[AEPhiSierra]

I honestly think the main reason AEPhi is small is sort of by choice. AEPhi is a historically jewish sorority and while its membership is open to people of all races and religions ( I am a non-jewish AEPhi chapter president and no aspect of national programming or ritual has made me uncomfortable with that) it doesn't down play that it was founded by seven jewish women. If a school is looking to open a chapter and their are no jewish women on campus it most likely will not be drawn to AEPhi. If you simply look at the location of AEPhi chapters: the Northeast, Southern California and schools that draw from those areas you will see this.

During my time in AEPhi I have never really heard of an AEPhi chapter starting through the formalized NPC open expansion process where several organizations make presentations and the panhel votes on which organization they prefer. From my knowledge most recent AEPhi chapters are started by interest groups/local sororities that are composed entirely or partially of jewish women who always had the intention of going AEPhi. (In fact I am aware of at least 2 or 3 local sororities that were formed with the intention of affiliating with AEPhi but were unable to secure an expansion vote from their panhel)

If AEPhi's supreme goal was to become very large I personally believe they would only be able to do this if they downplayed the organizations jewish roots and this is something they are not willing to do because it would be denying our organization's heritage.

I would also imagine that this might be the situation for other nationals where religion was an aspect of their founding such SDT and Theta Phi. Regardless of their national policies they are still labeled by the religion of their founders.