School overcrowding
 

Maybe this should go in chit chat but I thought I would ask its relation to Greek life....

I saw that some people were talking about how U of Washington's enrollment has gone up drastically. Has this happened at your school? Has it affected rush/Greek life?

Our enrollment has gone up in the past two years. It seems that we're finding that with more people, there are more clubs/activities being offered. So.....recruitment figures have dropped. The sororities seems to be ok during open recruitment (not the guys though), but formal recruitment is not seeming to be a priority for women on the campus. It stinks because we had one of the highest Greek populations in the country and I thought that was kinda neat. :(

Ontario's universities are far too crowded. Each yeah, there has been dramatic increases among students attending university and it's at the point now where something has to give. Next fall we'll have a double cohort because grade 13 was eliminated which will cause a ripple effect among the provinces and even states.

UMass is becoming terribly overcrowded. When the school got rid of affirmative action, they had to maintain the same race ratios, so they increased the size of the freshman class by about 30%. At the same time, the retention rate has gone from 50% to 80%. Four years of that have left the dorms stuffed. There is no housing at any price off campus (70% of undergrads live on campus), and the Greek houses are stuffed. So every space in the dorms with a door that locks has been converted into a room- lounges and offices and such. At the beginning of last semester, there were even people living in local hotels at university expense.

The solution is that this year, they're cutting the size of the freshman class down to about 50% of last years size. It means the race ratios will be shot to hell, but there's nothing else to be done.

UW Overcrowding
 

Because of the UW's overcrowding we saw a great rush year. However, looking at next year is kinda scary. We had a rush of 15 people at our house. Thats good compared to years before. However, we need a rush of 20 next year. That will leave us with 60 guys. Sororities had 40 girl rush classes. Amazing when we look at it. My vision is: Rush is gonna suck next year when they don't accept as many people to UW and have a grade cutoff at 3.5. It could be a body rush year for some fraternities like Sig Eps, but wait... thats every year.

On the first day of school, we officially have no open rooms anywhere on campus. The dorm I live in was full for the first time since it was built. We had one dorm that wasn't even finished because they were still remodeling it, so those students got to stay in a hotel for the first month (care of WSU, of course). And, if you can believe it, they are stepping up the ads about admission up! I mean, wow, we have a full campus, but they wanna up the numbers even more! I know UW is way more crowded though. I thought about transfering to the U next fall, and started calling about more information in October. I was lucky to get a sneak peak at the crowding for next year when they told me I would have to have a 3.9 to transfer (now if suddenly makes sense!)

Since the advent of the HOPE grant, Georgia's public universities have become full to the bursting point. Freshmen are lucky to get housing at some schools and at others, there's a lottery to get a room on campus if you're a sophomore or higher.

This is great for the Greek system anyway! :)

right now school is about 3,000 higher than its ever been. Sophmores and up are encourged, and seniors have have stricter rules if they stay. Hopefully more guys will come out.

UMich has a horrible overcrowding situation. It started 5 years ago (my Fresh year) where the overadmitted by like 500 and lounges were converted into bedrooms and they put many students up in hotels. Its called build another dorm, we know you have the money too. And each year it gets more out of control.
As far as it relates to greek life, it seems the more they accept, the less that actually rush (the more that drop out of it too). Even though rush numbers are still good. It still amazes me though that they can get 900+ girls to go through.

Parking hasn't been a problem til this fall. Thankfully, I'm at the business school which isn't on main campus.

Enrollment is up while some of the budgets of some depts are cut. :p

Some of the depts are getting overcrowded such as business-- thankfully they raised the GPA requirement to a 2.8 cumulative on all core class work (the business school is a SR part of the University--) gets rid of some people :)

My school hasn't really been "overcrowded", but they always accept more freshmen than they really have space for.

When I was in school, anyone who joined a fraternity was required to live in the house. The school depended on the fraternity system to take a certain percentage of the freshman class out of the dorm system. (Sororities were different - only a couple had houses, and only upperclasswomen could live in them.) The school also guaranteed housing for 4 years. So freshmen typically lived in crowded rooms (3 people in a double, etc), and one dorm had "lounge doubles" - they installed doors with locks on a few entry lounges, and made them into doubles.

As of next fall, all freshmen are being required to live on campus - they cannot live in fraternity houses. The school is building a new dorm to accommodate the increase in dorm population. This past fall, for the first time, a few fraternities extended non-residential bids, so they can keep their houses closer to full next year. Which should mean that since fraternity houses will only have to accommodate 3 years' worth of brothers instead of 4, the Greek system should grow. I guess we'll see :)

Parking has gotten worse at my school although new parking garages get built every year. The traffic along the roads I take to school has gotten more and more congested. It has also become much harder to get into classes. They become full quicker because of the greater amount of students UCF admits each year.

