[naraht]

In two different ways this represents Sectional splits jumping the shark, one of which was more or less inevitable, the other much less so.

The National Fraternity will not re-use any sectional numbers that have been used before. The only section numbers greater than 40 that have not ever been used are 46, 60, 78, 87 (which may be created in Region II this year) and 93. 35-39 have never been used so, I'm not sure why they reached all the way down for 31. The fact is that the Section numbers when originally established after con-con (they used different numbers prior to con-con) were more tightly packed in the east and that is where the expansion turned out to be. For example the only numbers under 21 that have been used are 1,2,4,7,8,10, 13 and 14.

What wasn't inevitable was that this section would split at all. From everything I can find, the section just went up from 8 chapters to 9 last year and according to the current stuff on the National Website they have no PGs or IGs. (This may be a month or two old though). For a section the physical size of Indiana, I just don't understand why there was pressure to split unless it was from the fact that both of the other old sections in Region VI (48 & 54) had done so in the last two years. I

f Indiana were the size of Section 2 (San Diego, some of Los Angeles Metro, Arizona and Las Vegas), maybe splitting makes more sense, but Indiana end to end is less than six hours travel and the farthest apart chapters are more like four hours...

Maybe there are other reasons, but still doesn't seem quite right.

Randy