Some Advice
 

I need some advice if there is anyone willing and knowledgable. Some ladies on my campus would like to bring a new NPC sorority to Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, Louisiana. They are particularly interested in Chi Omega, but understand that they don't pick like that. They have met with the council on our campus and were voted down. There are three current NPC sororities on our campus now, and it's a smaller school but not tiny. Probably around 15,000 students. Not a huge greek life, but I personally feel there is room for another group. I was wondering if it's really up to our campus' council or if ya'lls national/regional council make those decisions. Also, if they do, what kind of action do the ladies need to take to initiate something like that? I know that they'd hate to "go above" the campus council's head, but they are very passionate about having something different. Please forgive me if any of my details are wrong; I'm going on what one person with the group told me.

The campus Panhellenic is the first to decide whether the campus is open to expansion. If so, they would inform NPC, then NPC would invite its member organizations to submit proposals. However, since it sounds like your campus Panhellenic has decided it does not want to open for expansion, I think it dies there (for now).

The only way I can see this happening is if 1) all the current NPC chapters were at total or very near it and 2) the interested women form an interest group that consistently, for at least a couple years, stays at a level comparable to the other sororities.

What do they think will be so "different" from the other NPC sororities?

Can a school administration (or Office of Greek Life specifically) open the campus for expansion in spite of what the local panhellenic says?

And a related question (though maybe it should be anther topic), how would an NPC colonize at a school where it would be the only sorority of it's type, specifically an HBCU?

No, the school admin or GL office cannot do that. They can allow other kinds of sororities (professional, service etc) but not one that wants to be on Panhellenic.

As far as the second question, it would work pretty much like any other expansion, except the Greek Life office or school admin would vote on whether they want a group to come and which group they want, instead of Panhellenic voting on it. They could probably ask the NPHC sororities already there for their input, but that would be strictly unofficial.

good question - i'd like to know. would it be similar to how Pike got to Howard? (ok i know APO is there too... and Pike isn't NPC, but that's the first correlation i thought of)

I find that interesting....it seems like the local Panhellenic has more authority than the university in this case.

Thanks!

APO being rechartered there was more like any other campus organization being rechartered, on the school administration side.

With NIC orgs, I don't think it's nearly as strict. From what I recall, the boys there approached Pike and Pike said yes, rather than a formal procedure from the school to determine which org they wanted. (Which, in that particular case, may have been a better path, but it's none of my business.)

I think since all the individual NPC orgs are bound by what the NPC has established, I don't think any one group is going to fight to come in against the protocols of the PNC. They've established procedures in the mutual interests of all the NPC, so they expect people to follow them.

The university can kick them all off, but I don't think they'd try to subvert the policies of NPC or put pressure on the local groups to do so.

I think NIC is different, but I don't know. While they do have formal campus initiated expansion, I don't think it's considered required, but I'm not sure. (If a group starts up even if the campus IFC doesn't really want to expand, it's usually still in their best interested to make sure the new org. is bound by the same rules as the rest of the groups, so I think they usually get to be campus IFC members pretty quick.)

The campus is not open to NPC expansion, so it ends there.

You might want to investigate other types of sororities, like a multicultural GLO or a non-collegiate sorority. These are not NPC organizations.

our campus has five NPC sororities and nine NIC fraternities (one of which is a colony). As a countermeasure we have decided to stop expansion on our campus until NPC expands. If NPC won't let girls colonize a new NPC sorority I suggest speaking to IFC about suspending fraternity expansion as well...

That doesn't make sense. Typically, Fraternities tend to be smaller than sororities, and more numerous. You'd probably have to search for awhile to find a campus with more NPCs than fraternities. Plus, because IFC doesn't deal with quotas, etc like NPC does, you're still going to get the same amount of guys rushing (save for a few that the PR of an extra set of letters would bring), and probably give out the same amount of bids. I know that there are a few more stats that go in there, such as the probability of a guy finding a "fit" amoung more groups, but in general, you're probably not achieving a more even guy/girl ratio, which I'm assuming is your goal.

Does the NIC have the same type resolutions about expansion that the NPC does? I thought that you all had more autonomy generally.

True. Example: my school has 6 NPC sororities and 17 IFC fraternities.

