Competition with nationals?

[damasa]

I was just wondering how all of you that belong to a local fraternity or sorority deal with competition from nationals? Are you more successful than the bigger nationals? Do they have the advantage on your org?

At my university, we are currently the strongest fraternity on campus, we have the largest number of members, our presence is felt, we participate and help the university in almost twice as many things as any other fraternity..and we are the only local! We have been doing a great job these last few years and we don't feel threatened by the nationals....

What's your situation? Just being nosy, because I've heard many say that a local among nationals will get crushed...well, we've survived 30 years so far..and we are going strong, I also know of a few sororites on other university campuses close to mine that are succeeding.

d

[Vixenradio]

Hey there!
Well my situation is a little different I suppose because I'm not from a huge university. I go to a college in Boston that has about 2,3000-2,700 students. Most of the sororities and fraternities are local, but we do have a couple national...Here's the run down:

ZETA PHI ETA
ALPHA EPSILON PHI
KAPPA GAMMA CHI
CHI DELTA CHI
SIGMA PI THETA
SIGMA ALPHA EPSILON (Phi Alpha)
ALPHA PI THETA
PHI ALPHA TAU

The sorority I am in (although I am now alumni) has a very strong presence on campus and does a lot of events. Although we are stong in number for a school our size (about 23) numbers don't matter as much as heart and devotion to the sorority. Local or national, as long as you wear your letters proud and respect your organization thats all that really matters

[Lil_G]

Shouts out, one local to another.

We're brand new and just getting our name out there. So it's too early to tell how our status as the newest fraternity is a result of being local or not. A couple other factors, our greek community has many local groups, in fact half of the sororities are local. I wouldn't say being local has more pros or cons or vice-versa since the student body doesn't want anything to do with the crazy dues that are stereotypical held among internationals. I think we'll be fine in the long run since we have a great group of guys.

[damasa]

Lil_G, where are you located? Are there a good number of nationals on your campus? Is your greek system huge..or kind of smaller in the aspects that each house carries a smaller amount of members, compared to 150-200 members in each group?

Just some quick questions...

d

[Gizmo]

Hi, everyone.

Well, my sorority is not quite a local since we do have a national organization. But since we only have three collegiate chapters currently, I figured my response was not completely inaccurate. In addition, I was a founder of the first colony which could experience many of the same situations as a local.

I am a member of the Beta Chapter, the first interest group that caused the original chapter to become incorporated as a national organziation. The OU chapter had a lot more difficulty getting established than the original MN chapter. The University of Oklahoma has a very strong greek culture. At the beginning, the other Greek organizations felt that we would be a threat to them. However, when we demonstrated from our founding class that we were not (90% of our members never rushed or seriously considered pledging), they decided to tolerate our presence. Today, the attitude is improving.

As of today, we are still not a part of "Greek Affairs" but more and more people on campus are becoming aware that we do exist. We do not rush in the same manner. Our rush is simply multiple events during the first 3 weeks of classes. Any woman attending three events within that time may pledge if she is pursuing a technical degree. Our membership numbers don't even hit the same ballpark as the other sororities on campus (20 compared to 200, a conservative estimate). We have no house whereas they have mansions. But we do find quality members who believe in our goals and the relationships between sisters is very strong.

Good luck to you all.
Gizmo

[AOX81]

Well my sorority has been around since 1989 and we are definitely still going strong. The national sororities are the one's that are struggling because they're always worried about getting numbers, being put on probation, or getting their charter revoked.
We don't have to worry about numbers. Recently a national sorority purposely had their charter revoked because they didn't like the rules and went local. They are now completely gone. One of the last remaining members of their sorority disaffiliated herself with them and joined my sorority.

I would say there isn't a lot of competition on the campus that I went to school at. I wouldn't exactly say that the nationals have an advantage over us because we usually do better than them during recruitment. We usually take between 45-50% of the girls during rush. The nationals get more girls through COB. We usually don't COB unless we really know someone well.

Have a nice day