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The numbers issue has been discussed over and over. Coramoor, I think you and I would probably disagree on the way specific chapters are valued (based on your comments, especially the "easy pledge process"), but I would agree with you that the only proper measure of your fraternity's value to you is what you personally get out of the membership.
I know a little about Morgantown (I'm from Logan originally) and who is - or used to be - considered the top fraternities there. My guess is they are also among the larger chapters on campus.
Let me turn your analogy on its head: you said a 150 man chapter cannot do anything that a 40 man chapter cannot do. Well, a 40 man chapter cannot hope to compete with a 150 man chapter when manpower is a key factor. The smallest fraternity on campus never wins the overall Intramural Trophy, they don't have the top sororities locked up, they don't have the power in student government and they cannot draw pledges from among the most ambitious guys on campus. The smaller chapters usually keep to themselves and don't compete in anything. Nothing wrong with that; if you don't compete you don't have to worry about being judged. If you making hard pledgeship and hazing a virtue, then you never have to worry about competing to recruit the football quarterback or the student body president - they aren't interested.
It's a mistake to equate large size with low quality. It's a big mistake to equate small size with exclusivity. the truth is that the top men, the most ambitious men, the sharpest men, want to join the popular group with the most men like them.
If you and I start out to create a large chapter by offering bids to everyone, it won't be large for long. No one wants to join a fraternity that everyone/anyone can join. The chapters that inflate their numbers by mass-bidding usually aren't large for long. The fraternities who want to be large because they recruit winners and achievers find that their biggest problem is saying no to potential pledges because so many men want to join.
Tom Earp, I respect your opinions but let me draw another analogy to you about "knowing each other". You spoke of walking across campus and wondering whether or not that fellow in the LXA jersey was from your chapter or not. Consider this: let's say you are in Special Forces, and you're in a strange town where you don't know anyone. You walk into a bar crowded with other military men - you don't know anyone. Across the room you see one other man who's wearing a green beret like yours. You see him; he sees you. You immediately have a bond with that man because you know have more in common with each other than with any other man in that room. You've had the same experience of being in an elite unit. the fraternity parallel is this: if you're the biggest, the best, you're the IM champions, you run the campus and own the sororities, you are in an elite unit, and you immediately have a bond with that other LXA (or Pike or Phi Delt or KA).
Tom, your Lambda Chis on my campus have 150+ men and they are an elite unit. My chapter too. We do have smaller fraternities as well.
Coramoor, some of those 40-man chapters are miserable because they are lesser quality outfits. A few, however, are very happy with who they are because they value different things than we do. I have no problem at all with that. But...don't sit there with 40 men and try to tell me that you could compete with us if you all-of-a-sudden decided to make a game of it. It's perfectly OK to play football for Fairmont State; it can be a wonderful, rewarding experience and you can get a lot out of it. But don't delude yourself into thinking that playing for Fairmont means that the men who play for the Southen Cal Trojans or the Texas Longhorns are somehow less worthy or less enthusiastic or that their high profile "does not equal strength or quality".
I mean no disrespect, it just pisses me off to hear someone say off-hand that big chapters have less quality and that small chapters are more selective. In my experience, the exact opposite is almost always true.
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