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"I would rather us try to be "the best fraternity" than "the most preferred", whatever that means."
I agree wholeheartedly. "The most preferred fraternity" is a shameless marketing ploy by the Fraternity based on the fraternity's assertion that it has pledged more men in each of the last few years than any other fraternity. But even IF Kappa Sigma HAS pledged more mean than any other fraternity, that does not make Kappa Sigma "the most preferred fraternity". The true yardstick, numbers-wise, is which Fraternity INITIATES the most men. Pledge retention is the key. Any fraternity can go out and pledge a large number of men. But if the actives later decide that they don't want some of those pledges and cut them, or if the pledges decide that they made the wrong decision, and drop out, then how many were pledges in the first place means little, if anything. Despite having the largest number of pledges in a year, Kappa Sigma does NOT have the highest retention rate, the highest number of initiates, or the highest average number of men per chapter, all better indicators of preference than the number of pledges. Pledging is based on often first, often superficial impressions in a very short period of time, by rushees who are usually young, inexperienced, and highly impressionable. How many of those pledges stick around and ultimately decide to become initiates of a chapter is a far better of indicator of preference than the number of pledges the chapter takes to begin with. You may or may not have noticed that the Fraternity never publishes / publicizes / brags about its overall pledge retention / initiate numbers. Why do you suppose that is?
So much about the Fraternity's affairs these past few years has revolved around numbers: number of pledges, number of new colonies, number of charterings. But as your posting suggests, there is indeed far more to "quality" than "quantity". There are any number of fraternities with far fewer chapters, far fewer total members, and far fewer pledges that are every bit as good as, and are probably better than, Kappa Sigma in every other respect, measurable and intangible: Phi Gamma Delta, Beta Theta Pi, Phi Kappa Psi, Delta Sigma Phi are four such mid-size fraternities, and there are a number of much smaller ones, such as Theta Delta Chi, Chis Psi, Psi Upsilon, and others that are every bit as good as Kappa Sigma, are just as "preferred" or "preferable" in ways other than simply how many chapters they have or how many men they pledged or initiated.
Still, from the time of Stephen Alonzo Jackson, Kappa Sigma has been an expansionary fraternity, and where the Fraternity has most recently expanded to and where it will or might expand to next are interesting topics. In the Northeast, I have heard that we have new interest groups at Rochester Institute of Technology and Hofstra University, two schools at which our chapters (Omicron-Alpha and Nu-Eta, respectively) became inactive three or four years ago. So it would be terrific to return to both those schools.
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