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Again, I think the key in how the older chapter members are treated when they are made alumnae makes a big difference. To say "We know you've worked so hard and we appreciate the efforts you've made so we want you to enjoy your last year here and not have to do all the work involved in a reorganization. These are the ways we'd love to have you stay involved with the Fraternity. Let us know how we can help you transition into one of these options" and then have actual options for them.. Junior Circle, local Alumnae Chapter, advisor positions at nearby chapters, etc. When you're a chapter of 12 on a campus where Total is 120 (like at our U Mich chapter was in 2000), it's not that fun. Every member is an officer and some hold two offices because there are more officer positions than members. You don't have enough members to have mixers with a fraternity. Everything is expensive because there aren't that many to share the costs. Everyone is required to live in the house all the time. You try to recruit with 12 women when there are 1000 PNMs. How do you even do that? You have no committees or everybody is on every committee. Every member has to participate in every Greek Week event. Building a Homecoming float to compare to theirs with 1/10th of the people? It's exhausting and frustrating.
NPC has a few ways they suggest that can be used to figure Total. They are also suggesting now that it be reviewed annually. Average chapter size is one suggested method. Another is setting Total at the number of the largest chapter at the time. I think there are two other methods but I don't remember them offhand. Personally, I think that if you take the average Quota for the last 4 years and multiply it by 4, that would be a good number, but that's not one of the methods. That would mean that a chapter that took quota and had good retention would be at Total.
It used to seem like such a fixed number that Panhellenic was always afraid to lower it because they might not be able to raise it again. When you reassure them that they can re-evaluate it in a year, they are more comfortable with it. If they have an unusually large recruitment, then they can increase Total. If things tank on campus and nobody goes through, it can be lowered. It's much more flexible than it used to be and I think that's a good thing.
We have a few campuses in my area where Total is way too high and every chapter is 20 women below Total. We have generally encouraged a lowering of Total rather than bugging the chapter about not being at Total. We do look at whether they are competitive with other chapters on campus. If chapter sizes are 23-29 and Total is 45, we know we're on target with the other groups. (University of Toronto is in that situation and just lowered Total for the first time in a decade even though no chapter had ever attained it!)
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