Advise Needed!
 

I attend school in New England with about 5,000 students; 9 Fraternities and 3 sororities. We had a fourth sorority but they were expelled and their entire new member class (40 girls) were released from their bids. Additionally, during formal recruitment last spring about 40 girls didn't receive bids from any sororities because there weren't enough sororities for all the girls that went thru recruitment. My point is that there is a need for a new sorority on my campus because about 80 girls are interested in joining greek life and have no where to go. We met with our greek life advisor and while he wants to expand, he says that our campus is currently under review by a greek task force and we won't be able to expand until they're done investigating (assuming everything goes well) which won't be for at least a year. Many of us are juniors and don't want to wait until the end of the year to start the expansion process when realistically we probably won't see it through because we will all graduate in the middle of the process. We met with our Greek Advisor last spring about expansion and he said we would be able to start the process after informal recruitment this fall and now that it's the fall he's pushing it back again. It doesn't make sense because the current sororities were able to take new members this fall (during the investigation) but we aren't able to start expansion even though there is a clear need for it. We thought about starting a local sorority but don't know how to go about it. Being a part of greek life is very important to us but our greek advisor is very "flakey" and we have a feeling that come the end of this investigation he'll have another excuse for us about why we can't expand. What can we do?? We originally wanted a NPC sorority but now we're open to local too, whichever one we can get the ball rolling on soonest. It has been a very long process with a lot of dead ends and it's incredibly frustrating. Any advise would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

QFP

Unless you have bed quota how can there be too many PNMs? I thought only Indiana and Nebraska didn't use quota-total.

If the campus has a set total, maybe that is why there are "too many" pnm's and the greek life advisor isn't increasing the total.
If there is a total, don't the chapters have to stay within that total?

I would suggest bringing that up to the greek life advisor. If so many girls are going bidless, then total needs to be increased or the school needs to "rework" how they do recruitment and bid matching.

Do schools with only 3 NPC's have to do RFM?

No, total has nothing to do with quota. 40 girls did not go bidless because you need another sorority on campus. 40 girls went bidless because they were released or dropped out. Every single person going through recruitment CAN be placed in the existing sororities. There is no limit to spots in the existing sororities. The number of bids is determined by the number of women still in recruitment after pref party divided by the number of sororities (a little simplified now that we have RFM but that's the gist of the process.) Having another chapter wouldn't fix the problem of 80 juniors with no affiliation. No new chapter is going to take 80 juniors. Most new groups take majority FRESHMAN, sophomores and a couple juniors. Also, expansion wouldn't necessarily open an new chapter in time for you or the current juniors to join the chapter. It takes a bit of time to go through that process. It's not an overnight thing.

The ONLY campus that doesn't do this is INDIANA.

nope - chapters don't have to "stay within total". Example: total @ Arizona is 220. After FFR chapters are now anywhere from ~ 200 to 300+. The AXO co,ony has ~250 members, give or take. Theta is at 274 right now, last I looked.

That help? make sense?

And Nebraska. If you look at their bid day numbers, they are all different. They don't do bed quota like Indiana, but they do have some odd formula other than quota-total.

Why don't you go through formal recruitment at your school? If being part of Greek Life is that important to you, why did you wait until your junior year to pursue it?

This.

The only way that chapters would be restricted from taking PNMs and exceeding total is if the campus only held informal recruitment. Otherwise, if every chapter had 30 members, for example, total was 40, and there were 90 PNMs left after pref, each chapter could take 30 new members (90 / 3). Each chapter would have 60 members; 20 above total.

Potentially every PNM could receive a bid after pref, regardless of what total is.

Nebraska is just a normal school.

