I think you all need to take a good hard look at your ideals and values and how you are fulfilling them.. Not at all to say you aren't fulfilling them, but this is the time to evaluate what exactly it is that you as a sorority are aiming to do.. If it boils down to creating a bond between women to advance yourselves educationally, socially, philanthropically, etc than you should most definitely not be disaffiliating with you local campus panhellenic as these are the exact goals of that group!!
As an alum of a local chapter that was in the exact same place as you are at one point, I can't even begin to express how much help being a part of our panhellenic was to us becoming stronger as a group and able to share our message and values with more women as members and the entire campus as an extension of them. Participating in formal recruitment with Panhel taught us how to come together as a group; how to organize an efficient and fluid event; how to interact with other people in a fast, stressful situation; and how to sell yourself and your organization. You don't get that kind of experience from COB (unless you do some crazy COB...)
If you think that one of the biggest things keeping women from joining your group is the length of and work involved with your new member period, I think that you should give shortening it some good long thought. Groups all over have been shortening new member periods for a millions different reasons and have all been moving important lessons from those original new member periods into initiatives that are introduced to sisters/brothers as a whole. It can't possibly hurt you to be having whole chapter sister education periods to remind women of the vows they take and the rituals they partake in. I'm not saying you should make 'instant sisters', but if you are recruiting right, you shouldn't have to weed out people during a new member period.
I'm also not against the idea of locals going national though and if you decide that you need to.. well.. It's a very personal decision for any local chapter, but at the end of the day, I think that the sisterhood of the women within a sorority is much more important than the letters on the front door. It's a choice that you as actives will need to make with input from alums but if the choice is die or go national, you as actives have more to share with future women as members of a new national on campus than as a failed local sorority that can be in some campus history book at some point in the future.
While I have developed opinions on all your options, out of the three choices, I would recommend you work on your new member period and figure out what else is discouraging women from joining your chapter vs. the other sororities on campus.
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