NPC adding new council members--do you think it could/will happen?
 

The recent NAFLO and KBG threads made me wonder about this--do you think the NPC would actually be open to accepting a new member group if one or more met the requirements and applied sometime in that not terribly distant future? Considering it's been 60 years since they last expanded, I'm doubtful if anything would actually go through. OTOH, the NPHC did expand with Iota Theta Phi after 60 years of dormancy (yeah, I know they are different lanes and trying to make any generalizations across them is probably not a great idea), so old, long "stable" (read: same member organizations for decades) national councils have expanded in the recent past.

What do you think? Would a hypothetical new NPC group stand a realistic chance at being admitted, and how might any new additions be received ior change the NPC "landscape"?

"Different lanes" but councils and conferences may consider similar things when making such decisions. Here is what came to mind when I read your post:

1. Are there any newer organizations (or older organizations) that want to be a member of NPC and are sustainable and have something substantive in common with the other NPC sororities?

2. Iota Phi Theta was founded in 1963 and joined NPHC in 1997. They had 34 years of longevity and sustainability as an historically and predominantly African American fraternity. The other NPHC orgs joined in 1930 or 1931.

3. The NPHC consists of both historically and predominantly African American fraternities and sororities, of which there are 9. In other words, the context of the Divine 9, a relatively small number of historically and predominantly Black GLOs, is different than that of the NPC's 26 sororities (and NIC's 75 fraternities, including 4 of the 5 NPHC fraternities). That's a lot of sororities and so much that the NPC and NIC are separate conferences, unlike the NPHC.

4. I'm always interested in how organizations withdraw membership from councils and conferences; and how some organizations rejoin councils and conferences. When reading about fraternities that withdrew from NIC, I always wonder what the "disagreement" was.

Unless KBG kicks into super turbo expansion mode, or SAI/GSS/OPA decide they want to go full out social (not that there is any inkling of this happening whatsoever), conventional wisdom is that there will be contraction rather than expansion.

I think that when Kappa Sigma withdrew, part of the complaint was that they were having to pay for lots of NIC-sponsored programs that were duplicates of what they already provided for their members. In other words they were sick of ponying up $$ to finance stuff for the smaller fraternities that couldn't afford it. That's really simplifying it and as I said that's only part of it.

^ that's my thought.

I am thinking and I can't really come up with a sorority that would really fit the NPC profile plus provide national support and be "competitive". In my mind, the sororities that are outside of the NPC sprouted up BECAUSE they weren't NPC, either because of cultural or religious focus or desire to do their own thing.

Further, the NPC has ways of doing things that aren't the way things are done in other sororities...some require a statement of faith to join, others prefer a more NPHC type intake system and small pledge classes. It would take a huge change on the part of one of the two parties in order for it to mesh.

There are certainly sororities that meet NPC criteria for membership. SLG comes to mind, as I mentioned in the NALFO thread. There is also historical precedence for a group that sprouted from a non-NPC mindset later joining the NPC. The question is, what is NPC providing that one of those groups would not? Is there an advantage to being a full member of a CPH? Does NPC do national-level development type activities? Because the flip side is that joining an NPC requires an org to follow a lot of rules they didn't have prior. For what orgs might that be worth it?

I think I remember reading from BootyKBG that at one time KBG was on the path to joining NPC, but then some things changed. It also doesn't help that KBG is retracting and losing chapters to NPC groups. (For their old chapter at Loyola, KBG was not allowed to recolonize it since they were not an NPC and the school decided to have NPC groups only)

I think it would be very difficult for even a well established organization to achieve the momentum needed on many campuses that would be required to "compete" in the NPC game. Recruitment methods, quotas, total, houses being required to survive on many campuses and rules rules rules! :) I can see where many would look at NPC membership as a set of golden handcuffs even in the best of circumstances.

I think it's much more likely that some NPC groups will eventually be absorbed by other NPC groups. It's got to be increasingly challenging in this economic climate for some groups to survive as individual entities in the long run.

Well, that's assuming that they have to compete. There are numerous campuses where SDT just does its own thing, and that's more the model I could see one of the Latina-founded orgs following.

In terms of particulars, why is the NIC easier for Alpha Phi Alpha (and two of the other NPHC fraternities) to join than the NPC is for Sigma Gamma Rho (or the other three NPHC sororities). Is it the standardly unified rush concept that NPC has at most schools?

There might be rules which apply to NPC rush groups which the other GLO's don't want to abide by, and by rules, I mean dress codes and things of that nature.

I think dress codes woyld be the LEAST of the rules worries. Besides, other than competing with the other sororities that do wear matching clothes during rush, there is no NPC "dress code".

I think this is interesting. I don't have an opinion, except that I think it would be interesting to watch a new sorority grow and change over time, as well as what they would do for NPC. The NPC sororities have changed so much in terms of who they accept and what they do, I think it would be interesting to see how a Latina or gay or some other sorority would change the mix of the larger consortium.

At my school, there's a dress code during rush week, which all the sisters in the sororities have to comply to.
There's other stuff they have to do, but seeing as I'm not a member of one of the social sororities, most of the stuff I have is hearsay.

That's an individual case at one university that would really have zero effect on SAI making a national decision to join NPC. Besides, if SAI became part of the CPH, which they would have to do if they became NPC, they would get a say in things like rush week dress code - which is campus-specific policy that can be changed.

Gamma Sig is constitutionally co-ed, so I'm pretty sure that they would never join the NPC (and for various other reasons, as well).