I've just read this whole thread in one sitting, so I have a lot of random things to say.
First of all, PLEASE tell me you've already contact the AST NPC Delegate assigned to your chapter. Not the NPC Area Advisor, but the AST Delegate. I think you can find the listing of which delegates are assigned to each chapter on the secure side of our website. She will know who to ask "behind the scenes" to find out if the other National Organizations know whats going on. Our delegates are good people...I know them all.
Secondly, are you SURE this actually happened, or is someone just thinking it happened? Is this a rumor going around? Someone ought to be able to produce Panhellenic meeting minutes that show the vote being taken. I am a Greek Advisor, and I have plenty of examples where I'm meeting with a student and make a suggestion to them, and the next thing you know I've closed every chapter on campus according to the rumor mill. Then it takes them a week to get up the courage to actually ask ME what the true story is
. Things get blown out of proportion quickly and suddenly no one has the correct information.
Thirdly, 33girl is right. On my previous campus I really encouraged the chapters to lower total one year (only by 5, but still) simply because no one had maintained the magical number of "50" for longer than one semester (and they were only at 51) for about 10 years. All of my chapters were under CONSTANT pressure from their HQ to reach total, so much so that they were doing a COR event every week and didn't have time to do the other things that sorority is all about. They were stressed, tired, and NOT enjoying their experience, and it was showing. I was tired of seeing them this way, so I really encouraged the discussion, but did not make the decision for them. So we lowered total, knowing that we could always increase it when it was time. The chapters are much closer (a couple are going over) to total and don't have to worry about weekly CORs anymore. They are doing other events on campus and it shows. They aren't complaining about "mandatory sorority events" nearly as much, which makes joining these organizations more attractive.
The process for changing total (according to NPC) is that once it starts being talked about in Panhellenic, each chapter should contact their NPC Delegate. Those delegates then talk to each other, look at the campus numbers and their chapter performances over the years, and then figure out what would be the best thing for the campus to do. Then they tell the chapters whether they would be for or against it (that's what happened in our situation at least). The National Organizations saw our point and was comfortable with our proposal. Once again, we could have raised total the next year if we really wanted to (but it takes longer than that to build and maintain numbers).
If your chapter is really confused (or other chapters are saying they're really confused), you might want to have someone in your chapter gently suggest to the Greek Advisor that the women are really confused and giving each other conflicting information. You might want to see if the Greek Advisor could either come to your meeting to explain what is going on, send out a mass email so that everyone hears the same message (provided they actually read it), or encourage everyone to come to the next Panhellenic meeting and plan to review exactly what's happening. It sounds like something about your structure is changing, and it may not all be decided yet, but people are just getting the bits and pieces of it. Have you contacted the Greek Advisor and asked her what is going on? Don't give your opinion on the matter, just send her an email saying that your women are giving you information that isn't making sense, and you wanted to get the correct info from someone who knows what's going on to help clear up the confusion.
PsychTau