Whoa...i have never heard of a school making someone live in residence, that's ridiculous. At our school however, our residence (dorms) only accomodate about 10% of the total undergraduate body at about 2,100. At mid-august there was a waiting list of students equal to that total amount this year. To top it off, there's a .2% vacancy of housing in this city - just brutal.

It seems that Our Acedemia Brilliants have come up with many Dumb ideas!

In Kansas, all of the state schools have shown minor increases, but in the same tone, they are raising tuition, limiting new students to GPA for admittance.
Yet my school tore down a dorm to make a plaza area. The only ones making money are the devolopers who build sub standard apartments. They do not let first year freshman live in Greek Houses.

Of course parking is a premium, but My chapter has parking for the House and Brothers which is right accross from campus.

Hell lets build more academia buildings but no place for students to live. :rolleyes: :mad:

Freshmen are being required to live in dorms because of an incident that happened about 5 years ago, where a freshman fraternity pledge drank too much during a pledge activity. He had a severe case of alcohol poisoning, didn't get the medical attention he needed until it was too late, and he died. :(

So the school administration decided that the best way to prevent something like that from happening again, is to keep freshmen on campus, where there are graduate residents to keep an eye on things.

*sigh*

Hmmmm, that's too bad. What if someone prefferred to rent a house or appartment not affliated with the university, would that be allowed?

I went to college in an "urban setting" (i.e. a few blocks away from a very, very bad area) that didn't have enough housing to accommodate everyone who wanted it. They didn't guarantee housing for anyone, even freshmen, and they held a lottery every year to see who got housing the next year. To top it off, a student had to already have housing for the current year to participate in the lottery.

It wasn't a problem for me since I commuted my first two years and then lived in my sorority suite (exempt from the lottery; we got to choose who lived there). But I knew many people who lived too far away to commute who lived in terrible, unsafe, overpriced slums.

Meanwhile, the university continues to buy up half the city and build academic buildings :confused:

Freshmen are not allowed to rent an off-campus apartment/house. Upperclassmen could, but housing is pretty scarce and quite pricey in Boston; most students live in the dorms or their fraternity/sorority houses.

Try being a commuter school in Los Angeles
 

I remember a couple years ago when I went to a leadership conference for a national academic honor society I belonged to. They had us break out into groups for discussion. Our groups were based on the size of the campus enrollment. The other delegates in my groups came from "big" schools that had 20,000 or 23,000 students. I'll never forget the expressions on their faces when I announced that California State University Long Beach has 31,000 students. They looked like they were going to pee their pants. :) I find it amusing when I hear people say "Oh my college is just soooooo huge. We have, like, 18,000 students." :)

Actually, the exact number last year was 30,918 and we probably have about 33,000 this year. This is due to normal growth and CSULB's increasing academic and athletic reputation. The university is reporting that we are at/over capacity. To help ease the over-crowding, CSULB is going to institute higher standards for admission. I don't really think that diversity will be a problem for us - our campus is well-known for the ethnic diversity of the student population (not surprising for a Southern California school).

Our dorms are filled to capacity with waiting lists. My roommate who attends on a golf scholarship couldn't even get a spot - and athletes always get priority! The nearby Brookes College has dorms about a half mile down the street. They allow CSULB to put students into their dorms. Since Long Beach is a large city, off-campus housing is not too hard to come by. The only problem is that the college itself is located in a neighborhood which is 95% single-family homes. No biggie, there are loads of apartments within a 10 minute drive. Though, sometimes the rents can be a little on the pricey side.

And what about Greek Affairs? Funny enough, with 33,000 students, one would think that the fraternities and sororities would be huge. Nope, not so. Being an urban university, most of the students drive in from home and have no need for a sorority "home away from home." I'm actually considering requesting the recruitment numbers from the Panhellenic Office. Does anyone know if there is an NPC rule against giving out that information? I am a member of the National Association for Student Personnel Administrators and have been recently added to the Fraternity/Sorority Committee (called a Knowledge Community). Just curious.

......Kelly :)

it's actually not that unusual to require student to live in residence. We require students to live in the halls freshman year. They're allowed to move to the Greek houses sophomore houses, but if not there, then they have to stay in residence. After that, they can move out, but most stay.

Amherst College requires all its students to stay on campus all four years. Harvard doesn't require its students to, but they have room- 87% stay on campus all four years.

