Advice on bringing a new sorority (colony?) to my Midwesten university campus

[33girl]

QFP.

Originally Posted by jejunestar

So my best friend and I are interested in trying to bring a new sorority to our campus (if I'm correct, that would be a colony? Sorry, I'm not 100% sure on terminology), but we are not 100% positive on how the process works.

We attend a large university in the northern Midwest, where greek life is a lot more laid back then in the South, but is still a pretty big part of our campus' social culture. We have 7 sororities and...I wanna say 13 or 14 fraternities, but I'm not positive.*

We both went through formal recruitment last fall, and accepted bids from sororoities...and while we both enjoyed the pledging experience, we both chose to drop before initiation, and ended up taking a year off school. Although we both love the girls in the sororities we pledged, they just didn't feel quite right in the end.

We are returning to our university in the spring as sophomores, and we both still really want to be a part of greek life- but we discussed it and we really feel like, although all of the sororities already at our school are great, none of them are right for us- so we thought bringing a new sorority (colony?) to our school might be the answer.

We know plenty of other students who are also interested in a potential new colony at our school, who like us are interested in greek life but don't fit into any of our current houses (which all have very distinct qualities). We have good friends in pretty much all of the sororities and fraternities on our campus who are willing to support our efforts, so it's not like we'd be going into it as a new sorority that no one would want to mix with. We also have pretty solid knowledge of the greek system and we know what we want in a greek organization.

We also have a sorority in mind that we would specifically like to colonize on our campus, especially because that sorority has a philanthropy that is incredibly important to us both personally, but also because we have seen various other chapters of this sorority and they seem to embody our values really well. (I don't know if I should mention which sorority ut is that we are looking at or not, will that help with answering questions?)

We do know that we will have to talk to our school first to allow another sorority colony on campus, but can anyone tell me if there is a way to ask for this sorority specifically to be the one we bring on campus, or will it be out of our control? What do we need to do to get this all started, how long does the process take, and what will it be like? I'm interested in hearing if anyone has experience with this!

Thanks!

Originally Posted by jejunestar

Most chapters are around 100-150-ish members. The sorority I rushed was lower-top/upper-middle tier (3rd out of the 7). I did leave on good terms- I still have a good relationship with a lot of girls in the sorority and hang out with a lot of them regularly.

I know that obviously the people who are at my school will not change, but considering the number of girls who rush and drop during the pledging process (which is quite a few) because they're looking for something different, as well as a big decline in the top two houses due to repeated hazing issues, plus the fact that there is a pretty big difference between even upper middle and lower middle tier sororities, i feel like there is definitely a niche where a new sorority could fit in and have plenty of interest, especially with the upper tier sororities losing their reputations a bit.

I mean basically, we know the girls who would be interested in this, it's not like we're hoping our campus will magically have a different kind of girl there. we just want a place for those of us who would fall somewhere between the upper and middle tier sororities that currently don't have a fit (because the previous sorority i pledged would be that bridge, except that they are basically the stoner house, that's their thing, and they're not doing much to bridge the gap between the tiers at all)