University of Nebraska
Lincoln, NE
August 19-24, 2013
Chapters set individual quotas
Total=134
Registered PNMs=1,058
*********************
Kappa Kappa Gamma Sigma 1884
Kappa Alpha Theta Rho 1887-1891/1896
Delta Gamma Kappa 1888
Delta Delta Delta Kappa 1894 (43)
Pi Beta Phi Nebraska Beta 1895
Alpha Omicron Pi Zeta 1903 (46)
Chi Omega Kappa 1903 (46)
Alpha Phi Nu 1906 (46)
Alpha Chi Omega Xi 1907
Delta Zeta Zeta 1910-1971
Phi Omega Pi Alpha (Founding chapter) 1910-1935 National absorbed by Delta Zeta
Alpha Xi Delta Rho 1912 (43)
Gamma Phi Beta Pi 1914 (45)
Alpha Delta Pi Alpha Epsilon 1915-1932/1963 (16)
Kappa Delta Pi 1920-1943/1947
Phi Mu Zeta Gamma 1921-?/?
Zeta Tau Alpha Beta Eta 1922-1937/1956-1980
Alpha Delta Theta Zeta 1923-1939 National merger with Phi Mu
Sigma Kappa Alpha Kappa 1923-1972
Theta Phi Alpha Mu 1924-1937/2011
Sigma Delta Tau Theta 1925-1970

The part I highlighted from your post makes it different from the majority of schools who use RFM for formally structured recruitment. Nebraska and Indiana both allow chapters to set individual quotas. Nebraska doesn't use bed quota, Indiana does.

At least some do. The school I advise at has 3 chapters and we used RFM for the first time last year.

LOl...I missed that. The difference is that the quotas set by Nebraska aren't exclusionary. The question is WHEN do the chapters decide to set quota? Before or after pref. A quota in the 40s for the majority of chapters is very appropriate for a PNM pool of 1058. Most likely they are deciding their quota number organically. I still would not lump them with Indiana, even though it is a strange system.

Unless your school has a cap on membership (like Ohio State used to but doesn't any more) imposed by either Panhellenic or the administration, there are NOT 80 girls with "nowhere to go." Previous posters explained how quota works during rush. The three remaining sororities will just get bigger for a time than some members would care for them to be. This sucks, but that's life. It's far better than adding a chapter when there really isn't a need for it and then seeing it close down 5 years later because it was only opened due to a one-time bump in numbers. You may think it's best for you now, but you need to think ahead to the women who may be struggling when you're graduated and gone.

If a campus is under investigation by a task force, it usually is not a situation that an NPC group would want to come in to. Also, if a campus is under this sort of investigation, a local will have everything they do scrutinized even more because they'd be an easy scapegoat.

Go through formal rush in the spring and keep an open mind to the sororities that are on campus now. If you (and the other 79 girls you are speaking for) can't do that, then Greek life on this campus probably isn't for you.

Without directly outing the OP, and maybe y'all are way ahead of me, but this sounds like the ONE school that has guaranteed placement. So there is no way that 90 PNMs were left bidless.

I looked up that school in IrishPipes' thread and the numbers/scenario are not matching up (to me, at least, with my current knowledge) with what the OP said.

I know one school in New England which currently is under a task force review and was looking into expanding from 3 NPC chapters to 4 before the task force, however other details don't quite match up with that either.

That was easy, lol.

None of the numbers seem off with me, but I cannot find the info about a chapter closing and kicking out new members.

I'm not getting the "4th was expelled last spring part" -- that's where the number seems off. The school we're talking about has had 3 chapters for quite a while.

Also, the sorority that was scheduled to colonize this week did in fact colonize...there are FB pictures. I think this must be another campus.

I don't know the OP's school. I am wondering if the former fourth ("expelled") chapter perhaps was a local.

Lightbulb. In IrishPipe's thread, there is a school with a really big clue in asterisks. I haven't compared the numbers to see if they synch The chapters are NPC though, so the claim that there were "not enough chapters" for the rushees doesn't jive. I just checked the number of chapters -- no to this guess.

I attended a school with 3 sororities (during my time- they've since expanded). We used RFM every formal recruitment while I was an collegiate member.

Also, in terms of special snowflake schools for recruitment- don't forget that Arkansas has joined their ranks (different quotas per chapter).