Something very simliar happened at our school about 15 years ago. We had (at the time) 5 sororities and we really needed to add a 6th. One of the main reasons were that as recruitment efforts were gaining each year, and we were faced with only 20 to 30 students, who could not be accepted into another sorority during each recruitment, because all of the sororities were at-capacity, so there was no room for snap-bidding, etc.

The campus Panhellenic, like yours, did not want to expand, and this went on for about three or four years before we had to have a meeting with them and gave them the gravity of the situation. If it's time to add, then it's time to add.

We gave them the option of either increasing their current numbers (which they didn't want to do either) or adding another sorority, but we had to make it clear that one choice or the other needed to be made.

I'll admit...they hit the breaks on it, but we reminded them that the administration of the school and the sorority's had always had a great relationship, and we "didn't want to see that changed." We got up, and walked out of the room.

They voted to add another sorority, and Phi Mu came to our campus the next year and quickly rose to one of the top sororities we have on campus.

I know that not everyone cannot be given a bid, and there is always a few girls each year that are not accepted. Our situation was that we had extremely qualified ladies who could not find a sorority home due to space, and we wanted to create that space for them.

Georgia Tech has a whopping 30 IFC fraternities and only 6 NPC sororities. Quota was close to 50 last year, and average IFC chapter size is roughly 60 or so. (If anyone knows better, feel free to correct me... these are just rough numbers.)

I'm not correcting you, but it's worth noting that Georgia Tech's male to female ration is atypical for anything other than an engineering school: it's about 70% male. So, you still have more IFC groups than you might expect it things were proportional, but not as much as it might first appear.

And in case any female PNM's are thinking that you'd like that scene remember: the odds are good, but the goods are odd.

umm. how many IFC orgs ARE there?!

The relationship between NIC (national interfraternity council) and IFC is much looser than the NPC/Panhellenic relationship, to put it mildly. http://nicindy.org/information/NIC_m...ties/index.php is a list of all the NIC members, but there are several IFC fraternities (Kappa Sigma, Phi Delta Theta, a few others?) that aren't NIC members, and several of the NIC fraternities (Alpha Phi Alpha, Iota Phi Theta) that are also NPHC fraternities.

In short, there's no real answer to your question. I can tell you that there are only a few fraternities with any sort of presence in the Southeast that aren't represented at Georgia Tech. The list is at http://cyberbuzz.gatech.edu/ifc/inde...e=fraternities

/hijack

Maybe so, but I like the odd goods I got :D

ROTFL! I remember commenting on the great odds to a sweet Georgia Tech Indian girl we know here and she said in all seriousness,"But you can't really count over a third of those guys."

In the interests of message board harmony, I'm just going to let that one go.

It had the same effect on me when I heard it from the mom of a girl who goes there.

Seriously, there are fantastic people at Georgia Tech; I'd even go with saying the vast majority of people that I've met who went/go to Tech are exceptionally witty and as socially well adjusted and as cute as you'll find at any campus.

But when someone from Tech identifies somebody else as weird or geeky, know that we're talking the characters from Lambda Lambda Lambda in Revenge of the Nerds in real life here.

I'm sorry. I was just trying to kid.:o

So once again, here comes the rub!:mad:

NIC Greeks will expand if there is a need found.

NPC Greeks will not expand even if there is a need to expand to cover the existing Chapters instead.

Why do people think there are new GLOs croping up as locals or going to Multi, Latino, Asian, GLOs, ETAL ? Dar.

Not all men or women will feel comfortable with the existing GLOs on campus!

They are looking for something new to place the hat on their heads!;)

Help pull the heads out of the sands and expand.

If we as Greeks do not grow, we dwindle and die.:o

I was an engineering student, and I remember brining some sorority sisters to an engineering party. Hilarity ensued.

Iowa State has 30 fraternities (one local, the rest are national or affiliated with NIC) and 13 NPC sororities (with two sororities, Alpha Sigma Kappa and Phi Beta Chi, as additional panhellenic members).

The fraternities number anywhere from 13 to 88 according to the most recent grade report. Sorority total is 85.

What you have to understand about Tech is that the really weird and creepy people, you're never going to see and interact with socially anyway. So you really don't have to worry about them. They don't come out except to go to class and labs. :)

Hold up here.

