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Originally Posted by dukedg
Duke - when I was at Duke we had ten sororities, one of which did not participate (or rarely participated) in FR. After I graduated this sorority left and then Panhel opened for expansion. A new sorority came on and did a fabulous job. Now there are ten sororities and one is struggling with numbers (a chapter that used to do well while I was there). So, in retrospect, I don't know if expansion was a good idea for the greek community there. Why couldn't they just have nine strong chapters?
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Just wanted to throw this out there. Please note I'm not familiar with Duke's specific situation so I'm responding in generalities.
1+1 does not always equal 2. There may be internal problems that cause a Chapter to drop in numbers. We've all heard/seen examples of a few "bad" group of Exec officers or "bad" pledge classes dragging a Chapter down. Once you find yourself on one of the bottom rungs of the Panhellenic ladder, it takes a lot of hard work to pull yourself back up no matter how strong the entire Greek system is.
There are some unfortunate situations where no matter how much hard work a Chapter puts in, they simply can't pull themselves up. They could be busting their buttts recruiting 24/7/365 and still never manage to grow even though everyone else on Sorority Row is bursting at the seams with large memberships.
Why is that? The fault for lack of a better word lies with the PNMs. Let's face it, there are many young women who are only interested in joining a rock solid Chapter and/or a popular one. Some don't want to take on the challenge of fighting for a struggling Chapter. Some don't want to have to work that hard because they already have enough on their plate with school, etc. Some aren't interested in being groundbreaking leaders. Some would rather not be Greek at all than take on that responsbility. I'm not saying it's right, but it's not necessarily wrong either.
We as alums sometimes get so wrapped up in the big picture Panhellenic mindset. At times we forget what it was like being 18 and having to make that life changing choice of which sorority to join. If given the choice at that age, would we have selected the "challenge" over the "easy" Chapter? Especially when we bonded with the sisters of the stronger ones?
But our alum instinct is that if one Chapter is struggling we must all band together to strengthen it. We're only as strong as our weakest link. Well sadly sometimes there is just no way to fix this problem because it's too large and too pervasive. The only reasonable alternative is to allow that struggling Chapter to close. Sometimes bringing in a new org with a clean slate to colonize is the best solution.
My two cents worth.