Do large pledge classes hurt a chapter's ability to establish meaningful friendships
 

Do large pledge classes hurt a chapter's ability to establish meaningful friendships with new members?

My initial response would be yes ... but we have never had a large pledge class. Ours averages around 7-9 with total active membership averaging around 22. Being this small, we are all very close to one another and I could not immagine that being the same with a huge active chapter.

No. I'm from a class of 56 and I have established many meaningful friendships. I really don't think size has much of an impact - it's more about the people themselves and their willingness to connect with each other.

I'm from a pledge class of 29 (not quite 56). We do get very close, it just takes time. Since we have deferred recruitment though, it is sometimes harder for the new girls and the seniors to bond too much because they only have a semester with them.

IMHO it really depends on the Chapter and can even vary from year to year. I know of some campuses where they've had what I consider a small pledge class (10-15) and they weren't very close. While I've seen large classes (40-60) be amazingly close. It depends on the activities planned, how committed the members are (both old and new), and simply the personalities of the members.

The SLU chapter of my GLO has pledge classes of like 100+ (from what I heard). They have "families" of like 20 people, I heard that it works well.

I can only comment on my experience since I obviously didn't go to a school where there were pledge classes of 50 girls. My class started out I believe with around 15 girls. Gradually people dropped until there were about 6 or 7 of us. Out of that group, it was still very "cliquey" and ultimately, 3 of us ended up crossing. It was like 3 of us who were already friends and the other 3 were already friends-type deal. But then my chapter also has had larger classes than that cross and from the way it appears the girls seemed/became super close. I think it just depends on the personalities of the girls pledging and what they are looking to get out of the organization as a whole. I think that regardless there are always going to be people you are closer with than others, and like in real life, people that you really can't stand.

Those chapters that have large NM classes (Ole Miss, Texas, Oklahoma, etc...) have systems and programs in place that work for their chapters. No, you probably don't "know" everyone (you know their face/name, but that may be it) but you still form the close friendships and respect for your org that you would with a smaller chapter, it's just in a different way.

Like winneythepooh7 said, even in a smaller class or chapter, you're not going to be BFF with everyone. And that's okay.

I don't know about that, I think at Long beach, The bigger hosue tend to separate themselves by pledge class and have a lot of issues with other classes in the house. I know fraternity, such as mine have a bit more closer bond to the house and the people in the house. Bigger class tend to have more cliques, i could be wrong, but i seem class of 45 girls having different groups get along with each other and talking bad about other people in their classes. I do agree you are always going not goign to get along with anyone, no matter the size of the group

That another funny thing, i know girls who have members in their house and they don't even know them, one girl founded out a year later a girl was in here NM classes.

This is exactly the case. I come from a pledge class of 66 (and there have been pledge classes of over 70 at my school). I will say that it is impossible to become close with every girl in your pledge class nonetheless your chapter. You find your core group of friends in the pledge class that you become really close with. Inevitably, every class loses a few members a year so by the time you're a senior, your pledge class is smaller. The remaining girls tend to become a lot closer.

Large pledge classes do not hurt a chapter's ability to establish meaningful realtionships. Poorly run fraternity (or sorority) education programs do.

I see chapter with really good education programs that have bad relations with their members. Large Groups have the trouble like small groups, but small groups most likely will know all the members of their house then large groups. I am not saying if it is bad or good, but realistic it is hard to get to know over 100 girls or guys in a year then have to know a group of completely new people that can range fro 30-50 people

Size is irrelevant if, like others have said, you have a stable program that involves the new members in the chapter. And we can not forget to "keep rushing" current members by making everyone feel included, trying to attend things etc. so there can be less division amongst groups.

BUT if you havea large class in 4 years you need to replace them! So the stronger your chapter officers, programs, and commitement to the GLO u are a member of is size should not matter. I have seen small and large chapters fail b/ c of a common thread: lack of responcibility and lack of communication.

I understand what you are saying, I do believe it can happen in small and large chapter, but many people on my campus with 100+ members do say, it is kind of hard trying to get to know all their pledge class members, and with some chapters you can see the divide. My cousin is a Tri-Delta from Indiana and she talked about how hard it is to get to know people because her pledge class is 67 girls with 159 members. Somebody did make a value point about thoughout the years, the girls that are left are the ones left from your class, and i do agree with that.

It just blows my mind to think of having a pledge class of over 20, let alone over 50! Ours have always been small, with my 9 person class being the largest in recent history. We tend to wear our size as a badge of honor...even though we may only have 20 or so actives, we still meet/exceed the work done by chapters 3x our size on campus, and we manage to have a better GPA than every other house on campus (why that's important? fewer girls means that every grade hurts the average).

