Large vs Small chapters
 

Since I went to a small school, our chapters were small. We had seven sororities on campus, all between 35-60 women (total was 60 at that time, now it is 50) one was around 15 women...

My class was considered large, we had 4 through formal, 4 through COB and then, since our NM program was 4 weeks, we took a second group each semester, they were the part two of our class, there were 2 of them. Total of 10 in my class.

Now, as I am wasting time looking at bid day pictures, I am seeing classes of 60-100 women and thinking HOLY CRAP. That CLASS is larger than my CHAPTER.

Do you know all of the women in your CHAPTER? or even your CLASS?

At schools with such large groups, is there a reason they don't make the chapters smaller and then expand to have more chapters?

Don't get me wrong, I look at bid day pictures and videos and think "Wow, that would have been awesome to run with the other new members and see such a large group looking for me!"

Also, how does it work to select new members? How do you remember everyone? How does everyone get to meet all of the PNMs? My mind is boggled with such a large group!

These are things going through my mind during the super bowl.

I'm from IU, but my chapter expanded beyond our bed quota during my junior and senior years. We took a PC of 80something this year, and it is really a full-time job.

I can't talk about the selection part, obviously, as that's MSS

It takes time to remember everyone, and sometimes you still get girls confused. I had moments where I was like shit...I know you. I know you, I KNOW YOU WHY CAN'T I REMEMBER YOUR NAME?!?! You gradually meet them, we have 'Lion Links' so one active is assigned to one new member each week or two, that helps, and then you go out to dinner with other lion links and you gradually get to know them in small groups. It really is a challenge, but you do it. Comes in handy when you join new offices and have to learn names :)

There are obviously pros and cons of small and large chapters, but at campuses with sorority-owned (as opposed to University-owned) housing, filling the house is critical. At places like my alma mater (Illinois), this gets harder and harder every year that the non-Greek options get better. Lots of women only want to live in the chapter house for one year, so you have to effectively have a pledge class each year that is large enough to fill the house when they are sophomores.

So how would a campus make more groups colonize so that there are fewer members? If it's a campus that typically has only NPC chapters, there is a finite number of them. If you take huge Greek campuses like in the SEC and others, there may be 18-20 groups. The remaining ones of the 26 may not want to be there, may not have the resources, etc. You can't just "make" more groups appear in order to lower chapter sizes

I'm not saying "MAKE" I was just saying why doesn't that happen? I was just thinking as I was watching the game... not trying to cause controversy.

Huge chapters are just so far from what I came from, it really is hard for me to fathom a greek system that is as large as my entire school population.

There are a few schools where they're going to have to start begging some of the NPHC or other non-NPC sororities to get involved because they are just maxed out. Obviously IU is in that category, but really Alabama is pretty close to maxed out. I am surprised that there hasn't been a taker at Bama yet. While it would be VERY expensive to colonize there, it seems like you could amortize out those costs pretty quickly. My guess is Arkansas will give the 2 new chapters 2 years to settle in and they'll add 2 more. They have enough interest to probably take on all of the NPC (not that I'm advocating that). And I don't think the trend toward interest in sororities is going away any time soon. I'm in the camp that it's a direct result of kids having every moment of their lives planned and organized.

Because it is very expensive to colonize anywhere much less at one of the larger schools. You have the PR process the semester before colonization. Then you have the colonization process which takes 6 or more executive office/national office people (many more if it's an Alabama or the like) and housing them for about 2 weeks. Then you have the consultants who have to live with them for a semester or two. Then you have housing. Our house at Alabama that we just moved into last fall after one year on campus cost $8 million. No one gives that to you. And all that's jsut for starters. It's a very expensive process and not a step that groups take lightly.

60 girls in my new member class and about 200 in my chapter when I was in school. I knew everyone. Was I BFF with them all? Certainly not. But the same would have been true in a group of 30.

FWIW, I really enjoyed being part of a large chapter. Girls came from all different backgrounds and majors, we had a ton of talent to choose from for Homecoming skits and intramural sports, and a lot of different interests represented in various campus activities. :)

It also made it easy to pick and choose what you wanted to do. We were small when I joined and big when I graduated. When we were small, I felt pressure to have my hands in everything. Had to be in skits, on the IM team, do other philanthropies, hold an office, etc. etc. When we were large, I could do things I was truly passionate about and put 100% into those things

I am from a larger chapter, but advised a small chapter so I could see the pros and cons of both. The biggest pro for large chapters is that you have lots of members to share the load. Also, it's not detrimental to the chapter to have members with varying levels of involvement. We had sisters who never took leadership roles, performed in skits, etc but they did pay their bills on time, went to class and had great GPAs. In the small chapter I advised, this type of involvement was often looked down upon. I always had to remind the EC that it takes all types of members for a chapter to be successful.