/end hijack

Now see you're gonna make me dig through the states....

Well the good news is that you only have to dig through 6 of them, and none of them have a lot of schools with Greek life.

And yet, after looking through all of them, I still don't know what school(s) everyone's talking about :p

I'm so not good at this game.

It's not that school, as they have already decided to add sororities and as the Greek life advisor is a female.

A chapter that closed doesn't "kick out" new members. They are released from their bonds to the sorority per unanimous NPC agreement.

Also pinksequins - I thought of that one too while I was looking, and if that is the answer, there must have been an underground sorority hanging fire for a long time.

I went through some and had a guess, but I don't think it is the ones others are talking about. I still don't know where this task force comes into play.

Aha. The confusion seems to be that the school is likely not TECHNICALLY in New England. In looking just at the numbers, it would seem like expansion is a reasonable idea. Now, going from good idea to getting it done is a whole different thing. And if your Greek life director is dragging his feet, I don't know what you can do about that besides say pretty please. Being fully professional, polite and succinct, try to meet with him to find out what his concerns are so that you might work toward alleviating those concerns. The problem could be that the other sororities don't WANT expansion, and without that, you're going nowhere. It could be a concern about hazing, drinking, exclusionary tactics, laziness (it's a lot of work to bring on a colony!), etc. All but the last one can be worked through with a little research on your part. With laziness, you're screwed.

What? No one in the nearby to New England states ever says they are in New England.

This. People who aren't near the area will assume that NY (especially) or PA or Jersey are part of New England, but people who live in those states know that they're not.

As a New Englander, the thought of mistaking PA as being in New England is just silly.

Going with DubaisSis' reasoning, there is at least one school that matches fairly well (but the lost chapter was a few years ago). I know the school that comes to mind because of relatives. IF it is that school, the expansion process is extremely slow and deliberate. The administration has not been particularly fond of Greeks and has taken a range of actions over the years. Returning to the OP's query, women at that school did not find homes, then it was for standard reasons (dropped or released). They aren't homeless due to to an arbitrary cap.

As a Pennsylvanian, I agree with you. :D

Exactly my point :D

When I was in college in PA, I met someone from another state (I forget which - maybe Missouri?), and I told him I grew up in New England. He said, "Oh, I've never been to Massachusetts." I was a little confused and told him I was from New Hampshire. Then HE looked confused and said, "I thought New England was in Massachusetts..."

If someone isn't from the northeast, I don't really expect them to know much about the area. However, people who are there KNOW their New England states and whether or not they live in one.

Ha ha…. I’ve had a similar thing happen. I once mentioned “growing up in New England” to a non-Northeasterner, and they said “You're not from New England. You said you were from Connecticut.”

No respect, I tell ya!

I know there are some Nebraska folks on here who can clarify, but Nebraska has some quirky formula where Lincoln girls are "free" and the remainder are bed rush or something like that. The difference between Nebraska and Indiana is that PNMs aren't suffering due to the odd formula. Placement numbers at Nebraska have consistently remained very high.

As for the speculation that this is the very, very, special snowflake guaranteed placement school, I don't think so. It just expanded (NPC) this week.

Well, some areas on the edges of New England won't self identify that way, specifically some from far SW Connecticut (who are considerably more likely to root for the Jets than the Patriots) and a few that I've met from up near Lake Champlain (NW Vermont) who are closer to Montreal than Boston.

Yes, but if someone from Connecticut says, "I'm from New England," that shouldn't confuse people, as CT is, in fact, a New England state. The point she was making (I believe) is that many people believe that New England is a city.

I blame the Patriots :p

I have heard people attending college in Northeastern New York describe their schools as New England colleges. In terms of academic culture, they may be.

This is the answer to everything in the world.

I don't know how y'all figure this stuff out!

I've been able to figure out 1 school in the who knows how many years I've been on greekchat and it was this year!

I suck at this. LOL.