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I go to one of those smaller, less known schools and I can honestly say that I can see the benefits and the drawbacks to it. Christopher Newport University only recently became a university, before that it was a college, and even then, there were (inter)national organizations here. And up until this past year, CNU was largely a commuter school that attracted the more non-traditional students.
Yes, that makes it more difficult to get interest in the Greek system as a whole. We've found, more often than not, that many commuter students aren't as attached to the university...they come for class and leave. Whereas the resident students are here all the time. Yet we still managed to reach out to a (relatively small) number of commuter students.
However, all the organizations here tend to have very dedicated and out-going members. GPA requirements are going up for the university and with that for the Greek organizations as well. As the school demands more of its students, we demand more of our members.
I'd say our biggest problem is not the Greek organizations in and of themselves, but the administrations attitudes towards them. Within the past year and a half, we have lost three organizations on campus (four if you want to count one that simply died out). And yet, admin is encouraging us to expand. Considering the recent elimination of organizations, I think it might become a little harder to get another organization to colonize here. But we're trying. Despite all the attempts of the university to rid itself of Greek life, they have hired a new Greek advisor (at a time when the state is cutting back the budget for educational institutions). Their "new plan" for Greek life is to expand to eight NIC fraternities and eight NPC organizations. We're currently at two NIC fraternities (we lost two last year) and three NPC organizations. We also have two NPHC organizations (we lost two last year....one died out).
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