On the flip side, a lot of Mass. state colleges only have room for a very small percentage of their students. UMass Dartmouth has 8000+ students, but only room for 1000 in the dorms- Bridgewater State has 12,000 students, room for about 2000 in the dorms- and local zoning in both places forbids Greek housing.

I know at most universities in Texas, thats the norm. You live on campus till you accumilate 30 or 60 hours, unless you live in town (with your family or relatives) or can get a medical excuse. (Which is what I did my fresman year to get an apt. Communal living was not for me but I think EVERYONE on the planet should be forced to do it for at least one semester. I swear if the Palastenians and Isrealis had to crap with each other on a daily basis, there would be no middle east crisis.)

BTW - What is grade 13 and why did they do away with it?

My university is the fastes growing in the state - 6 years running. When I started here enrollment was 15,000. This year we topped 20,000. Expecting to grow at 1000 students per year till we top out at 35-40K. UGH. i'll be long gone tho. theyre throwing up buildings left and right. Now they are starting an new housing task force next week to look at housing issues. on campus dorms and apts have been at 100% occupancy for the last 3 years, which is what policy requres before they can build more. We are the "overflow" university for UT Austin, whichis at supermax capacity (they dont accept transfers anymore) . So this year was the first year where we got overflow. Last week we initiated two "overflow" brothers. Cool for us.

As for the stated question. Well, I think it has been a slow increase on greeks. While I have been here PHC added a new sorority and increased quota 4 times. As for fraternities, we added 2. My org. We are the largest we have ever been. But I think that is due to busting ass at recruitment.

Only in Ontario, back in the day there were 13 grades. The last grade was called O.A.C. because the courses you studied were Ontario Academic Credits used exclusively for univeristy acceptance. You would only study grade 13 if you planned on attending university and would thus cater your courses to whatver you planned on taking. For ex, someone in engineering would take OAC Physics, Agebra & Geo., etc. etc. and the institution would take your 6 best O.A.C.'s, one of which has to be O.A.C. english.

Anyways, a few years back the provincial gov't made massive cuts to education spending and one of the first things to go was to get rid of grade 13. So, eventually everyone knew there would be a double-cohort year of two full grades across the province. That year is september of 2003, there will be more than double the amount of students applying to get into post-secondary as the year before. Lastly, Ontario maintains a disproportionate amount of the total pop. in Canada at about 35-40%. That's why ppl are freaking out, this will have huge implications for the students involved, not just in school but after graduation as well.

I think a big reason more people aren't going greek even if schools are getting bigger is because there are a lot more first generation college students. So its not like, yeah, my dad/mom/uncle whatever was greek, no one had even been to college. Or if they are second generation (like me) maybe their parents weren't greek and so they say, why should I be? Maybe numbers themselves aren't down, but percentage wise they are?

UW
 

I didn't go to U Dub but as an alum of a sorority with a chapter at U Dub, I talked to some of the girls during rush about what increased enrollment meant. (I live in Seattle.) Last year (fall 00) they had a huge over-quota pledge class because tons of girls rushed. But they rushed because the U wasn't guaranteeing freshmen housing, and they thought, "Might as well live in a sorority!" A lot of these girls were not serious about Greek Life and apparently quite a few of the chapters had problems with retention.

So this year at rush Panhel put a lot of stress on the "lifetime commitment" part of rush. I don't know how this affected the numbers overall, although I know my sorority did fine.

Re: UW Overcrowding
 

I just visited the Theta house at UW, and they are fabulous girls who had a great rush...they are hoping that numbers will again be higher.

I was just lavaliered by my UW Sig Ep Boyfriend, what do you mean they have 'Body' rushes? I know they've always had a big house, but hey, what can you expect from the largest fraternity in the Nation?

BTW, we have Theta Chi's at Cal Poly, there's actually a great exchange next week. We love the house, too bad they weren't bigger (25 guys) we have 100 girls!

Body Rushing
 

Good call. Theta's are good here. They seem to all be good looking and not bitchy like others here (not gonna name any, cause we see where it got me with Sig Ep's). As for the body rushing comments... To fill a big house, a large rush class is needed. A full house means more money. I think they filled their house in about 5 or 6 weeks or so. And I don't know if you have seen their house but its not the greatest house on campus. (Actual house not people in the house). Y a kinda get my point. Your right though, they did have the biggest rush class on campus, but body rushing to me is taking all legacies, taking all applicants that express interest. I would really like to know how many of the rushees were legacies. This would probably directly correlate to the size of the house. Also, I said we were Theta Xi, not Theta Chi.