Quote:
Originally posted by Firehouse
With respect, closing campus to expansion always hurts the fraternities. Again, we're speaking ONLY of fraternities. The sororities have a very successful but totally different way of doing things.
You used the analogy of "putting 60 fraternities" on a campus of only 2,000 students. In practice, no one is going to "put" sixty fraternities on a small campus. But men are very free-market oriented. If there are, say, ten fraternities, it's likely that two will be struggling at any one time, and two or three will take turns being the dominant leaders. The remaining fraternities will be solid, average. If you add an aggressive new colony - pick one of the agressive nationals, like LXA or Sig Ep - the colony will likely come in and add many new members to the system, especially men who might not have joined one of the other fraternities. Now for the same of an extreme example, let's say that as many as five new fraternities come in as colonies, all at the same time. What's likely to happen is that one or two of the five will fail, and the two original fraternities that always struggled will close their doors because they can't compete. The system is strengthened and total memebrship grows.
The fact about fraternities is this: you can't save a group that does not offer a product that no one wants. New blood will pump up the whole system, flush out the non-performers, and traise the bar. If "too many" fraternities come onto a small campus, there will not be enough members to go around and the "market" will take care of itself. If there are no restrictions, then the dynamic of the campus itself will determine how many fraternities it can sustain.
With men, the fewer the restrictions, the better. Let the market decide. Rather than making rules to keep one fraternity from growing and dominating the others, let them be who they want to be. They will force the others to catch up and the whole system benefits.
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Firehouse. You sound like you just got back from a National Convention. I guess the guy that gave you the pep talk didn't tell you about all of your chapters that are inactive because of low numbers.
You are wrong when you said expansion is ALWAYS good. Just look at UMass. The agressive nationals "expand" and the Greek system goes from 1800 students down to 800. Tell us how that is good.
Your arguement would be valid if we were taking about real expansion but most Greek systems are actually losing ground not gaining. Some nationals have 100 to 200 inactive chapters.
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