[aephi alum]

My school also has 5 sororities, with one (AEPhi) considerably smaller than the other 4. Less than a year after AEPhi colonized, our Panhel president decided she wanted to open the campus for expansion. At the time, total was 80 and we had about 20 sisters. Expansion at that time would have destroyed my chapter. We fought it tooth and nail, and eventually it was voted down because AEPhi was so new.

Several years later, total is the same, there has been no expansion, and AEPhi is now much stronger (though still smaller than the other sororities). In this case, Panhel successfully protected the "underdog" chapter by not expanding.

So, part of me wants to say HELL NO, don't raise total.

But the more realistic part of me realizes that there are a lot of women out there who would love the chance to go greek, don't fit in with the smaller chapter for whatever reason, and are being denied the chance to join a bigger chapter because of a number. So the best course of action may be to raise total just a little bit. This will allow the bigger sororities to take small NM classes (unless they're WAY over whatever total is now). Hopefully the smaller group will realize that they have to recruit more aggressively if they want to stay afloat; since they are not at total, they can recruit at any time.