will there ever be a new NPC member?
 

I am wondering what people think about this. It's been years since a sorority has become a member of the NPC. I'm curious if anyone knows of a national sorority has enough chapters to even qualify.

Just seeing what people think. :)

Plus there are so many different sorority types: social, professional, multicultural, etc. And many have formed their own councils. The AES sororities became members of the NPC...but I am unsure if all the different councils would want to merge. As a member of a social and a professional I don't know if it would happen...

What are your thoughts, oh Greekchatters? ;)

I doubt it. Not in my lifetime.

I can't find it right now, but there's a fairly long thread on this subject already.

With the bar being so much lower to enter other councils, doubtful.

Is the bar lower or just different?

I'm sure there's a bit of subjectivity there in what I said, but okay..whatever... "different." That's just a bunch of assumption on my part. And there's the fact that MCGLOs probably have no interest in operating like NPCs because there are so few similarities.

But who knows? Some local may turn into a national and actually petition.

I think with the NIC, we have an outside shot of seeing some of these newfangled "Christian" GLOs like Beta Upsilon Chi petition.

One group that I think might be a *possibility* is Alpha Omega Epsilon.

Do the Christian sororities and fraternities have their own council?

Isn't AOE an Agricultural Sorority? I thought they might be a member of a professional council...

I heard that Kappa Gamma Beta was thinking about petitioning...but something about their chapters--like they almost had the required number.

KBG and AOE would seem like potential choices to me but since the NPC rules are different than NIC (basically the male counterpart of NPC for you newbies out there) I don't know how that could happen. AOE has the right to take specific members based on professional aspiration but that goes in conflict with NPC rules against discrimination. I wouldn't plan on NPC changing their rules to accommodate that.

I think, if I remember from previous threads, that KBG is a true social sorority and would be the most logical addition, but AOE seems bigger to me and more able to take on the issues of scale that NPC membership would require. But remember, there are campuses all over the country where NPC and non-NPC sororities rush together. I think schools can (and do) require their local and smaller nationals to function under NPC or NPC-like rules to minimize hazing, discrimination, etc.

If they did work out something to bring AOE into the fold, SAI would probably fall into the same category. IF they wanted to, which is a pretty big if.

NPC limitation by major?
 

According to the Wikipedia page, Triangle Fraternity (which is part of the NIC)

"limiting its recruitment of members to male students majoring in engineering, architecture, and the physical, mathematical, biological, and computer sciences. It is the only member of the North-American Interfraternity Conference to limit its membership recruitment to these majors."

So a sorority which did the equivalent limitation would not be eligible for membership in the NPC?

Correct. But remember, our rush process is very different. We scream from the mountain tops to "keep your options open" and to look at each sorority with equal importance. You are required to visit every chapter during formal rush and you are required to accept an invitation from each one through the process until the end. It's just not the same with fraternities. The rushees are told (in most cases) to rush a few of the available fraternities. So whereas NPC functions to a great extent to help each of its member sororities achieve parity on each campus, the NIC has no such goal. And I think this is why NPHC couldn't merge with NPC either. Aspirants are told (from what I can gather) to choose A sorority they want to join and work toward that membership. Even-steven isn't part of the protocol.

If anything, members will probably leave, not be added.

This made me chuckle. Please explain?

Really? What makes you say that? Are there members of the NPC that don't seem too happy with it?

Oh I can't wait to hear this!

I would like to see BYX join but I know nothing about the NIC process. Does NIC have a non discrimination policy regarding religion?

By their actions, yes.

I would not and I'll do my part locally to object to their inclusion with IFC. On my campus, BYX has a large number of members in other IFC fraternities. It leaves them as more of a Greek Letter club in my book than a fraternity.

I also find the claim of them being a "Christian Fraternity" to be misleading. Nearly all ore maybe all NIC fraternities have Judeo-Christian (or just Jewish in some cases) religious values at their core.

Kevin,

Just because someone is allowed to have simultaneous membership in an IFC fraternity and another organization doesn't make the other a "Greek Letter Club". I'll be quite willing to argue at length on the topic, but that wouldn't just be a lane swerve, it would be an highway exit onto another road

In many ways groups like Beta Upsilon Chi are considerably more Religion oriented than almost all of the NIC fraternities were at *any* time in their history. Even Alpha Tau Omega (which I personally count as one of the *most* historically Christian Fraternities in the NIC at the time of its founding) would have been *very* unlikely to schedule time as an organization to attempt to Proseltyze, Beta Upsilon Chi and the similar groups do so.

