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I think it's great that membership numbers are rising at UCI. Other than UCLA, Berkeley, San Diego and Davis, there is generally low student interest in GLO involvement (i.e. lower than 15% of the student population). From the information I have collected through various UC student life offices, more students seem interested in student organizations that will help them advance in their post-undergraduate life. As we all know, involvement in GLOs can be helpful after graduating, but not all students see it that way. To each his/her own.
For UC Riverside, a campus that is slightly smaller and younger than Irvine, we thought we had seen a jump in recent years of students involved in GLOs. In the early 2000s, we had a report 3-4% of students in GLOs, and now there is approximately 7.8% of students involved. If you look at the data (which I do as part of my job), there was not necessarily an increase in Greek students, but a change in the reporting of chapter member's scholarship information. Before the year 2003, only IFC and NPC orgs (with the exception of 1 or 2 non-IFC or NPC orgs) were on the University's scholarship report system. All GLOs are required to report and update member scholarship information quarterly; up until 2003, 20+ organizations were not reporting this information, making the "All-Greek" campus percentage false. Now that all GLOs are on the system, the numbers are much more accurate. However, UCR's percentage is still down from where it was in the late 1980s-early 1990s; at that time, over 15% of UCR students were affiliated with a GLO. Lots of reasons for this slump, the big one being that as the student population at UCR rapidly grew, membership in GLOs didn't keep up.
Wow, that was long...
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