The biggest pro for the small chapter was how easy it was to get to know everyone. During recruitment it was easy to find girls who would have things in common with the PNM because they really knew their sisters.

It is true that in a smaller chapter, you do end up doing A LOT.

In my honorary, at one time down to 8 members when I was there, it was HARD. Once we added 16 new members in one semester, things got a lot easier.

Honestly, I would LOVE to have had a year in a HUGE chapter with a HUGE house. Our house was an old converted farm house that when I was there held 19 women (with one single.) However, we often had 2-4 singles. They now have made a lot of the rooms singles (which is good, because there were some SMALL doubles!) We had a decent living room, a regular old kitchen, a single bathroom downstairs (5 rooms downstairs on main level,) and a 3 toilet/2 shower/3 sink bathroom upstairs. We had laundry, huge storage and a nice sized chapter room downstairs. We had one of the nicest houses on campus. (I believe the ZTA house was an old dorm? 33girl, I need you on that one!) They held more women than we did.

Id LOVE to even go walk inside a large chapter house. Anyone know of any LARGE Phi Sig houses, or large houses near DC that wouldn't mind a random old person walking through oohing and ahhing?!

See, I'm the opposite. I was in school at a time when it was NOT cool to be Greek, when we had people "depledging" and "deactivating" left and right. We had far fewer members my senior year than my freshman. Our chapter ultimately closed because of it...and because of our inability to support the physical house with those numbers.
So I keep thinking that it's all going to swing the other way any minute.

My college has ceiling set at 40 now, it was 35 in the fall though. They only raised it a week before informal spring recruitment. I personally love having a small chapter because I know every girl well. Then again, my college is tiny (I would say about 800 students) so having a large sorority is improbable.

Because of this concern, if I were to colonize, at, say, Bama, I would NOT recommend building the biggest house on campus. Average house size max. Nicest? Maybe, but not the biggest. But with the way some of these schools are going, they have a LONG way to go before the membership can't maintain the structure.

When I was in school (in the 80's) my school was in a colony blitz. All of the chapters that extended failed within 10 years. But the numbers were not there, and pre-RFM the success of chapters was very lopsided. At least 5 of 15 chapters were not at (or even near) total, and yet they brought on a 16th. I don't think any school would do something like that now. And I think that's another reason to hold out hope for continued growth. RFM makes the whole process fair and my guess is chapter failure is down considerably. I don't know the numbers, however.

But I do agree that that's probably why some schools have allowed their chapters to become freakishly large - fear that it's the high point of the bell curve.

To preface: my pledge class was right around 54 and total was around 130 I believe. It grew throughout my collegiate years.

I knew everyone by face, name, year, majors (usually) and typically something about them. It really depended on if they were at the house often. When I was a senior, I graduated early. I didn't get to know that pledge class as well as I wanted, but I still got to know them fairly well. I knew the seniors, juniors and sophomores when I pledged very well. I also knew the juniors and sophomores when I graduated very well. I could tell you the life story of almost everyone in PC. This is where I think living in is important. If you have a smaller chapter, it is easier to get everyone together other than at mandatory events. In larger chapters, it is always a struggle. If there is a common structure, people come over for meals, studying, hanging out etc. You end up hanging out with sisters you normally wouldn't without the shared structure either because you live together or convenience.

I think the question could flip as well. Why have a bunch of small groups instead of having larger? Yes, there are different personalities, but at the same time, are the groups that different? As I got older, I really felt that I would have been comfortable with any group on my campus. I would have developed differently than I did, but I still feel like I would have done just as well.

I feel like a small group would have been nice. If you aren't an outgoing person it can be easy to feel lost sometimes.

I'm not sure how to answer without going into membership selection. I will try my best to still answer. On pref night/bid day, I met women that we were thinking of bidding or had extended a bid, whose names I had only heard a few times and had never met. I trusted my sisters to know the chapter and to know what was best for the chapter. Every year this seemed to work out really well for us. This is also why GCers recommend that new members stick it out for a few weeks if they didn't like their bid because at the larger chapters a PNM really only meets a small portion of the chapter. This also probably plays into why it took me two years to realize that the chapters on my campus really weren't that different. You get 130 college women in a room and there is a spectrum. You add the filter of being interested in sororities and the spectrum narrows. I can almost guarantee that the distribution of women from that spectrum in the chapters might be different, but that all areas would be represented. Sure XYZ may have more cheerleaders, but ABC has a couple too. This also might be different in the SEC. I really can only speak for my campus, but it has been echoed, more or less, from others as well.