I consider Beta Upsilon Chi to be Religion Focused in the same way that Sigma Alpha Iota is to Music or Alpha Phi Omega is to Community Service.

At Clemson BYX is a social fraternity that operates just like all others social fraternities in conducting rush, having pledges and parties, etc. They just have more strict Christian tenets that need to be followed, i.e. no drinking unless you're of age, belief in the word of the lord, etc. They're more religious (see several chapters getting sued for expelling gay members) than other chapters founded on religious values, as far as I can tell.

Edit: Naraht beat me to it.

I think Kevin's point is that if they want to become an IFC member they need to decide which way they want to go. Sigma Nu, Kappa Alpha Psi, and Triangle are all IFC members that operate very differently, but as far as I know, they all have a rule that you can't join another IFC fraternity.

I am very interested in this...for some reason, it would seem crazy to split away from the NPC...but many of the member groupa did fine without the NPC.

So I would think that the NPC label jas certainly helped when a sorority is looking into expansion or if a group of ladies on a campus are looking for a national group that is social and non professional, cultural, etc they would probably find the list of NPC members more easily.

I don't know much about the inner workings of the NPC...how do you know which groups area acting in a such a way...like are they working against the NPC or something?

I'm curious...

I'm confused by this. Care to elaborate?

Slight point of clarification, it is on the NIC level that there is the rule you can't join another NIC fraternity - i.e. if you are a member of an NIC, you may not join another NIC.

On the other hand, the IFC is campus specific. (Although, my understanding is the NIC is attempting to make campus IFCs more uniform – similar to the NPHC and NPC campus based umbrella organizations.) As such, on some campuses the IFC includes non NIC members (Kappa Sigma, Phi Delta Theta for example) – and GLOs that may allow duel membership (for example, Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia).

I've seen campuses where just about every Greek Letter Organization that isn't a true honorary gets stuck onto the same Council.

Mergers?

No.

Sorry, but this is a no spoonfeeding zone. Read over the expansion threads and think about it.

Okay, I was writing a post about how I had read through all the expansion threads since 2008 and didn't have a clue but the more I think about it the more a certain idea starts to make sense. I have no idea if I'm totally off-base or not, though, so I'm not going to voice my opinion on this matter. I just have one now where I didn't before.

I believe I know where you're going with this. When you first mentioned the possibility of a GLO (or GLOs) leaving, I immediately had a thought pop into my head which I think is the same thing that you're thinking. Your clue to check out the expansion threads makes me about 99% sure that we're on the same page.

I'm with you. I am seriously out of the loop and I didn't realize it. So, would the chapters that continue to expand and get bigger want to leave because NPC doesn't provide them with the resources they have on their own or is it opposite? I guess I never realized that there were organizations that were seriously that unhappy with the NPC. I'd hate to see anyone leave.

You knoweth not that you knoweth not.

I seriously doubt ANY regular poster of GreekChat has the inside scoop on what goes on behind the scenes at NPC. Please.

No one said they did...

As curious as I am about this, I checked out the expansion threads but haven't found anything about any groups suggesting they would want to leave. Perhaps groups that regularly choose not to participate in formal recruitment? I'm clueless.

33girl simply said that she could see a group leaving before one was added. That doesn't mean that any group has straight up said they might leave. As far as I know, no group is currently trying to join the NPC, either. This is just a "what if?" discussion.

My honest *guesses* about what could be meant...

The most likely reason for a group to want to leave the NPC based on expansion would be
1) a declaration that they *are* going to expand to school X even though the NPC at school X is unwilling to expand regardless of how large the houses get.
2) They've decided that they *are* going to return to the school that was their first chapter even though the school still (100+ years later) doesn't qualify for NPC sororities (presumably being a 2 year school)

I imagine it's difficult for smaller NPC sororities to compete with larger sororities in terms of alumni support and money when expanding at a large campus. NPC expansion and recruitment rules are so strict that they're unfavorable to smaller groups. You'll notice that many smaller organizations don't bother to even present at large schools even when it would be a recolonization of a single letter chapter. It's kinda not fair.

Except that this happened:

which makes it sound like more than a "what if" discussion.

Really? It's mutual selection just like with recruitment.

What does mutual selection have to do with it when larger groups have more resources, funds, alumnae, etc. to offer in their presentations? I'm not saying it's unfair, but it certainly isn't a level playing field.