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I graduated a year or two before the first unhoused sorority came to IU, so it hasn't been too long since I was there, but I have not been able to see these unhoused chapters for myself. However, I am so grateful and happy that there are 3(!) more wonderful organizations that college women have the opportunity to participate in.
As an active, I was always thrilled with our new pledge classes but it was all too common to find out that spectacular girls (who had maximized their options) went bidless. All my sisters that were RGs have stories of consoling wonderful girls who were open-minded and yet came up short. This is how it is with our crazy, antiquated system that does not use RFM and refuses to change. I would talk with friends in other chapters and we all seemed to agree: yes- an unhoused new chapter might possibly be "less desirable" but we really felt it would benefit the Panhellenic community overall. The demand was there and we knew there would be women who could look beyond the house aspect. And having these organizations would not make IU Recruitment suddenly super easy. It would still be very competitive but just maybe, this would make a few more deserving people able to contribute to IU Greek Life.
So I am just happy that these chapters have actually come to fruition and while they might struggle with their identity on a campus that hyper-focuses on having a house, I really think they have a true shot of being very successful and strong. IU is a school where getting to a bid to any chapter is beyond lucky (this is said across many campuses but I truly think it is IU that has lottery-esque odds) and these unhoused chapters are no exception.
I should add, that I also think another way to open up more spaces is to have more chapters require live-out policies. My chapter had a senior-year live out policy and when I was there more chapters began to open this up as an option for their seniors and it did help get a few larger pledge classes. But really, only at IU, one could think that anything less than 2 years in a house is not a "real" sorority experience.
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