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.