Even with 9 girls and a year later, I'm still learning thigns about my pledge sisters that I never knew. But that's what is great...we can still cram everyone into the living room and have a gripe session, we can still all fit in an elevator (don't ask...weird tradition), and we know more than name hometown major. It's a different feeling from holding your meetings in a lecture hall. When we got our new girls, we got all excited because we had to add another table to fit everyone.

I don't think i would have rushed if my chapter had been 100+ people...the size is just intimidating to me. I love my 23 Delta kittens, each as crazy and wonderful as they are, and I really do consider them my blood.

Absolutely not.

It may diminish a person's ability to be friends with all or most of their pledge class, but what happens is that the pledge class divides up into various smaller groups. I think it may actually be beneficial for forming friendships because the pool to choose from is larger -- just by the law of averages you're more likely to find a good friend in a larger group than a smaller one.

I went through new member period with 16 other girls. At first we had cliques, but as we went through when we would do things we would end up having to work with eachother together and in the end my whole pledge class became really tight with eachother and the rest of the sisters.

Something that we did in our chapter was have "pledge pals", that was an attempt to break up the cliques. Each new member would get "paired up" with a person they didn't know at all the first week of the new member period, and throughout the process, there would be stuff you were designated to do with your "pledge pal" only!

I see were PhoenixAzul is coming from, because my class was only 6 and we know everything about the person, even though we were a small class, we did start of not knowing each other, but we got to know each other over the years. Now, we recent had have bigger class, on class was 28 members and they had some much drama because they all did not get along and had cliques, but with a program like "pledge pals" it helped them get along. I feel it is easier for smaller group, but i think larger groups can do it as well

ps -

My pledge class was 23 to start. We lost 2 right away, another 2 the next year, 4 the year after, etc... to where we ended up with about 15 women our senior year. There was one group of women that always did everything together, another group of women who went around hating on everything the first group did and my friends who got along with everyone and laughed at all the drama. Now that we've been out of school 4 years, I really only constantly keep in touch with a few women.

Moral of the story: you are what you make of your situation. If you like it small, cool. If you don't mind it huge, great. Find what works for you.

Amen. My pledge class started out with 65 girls and we've already lost some and gained some. I'll be a sophomore this fall and I can tell you that the seniors who just graduated did not have 65 girls in their pledge class. (Anymore at least!) Yet the girls that were left were best friends and were all close.

And as it was said earlier by ISUKappa, larger chapters do adapt to having more girls... and although we may have to work a little harder to get to know each face and name (my method of operation is staring at the little composite we all get, haha) it happens eventually and we're sisters and good friends just as much as a chapter of 20.

My new member class was 50 girls. I agree with what was said about it being not the size of the group, but the quality of the new member program. We had a great New Member Coordinator for my class and she made sure we did plenty of activities throughout our new member period to get to know everyone. While I am not very close friends with all of the girls in my new member class, I definitely know all of them and know a few things about them. I consider all of them a friend and I know I could go to any of them if I needed something. There are girls that I have become very good friends with, and that's what makes the chapter strong. A few close friendships can really make the experience for a new member. I think the responsibility lies in the hands of the Pledge coordinator and the older members. As long as the new members are shown how important it is to get to know each other, there will not be as many petty problems. (because, let's face it, with that many women, there are always going to be petty fights.) I think large pledge classes actually help to facilitate more meaningful friendships. With more pledges, it seems to be more likely that each pledeg can find his or her "nitch" in the group as a whole.

My new member class about 55-60 girls in it & although I wasn't best friends with all of them I certainly made very many meaningful relationships. I got to know each of them over time but there were some girls I just clicked with better.

I guess it just depends on your preferences. We try not to take classes over the size of 15. We had a class of 30 when the active house total was about 25. They were the majority. And if they all voted the same on something but didn't know much about it, it wasn't always the best result. So we agreed never to take that many girls again.

Our campus greek life is small in comparison to bigger schools. Houses have a grand total of 70 girls rather than taking in 70 new members.

I've never been in the situation so I guess I can't knock it. But I don't understand how you can know who everyone is when you have over fifty new members AND over 100 active sisters. How do you meet everyone? And know everyone's name? I'm not saying you have to be BEST FRIENDS... but I'm talking basics... as in "I could recognize this woman as my sister withour her wearing letters."

I've always wondered the same thing about the huge big chapters. I am sure that our GCers from these bigger chapters will enlighten us, but I would imagine that if sisters participate in regular sisterhood events that there are ample opportunities to get to know a great deal of the sisterhood. I think it is like anything else in life; the more you put into it, the more you will get out of it. My chapter was relatively small, I think there were 30-40 of us when I was there and our pledge classes were pretty small. There were still new members and actives who chose to exclude themselves from events and just regularly everyday sorority life and I am sure that goes on in the big chapters as well.