Quote:
Originally Posted by violetpretty
I do have to wonder how Maryland had the same 18 chapters from 1962 to 1989, and without any membership-number-related closures since the first sororities came to campus in 1920 until 1990. That is especially impressive they made it through the 60s and 70s, times when Greek Life was not very popular! All that without RFM! Maybe as long as your chapter wasn't in debt and spiraling out of control with smaller and smaller numbers, your HQ didn't care?
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Yeah, pretty much. I don't think they cared if you had 5 members, as long as you were paid up. IMO the Internet has been part of what's changed all that. It's a lot harder now to hide that OMG XYZ's chapter at Goren U only has 16 people and the rest have 50, therefore XYZ must suck. When there was limited contact between universities, it didn't really matter. I mean, when I pledged I assumed that AST must have been one of the biggest sororities in the entire nation because it was one of the biggest chapters at my college.
Not only that, late 80s/early 90s is when insurance started going through the roof. Chapters who cost more to run than they brought in through membership fees were discarded. By this I don't mean that they were doing anything that was RM-bad, but that eliminating chapters probably cut the rate you had to pay on insurance.