Puddintane's school's situation was one thing - all the chapters were at total. Not only that, it was 15 years ago when Greek life was booming.

The situation the OP has described - we can't assume it's the same. I looked for sites for the Nicholls State groups, but couldn't find anything. We don't know if they're all at total, or if ANY of them are at total. We don't know if the women who "want something different" have actually bothered to go through rush and see what's there to begin with.

Tom, you've said over and over again how sororities at your campus closed. Part of the reason was probably because they expanded when they shouldn't have.

That's Nicholls State in Thibodaux.;)

I just really wanted to use the word Thibodaux. :D

:) i like your sig about crazy heffas.





anywhoo, yeah. like i mentioned in the OP, the girls in question are not closely associated with me. i do know that only 2 of them have gone through rush. both were offered bids but neither decided to continue after "seeing what each group had to offer". as for the other girls, i know that they have not gone through rush and are basing their opinions on what they've seen on campus and from talking to actives. i don't know about numbers really; i'll have to ask how many women the 3 established sororities turn away, if any. all i know is that the women in question are not satisfied with what they have found and i don't fault them for it. there wouldn't be twenty-something different NPC orgs if everyone fit in the three that are already on our campus.

p.s. there are no local sororities here, and i'm part of the first chapter of a multicultural org in our area. in louisiana, actually. woowoo

True, but if you had XYZ, DEF, and QPS instead of ABC, TU, and HHH (I just love making up GLOs), locally, it's not going to matter. Sure we all have different colors and flowers and philathropies...but it comes down to the girls on that particular campus. The reason, nationally, there are 26 NPCs, is that they represent a diverse avalibilty of resources and "business plans". Some of the smaller NPCs only expand once every few years, and then only to smaller Greek systems, where as the bigger NPCs expand to several campuses each year, and don't have much interest in taking on the little schools with small Greek systems. It takes all kinds, nationally. Locally, it doesn't make much difference which NPCs you have.

well, i guess it doesn't hurt to say which sororities i'm referring to...there's DZ, tri-Sigma, and Phi Mu on this campus. i've always regarded those to be larger organizations. i can't see it hurting to have another one, even a smaller one.

I laughed. The same can be applied to the husband's Alma Mater. He's an enginerd and I love him, but dang some of the people who attended his school were Weird.

Just wanted to point out that Pepperdine has 7 NPC sororities and only 5 IFC/NIC fraternities (one of which just got chartered this spring).

Well, there's ONE out of the thousands of Greek systems out there. I'm sure there's more, but you have to admit that it's the exception, rather than the norm.:)

ETA: Do you happen to know the average NPC size as compared to the average IFC size at Peppy?

You should try just a little better. Even I found it offensive.

I think what she was trying to say is that it doesn't matter if it's those three or KKG, AST and DG. The girls in the sororities would still be the same girls at that campus. If DZ, SSS & PM vanished tomorrow and 3 new sororities sprang up, most likely the girls who pledge the new groups would have been the same ones to pledge the old groups.

Like I said, it all depends on where they are as far as total is concerned. If the system isn't booming, many NPCs would be reluctant to colonize there. No group wants to come in and immediately assume the bottom position on campus.

Edited to just add this part.

No, not quit.

ADPi was there and were the so called fat girls, sound familiar?

The LXA Chapter helped a local start and they were offered affiliation with Phi Mu, and they refused, ergo, they then closed.

KD came on campus and seemed to have a great shot as had @ 40-50 members. Do not know why they closed and have not been able to find out why?


So, with ASA in a old but nice house on main drag (across from the LXA hous), SSS in an old house and hard to find, and AGD who is on the main drag but way south and wanting to build a new house, there is a need for at least one new Sorority that has backing and a good name for chapters in the area. School is @ 6,700 and growing.

So with now 6 to be soon 7 Fraternities and only 3 Sororities, what is wrong with me wanting expansion as it seems to be a thing today.

New School Adviser is a SAM (Sammie) and a firm beleiver in Greeks and wanting expansion!

So, why keep women out of the experience if they do not care for the current GLOs?

You must have a 1/2 empty glass.

Chapters will make it as long as they are spoon fed and protected and do not have to work to build!