gorgeous House GHI says Unhoused UVW is awesome girls with great involvement and GPAs and all looking like Scarlett Johanssen, and probably honestly mean it, if GHI dropped off the face of the earth tomorrow and all its members could join elsewhere, they'd rather go to their bitterest rival than the unhoused chapter full of girls they were saying were awesome 2.5 seconds ago.

Tangent, and sorry if we talked about this before, but why doesn't Auburn have houses? Is there just not room?

Pardon the lane swerve, but I think the issue is that with SEC schools and other schools with a similarly strict, rarely changing hierarchy (Indiana, USC, Texas, etc), is that the information about tiers doesn't often change and is readily available. I think what everybody here is forgetting is the culture that all these PNMs (and fraternity rushees, for that matter) came from...high school.

Ah, yes, high school, where you were either popular or not. In high school essentially the popular kids have the parties, the popular kids are the face of the school, the popular kids are the guardians of everything hip and cool and start all the trends. Although non-popular kids can enjoy high school as well, look at how much angst and social climbing there is to be popular in high school...at many schools, it seems like it is the only opportunity to have fun and be involved.

And then flash forward to college. Juniors and seniors have by now realized that college is a whole different beast...ANYBODY can have fun at college and be involved. Hell, even the biggest Icky Iota on campus has fun parties, has people on student government and dance teams, dates fun guys, etc. But to a freshman PNM who is just months out of high school, I think she (and he, to be fair) hears about the tiers the second she starts rush and is going to be focused on that throughout the whole process. If she wasn't popular in high school, this is her chance to redeem herself. If she was, she certainly doesn't want a downgrade. I think in most of their minds, popular = the only chapters that will have fun, just like in high school.

The issue here is that I'm not sure this mindset is something that can be changed, even with RFM and patient recruitment counselors and whatever. This is something that comes with maturity, and with living on campus long enough to realize, "Oh, nobody really cares about high school status anymore, anybody can have fun and be themselves."

So I guess my question is (and I know absolutely nothing about sorority rush, so flame away if I'm way off) do the nationals of Icky Iotas (and I'm sure everybody has a couple, just like everybody has amazing chapters) put together a plan for them to recruit a little differently? Obviously go through formal rush, but also with the understanding that this isn't our main way to get new members? I know all those chapters COB already, but it seems to me that even with RFM there are still problems for Icky Iotas...at what point does everybody stop trying to make the system perfectly fair and change, frankly, the immature mindset of 1,000+ PNMs, and instead admit that maybe Icky Iota will never shine during formal recruitment, and that's an OK thing, and then tweak and work on improving COBing instead?

If all of this is dead wrong from a sorority perspective, then tell me so. But it seems like from reading all the stories around here that it is damn near impossible for an Icky Iota at a super-competitive campus to change their status by formal recruitment.

33, that's exactly what I meant! :)

When I was at Auburn, each sorority had one or more floors of a dorm with a chapter room and kitchen at the end of the hall. Now they have individual --townhouses??, I don't know what they're calling them--in a Greek area. West Georgia and Birmingham Southern also have this setup. People used to throw around various reasons as to why the sororities didn't have houses but no one really seemed to care much. We were right in the middle of campus, we had everything we needed, and our dues were much lower than on the housed campuses.

Well said.

It's not just recruiting, it's retention. Even if you're able to - with a combo of formal rush and COB - get up to total or average chapter size every time, if the best fraternities still don't want to mix with you, if you still have to see Icky Iota grafitti everywhere, no matter how many stops you pulled out during rush, your new freshman members are going to be dropping like flies. This is why I'm such a deferred rush pimp. Yeah, the girls hear all the stereotypes and tent talk and maybe even see some truth in them (like the mixer situation), but they come in and KNOW that and have accepted that. "Yeah, maybe I won't go to as many mixers or get nominated for homecoming, but I really like the women in the chapter. I don't really care about the other stuff, but maybe I can help it to improve." Women who aren't into that shouldn't have to go there - or feel hornswaggled that the chapter who seemed like social butterflies in rush (or COB) is...not.

There are chapters out there that rely too much on COB, just as there are those who think formal rush is the be-all & end-all. You need to do BOTH to succeed.

Icky Iota graffiti?...dying over here!....

Auburn has dorms with the chapter room on the bottom floor. Most of the old dorms were that way too. Ours was. Birmingham Southern does actually have townhouses, with one group to a townhouse. At Auburn, several groups could be in a dorm. I think it's 4 but may be mistaken.

ETA: Oh never mind, I see what you're talking about at Auburn! I was including the coed dorms in that.

I love the big sorority houses but boy, it costs to live in them. One of our daughters was an active at a school where the houses were new but each one housed 16, usually officers. Those were affordable! Another one was at a school where the actives lived on floors like at Auburn plus there was a Panhellenic House where you could live that had members from all the sororities!

Arkansas is supportive of expansion but has not, as of yet, made any significant gestures to help with this problem. I think anything that the administration could do would be a plus. Hats off to Alabama for giving land. I was not aware of that.

Actually you're pretty spot on. Unfortunately many NPCs still put immense pressure on their Icky Iota chapters to make quota and reach total during formal recruitment. Of course, you want to encourage such chapters to do their best in FR. I assume it's partly for financial reasons; I hope they are more patient with II chapters on unhoused campuses.

Funny thing at Arkansas, when AOII colonized, the new members and parents (oh mylanta, the parents) were OBSESSED with the plans for the house. There was intense pressure for the house to be completed and to be a certain style, etc. Then when it came time to get girls to live in it, we really struggled to fill it. We had plenty of members, and those members insisted that the house exist, but they were simply accustomed to their own bedrooms, walk-in closets, bathrooms, etc. They would not consider communal living. The risks at Arkansas are staggering. I don't blame other NPCs for steering clear.