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I have to say that you can have true brotherhood/sisterhood with large number groups, but you have to build slowly in my opinion. Several years ago our chapter decided to go big. We went real big. My pledge class was 35 when we had 25 actives. We rushed 25+ for the next 3 semesters. The result? In my opinion we moved to fast and moved away from our core values. Many of the members who were initiated never formed many personal relationships and never really got what Teke is all about and as a result dropped. Out of the 100 members that have been initiated in my chapter since I came through, 30 of them are truly active. Fortunately we've realized our mistake and are coming back to our values and trying to reidentify ourselves with the greek community here at UCF. My advice to anyone who wants to go big...is build a strong pledge program first and establish an identity for yourselves. The time to decide the direction of the chapter is before you go big, not after. Make sure that the people who decide the direction of the chapter are going to be there for a significant amount of time and are going to follow through and take leadership positions. If you wait until you're big then you have all these people with their own opinions about what the chapter needs to be. I'm not saying that those opinions aren't valid, but the most important thing to have is direction. What that direction is doesn't matter, as long as everyone works together towards a common goal. That to me is what true brotherhood/sisterhood is about.
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