[DeltAlum]

I suspect that whether a chapter is closed or Nationals "sends in the big guns," to save it depends on the reason it is struggling and how likely it is to be saved. It's not smart to throw a lot of money at a chapter with repeated standards violations, etc.

Delt tends to colonize or recolonize about three or four chapters a year. Our traveling Chapter Consultants are key in this process, and that seems to be the number they can handle without depleting the attention they can give to the rest of their duties.

Preference can be given to former chapters where the Fraternity has a relationship with the university administration, although there are other factors which can easily overcome that situation, including a strong interest group and strong area alumni support.

By the way, there's nothing particularly "hush hush" about our chapter closings. At Karnea (the every two year international conference) a couple years ago, in the opening ceremony, the Consultants were asked to remove the banners of all of the chapters closed since the last Karnea. There were eleven of them. That was sobering -- no pun intended. All of those were for alcohol or hazing violations. For the rest of the conference, those gaping spaces between banners were a stark reminder of how much we had lost. We've been a little luckier since then, hopefully because demonstrations like that one send a wake up call to the other chapters.

One final observation which is not at all scientific. It appears to me that most of our colonization (where we haven't had a chapter in place in the past) is being done at smaller colleges with higher academic and social standards as opposed to the larger schools. I wonder if that isn't a wave of the future.