How is it possible to have a collegiate chapt, & collegians from diff universities?

[CutiePie2000]

Here is a question for you all. How is it possible to have an NPC collegiate chapter & have collegian members from different universities? It's always been my understanding that an NPC chapter on a campus has collegian members only from that university.

So: The University of Washington chapter of XYZ sorority can only have women in it who are enrolled at University of Washington,
the USC chapter of XYZ sorority can only have women in it who are enrolled at USC, etc.
I am sure that you catch my drift.

I happened to be looking at an AGD page http://agdah.tripod.com/collegian.html for their collegiate chapter out in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I should clarify that Halifax is not a big place, yet, it has many universities concentrated in that town:
Dalhousie, St. Mary's University, Mount Saint Vincent University NSCAD, and Dal Tech.

I happened to notice that their webpage said:
"The Collegian Chapter of Alpha Gamma Delta in Halifax is called the Alpha Eta chapter. This chapter was founded in 1932 and since that time has enjoyed a long life on the various campuses around the city. Our members are from all of the Metro University campuses - Dalhousie, St. Mary's, Mount Saint Vincent, NSCAD and Dal Tech Together we form the beginnings of the bond of sisterhood that will be with us throughout the years.

My question is..how is this possible? In some cases, will the national allow a chapter to have members from different universities, if the town is small? I personally don't have a problem with it, but I was just sort of wondering about that.

For example:
In Waterloo, Ontario, Wilfrid Laurier University (WLU) and University of Waterloo are LITERALLY across the street from each other, but oddly, there are 2 separate Sigma Chi chapters, one for each university, because I guess they aren't permitted to have guys from both campuses in one chapter.
Also, there is KKG at U of Waterloo; and then there's DG & Alpha Phi at WLU and those women's groups are not permitted to recruit from the "other" university, only their own.

In Vancouver, BC, there is both UBC and SFU. I have heard of some UBC men's groups accepting SFU guys as members, but never of SFU women joining the UBC women's groups....

[Senusret I]

Well, I know that NPHC organizations do allow metropolitan or city-wide chapters. Yet, Alpha Phi Omega, the service fraternity, does not.

It seems to me that if one organization allows it, then they all could potentially allow it.

I'm not clear on the insurance and liability issues involved.

It could also be a case of schools not wanting non-students to have access to university benefits.

Basically, I don't know, and I'd like an answer myself.

[RACooper]

I'm not sure if this helps, as I don't know how the NPC works. In Toronto, Lambda Chi Alpha was founded as a University of Toronto chapter. However since then a number of colleges and universities have sprung up in Toronto. As recruiting is extremely difficult for most Canadian greek organizations, we now consider the University of Toronto our primary campus, however if a man from Ryerson, York U, or any of the colleges wishes to rush, we don't turn him away. That is to say we only actively recruit at one campus, but we accept men from other campuses.

If we didn't do this, I don't know if we would still have a chapter here in Toronto. To put it in perspective, UofT has 55000 undergrads, yet the average chapter size falls between 20 and 30. If however we started to see a large demand from another campus, we would help start a colony there. I supsect that is what is happening at the AGD chapter in Halifax.

[dzrose93]

I don't know how all chapters work, but I do know that there are certain chapters here who allow women from neighboring colleges to join because their own schools no longer have a Greek system.

So, for example, there may be an XYZ chapter at Mercer University that has members from Mercer as well as Wesleyan College -- a school in the same town which used to have sororities but, for whatever reason, no longer allows chapters on campus.

[FuzzieAlum]

We had this at my school, Case Western Reserve University. The Cleveland Institute of Music and Clevelard Institute of Art were literally next door, and in fact they rented dorms from us. Their students were eligible to participate in our rush and some of them did in fact join.

But it wasn't citywide - the gals at Cleveland State or Kent State couldn't rush at CWRU. But they also had their own Greek systems, which CIM and CIA didn't.

[Siobhan]

Technically the Sigma Chi chapter at UBC was chartered as the Delta Omicron chapter of UBC-SFU; so they are allowed to recruit from SFU, but the chapter is based out of UBC, since there is no greek system at SFU

[NeonPi]

If I am not mistaken, that particular AGD chapter (Alpha Eta) may have been chartered to encompass all those campuses (aka a 'dual' charter, which Sigma Chi at WLU is).

As well, it is the only NPC group in Halifax, and the universities are quite small (and the other campuses have no other NPC groups, unlike Waterloo/Laurier). AGD International allows this because of the difficulty in trying to recruit from one school when the 2 locals have been doing it from all 4 for years.

If you like, PM me for more info.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Shala Berry, AOII
President, Canadian Interfraternal Assc.