Legacy Dilemma

[rhoyaltempest]

Originally Posted by breathesgelatin

This is true. It's due to the drastically different processes of NPHC and NPC.

With NPHC, you are encouraged to research the orgs beforehand and choose only one to pursue. As I understand it, there are many NPHC members on these boards that pursued membership in their selected organizations for years.

In contrast, the NPC members always encourage women going through recruitment to keep an open mind to all the groups and not go in with a preconceived idea of which one they want.

I'm not in a position to fully explain why NPHC focuses on research so much more than NPC, since I'm not an NPHC member. What I've learned from being on these forums is that NPHC tends on the whole to view membership as more of a lifetime commitment and thus something that deserves a long period of research, education, service, and self-improvement before membership can be granted. It's also due to the fact that each NPHC has a missional identity that is very well-developed and distinct. While all kinds of women join the NPHC sororities, they are very focused on their particular values and service and developing the same ideals. NPC is also a lifetime sisterhood and NPCs all have national philanthropic efforts but I don't think that NPCs have achieved the kinds of well-known missional identity that the NPHCs have. Frankly I think this is one area where NPC has taken a lesson from NPHC. I know my org has put a lot of emphasis on specific values-based identity in the past several years and I think it's awesome.

That's my best attempt to explain the difference and the cause of the difference from the NPC perspective. Maybe the NPHC women could give a different or better explanation.

Again, as many have pointed out, the two processes are apples and oranges.

To add to this, Alumnae/Grad membership is expected of all NPHC members so continuing to honor your lifetime committment by being active in your org after college is not taken lightly and although some members don't remain active after college, the idea is for potential members to understand fully what they're getting into so that they will indeed strive to remain active once they become members. Hence the need for all the research and reflection. Just to give you an idea of how important Alumnae/Grad membership is in NPHC orgs, some of the NPHC orgs have more Alumnae/Grad active members than they do undergrads; in some cases as much as 70%-75% Alumnae/Grad. The NPC and other councils cannot say that about their Alumni participation or even come close.