Question: Does anyone ever see the NPHC allowing inclusion of a 10th group?

[Rain Man]

Well, as you can see, I have spent a week trying to put some sort of finality on whether the reason many of the NIC/NPC orgs merged were because they were too weak to sustain themselves. For some of the orgs that ultimately dissolved, that may well have been true. For the orgs that merged, that may not have been necessarily true. I was hoping that Baird's Manual would've included the reason(s) for the orgs' decease, which it did for some orgs and not for others. I think Diamond Delta's post in the NPCs That Didn't Make It thread said it best:

originally posted by Diamond Delta
That is exactly right. When I read the Baird's it pretty much stays factual and doesn't say too much about why certain groups merge, but it does tell that they "have the same mission, pupose, goals, etc, etc" and not having too much chapter overlap is definitely a factor. It is also a mutual decision I beleive. Either XYZ and ABC decide to merge or perhaps, ABC realizes that they are not doing well for one reason or other and seeks out another group to abosrb them. Or possibly XYZ sees that ABC is a great sorority and they have the similar ideals, but for whatever reason ABC is having a hard time with growth, offers to absorb them. I don't think of it as a hostile take over or anything! I am sure some alumnae might not like it, you can't make everybody like everything. But it is a mutual decision.

So while it's quite possible that some of these orgs merged because they were weak to begin with, it isn't fair to blindly jump to that conclusion because it is the most convenient answer either. DeltaBetaBaby and 33girl address other possible reasons for mergers:

originally posted by DeltaBetaBaby
How does a group decide what group to merge with?

To which 33girl responds:

originally posted by 33girl
Probably commonality of ideals, opportunity and lack of chapter overlap. I. E. ASA and AST would never merge because we have chapters at so many of the same schools. It wouldn't help either of us with size issues.

But it still comes back to Diamond Delta's point that Baird's doesn't address the reason for mergers and absorptions of orgs across the board, for some orgs it does, for others it is never mentioned at all. Heck, for 3-4 orgs I had to take an educated guess as to whether the org dissolved or merged, and I could be wrong on those.

For these reasons, I am not going to even hazard a conclusion for the fraternities, as such factors as the Civil War, and the two World Wars (and possibly even the Vietnam War/antiestablishment movement) along with the Great Depression, will only obfuscate the issue even that much further. Not to mention the fact that some of the school that these orgs had chapters with were anti-Greek and were either abolished or made those chapters extremely hard to survive. Without more definitive facts, it is very easy to make speculative conclusions that are unsubstanciated.

One thing I learned from my research is that I overestimated the usefulness Baird's Manual would be to me for the research I was trying to seek.

As far as to why the NPHC orgs got to where they were without mergers or acquisitions, all I can say to that is, "They just got lucky. But that's not to say that something like that couldn't affect their org in the upcoming years either."

I enjoyed the research and the insight it provided, and yes, I would do it again in a heartbeat.

Now I'm going back to the "Question to NPHC Greeks" thread and re-iterate the original question I had in that thread, now that we went full circle again (but ya gotta admit, it definately was a lovely ride)