Expansion in the West Coast

So I am researching to expand my sorority to the west coast (specifically California). I'm currently in SoCal now just looking into schools but there seems to be a lack of response when contacting the advisor and other people within school departments. Any advice? Also since this is a Latin org, I wonder how was it for other multicultural organizations to expand to California.

Also I've noticed Greek life seems to be pretty divided in terms of social events. Ex: I haven't heard of Greek Unity events like they have back east; can someone clarify for me how Greek unity works over here?

Any suggestions or if you know which schools are open for expansion, I would love to hear from you!

[StealthMode]

I suggest you ask a moderator to move this to the Greek Life forum.

Thanks! Will do!

[DubaiSis]

To answer (or not) your question, it depends on the school. I'm a little confused about how a Latin sorority would be multi-cultural and not literary, however.

[SoCalGirl]

Originally Posted by steph18

So I am researching to expand my sorority to the west coast (specifically California). I'm currently in SoCal now just looking into schools but there seems to be a lack of response when contacting the advisor and other people within school departments. Any advice? Also since this is a Latin org, I wonder how was it for other multicultural organizations to expand to California.

Also I've noticed Greek life seems to be pretty divided in terms of social events. Ex: I haven't heard of Greek Unity events like they have back east; can someone clarify for me how Greek unity works over here?

Any suggestions or if you know which schools are open for expansion, I would love to hear from you!

(Any discussion may get lost in the Expansion thread so I'm going to respond here.)

If I'm reading this correctly, you're "cold contacting" the schools?
By this time, almost all CA schools are out for summer. I doubt the Student Activities Offices are fully staffed right now. From what I've seen, most CA schools do not have a distinct Greek Life Office, even if they have a designated Greek Life Advisor. It's completely possible that you are contacting the wrong people because of variations from school to school in roles and titles.

Has your group expanded to other states before? Are you using the same methods for CA as elsewhere? If not, why?

Latina sororities didn't come to my school until I after I graduated. From my years on GC and what I've observed at local schools, it seems that typically an interest group of students will form and reach out to the school and GLO for permission to expand.

I've never heard of the GLO reaching out to the school first. Are you hoping that they already know of an interest group that hasn't identified a GLO yet?

Finally, Greek Life varies greatly from school to school, even within the same city. At most schools that I'm directly familiar with, IFC/NPC groups and MCGLOs stay pretty separate. This can be do to lack of interest and/or funding. Groups may not be interested in more fees to support unity events.

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by DubaiSis

I'm a little confused about how a Latin sorority would be multi-cultural and not literary, however.

I assume "Latin" as in Latina.

To clarify and answer your questions:

1) I am currently just researching for my sorority, not cold calling. For example, I sent a simple email to greek advisors from one or two schools asking if expansion was open. Kept it simple and sweet during the month of may. But you may be right summer is here!

2) Since I am just researching I just looking around to see where expansion has been successful in the California area, I am not looking to expand right away. Therefore, I am just asking around.

3) Our sorority was founded by "Latina Women" but accepts women from various ethnic backgrounds. Hence, the reason why I ask for opinions from all, specifically multicultural organizations. Apologies for the misguidance in my word structure but yes @mysticcat I mean Latina.

4) Our sorority has ways of expanding but again... I am only reaching out to ask questions and just keeping an open mind as to how expansion can work here.

For the most part schools here are divided by IFC/NPC/MGC---- MGC being "Multicultural Group Council". Back east my sorority at my chapter is under the "United Greek Coalition" or UGC. That is one of the differences I have noticed so far.

But thanks for the input. I know it will be a long time before I can bring them up here. Just doing some light foot work along the way.

[LAblondeGPhi]

I think the fundamental difference here is that NPC expansion is very methodical and process-oriented, and this process is highly documented on these forums. I can't speak for multi-cultural organizations, but my understanding was that they are typically not nearly as constrained by the school being "open for expansion".

The goals for NPC councils are typically such that most organizations are at some kind of size parity and are all strong enough to survive. NPCs at many schools (including many in California) invest in very expensive housing infrastructure, which demands large enough memberships to make the entity successful over a long time period. These organizations often don't have the luxury of remaining small compared to the other organizations on campus. Coupled with a long history of unanimous agreements and highly coordinated recruitment environments mean that NPC groups undergo an extensive mutual selection process for colonization. You won't even see that kind of process with IFC fraternities.

I think the first step for you is to just research the councils at the target schools, see which organizations currently exist, and look at demographics for those schools to see if they would likely support the addition of your group.

As for council structure, I would bet that you'll see many variations and many structures among schools.

Examples:
UCLA has an Asian Greek Council, an Interfraternity Council, a Latino Greek Council, a Multi-Interest Greek Council, a National Pan-Hellenic Council and a Panhellenic Council.
http://www.greeklife.ucla.edu/

UC Berkeley has IFC, Panhellenic, National Pan-Hellenic, and Multicultural Greek Council.
http://www.calgreeks.com/

USC has an Asian Greek Council, Multicultural Greek Council, Interfraternity Council, Professional Fraternity Council, National Pan-Hellenic Council, and Panhellenic Council.
http://www.usc.edu/student-affairs/g.../councils.html

Stanford has the African American Fraternity and Sororal Association, the Interfraternity Council, Intersorority Council, and the Multicultural Greek Council.
http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/r...ife/fsl/houses

SDSU has the Interfraternity Council, National Pan-Hellenic Council, College Panhellenic Association, and the United Sorority and Fraternity Council (for culturally-based organizations).
http://go.sdsu.edu/student_affairs/s...eadership.aspx

Those are only the first five schools I looked up, and you can see that they all structured themselves differently from one another. I'm sure the next five schools you look up will have five more structures.

Good luck.

ETA:
I think "Greek Unity" events will also vary school by school. Greek Week combines organizations of all councils at UCLA, but I can't speak for other schools. Chapters are encouraged to have mixers between councils, to varying degrees of success.

Additionally, I wasn't familiar with council organization at east coast schools, so I did a quick search on Alabama, Syracuse, Vanderbilt, Georgia, and Florida. They seem to be arranged very similarly to west coast schools - a variety of councils, many with a Multicultural Greek Council of some kind.

[knight_shadow]

Does your organization already have more than one chapter? If so, who handled the original expansion procedures (internally)? Is the organization open to expanding to the west coast or is this more of a "testing the waters" thing?

A lot of the non-NIC/NPC expansions I've seen haven't been as drastic (going from Texas to New Mexico to Arizona, not from New York to California, for example -- this way, resources/support isn't so far away). It may be a challenge but not necessarily impossible.