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I don't know that I have a solution that would help the smaller chapters. On the one hand, I know chapters can rebuild themselves from almost nothing - on the other hand I know this rarely happens. And I realize some of the problems that a smaller chapter has may be their own fault - or it may be external circumstances - or it may be the fault of girls who are long since graduated.
I do think that there is something wrong with the way quota is being figured in this scenario, though. If quota is 8, times 5 chapters, theoretically 40 girls could get bids. (Now I know that doesn't happen perfectly anywhere.) But here only 23 girls accepted bids! That shouldn't happen. And there wasn't much (successful) snap bidding after rush, either. I remember in the days when I was an undergrad, you could tell by the number of girls who went to pref parties that it was going to be impossible for more than a few chapters to hit quota.
Girls are leery of joining a chapter that's below-average in size, and it's a small chapter's job to make themselves a desirable option. But the fact is, it's the way of the world that the chapters doing the best get rewarded, and the small chapters have to work twice as hard just to stay in place.
That said - on my campus there was a lot of dirty rushing, an encouragement to suicide bid, and a tendency for the Greek Life advisor to buddy up to the big chapters. I don't think that kind of behavior is appropriate or good for the system as a whole.
One thing that would help: We have rush in the fall. In spring, after classes and before finals, chapters are allowed to give out bids - they can replace the graduating seniors (although not at ceiling chapters can rush at other times too). This means big chapters encourage suicide bidding or promise bids to girls they like almost as well as their first list - and those girls will hold out for bids from that big chapter rather than looking around at other options. I don't think this is a good practice.
I do think that if we as sorority women didn't make such a big deal out of, "We're supposed to be aiming for ceiling," perhaps the rushees wouldn't either. After all, the men don't worry about that sort of thing. But maybe that's pie-in-the-sky thinking on my part!
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