With the recent decision to add a new sorority to the University’s Greek Life system, we at The Bucknellian are very pleased with the direction that the Panhellenic Council is taking. The way fraternities and sororities are set up on this campus, there seems to be a need for a new sorority to mirror the fraternity structure.
Greek women on campus are provided with fewer options because there are significantly more fraternities than sororities (11 fraternities, seven sororities). For this reason, men receive two major benefits.
First, they have a much broader range of groups to choose from during recruitment, allowing for a more diverse selection. Being able to choose from 11 different fraternities, a University man is more likely to find a group of people with whom he can easily fit in.
The second benefit of more sororities stems from a decreased chapter size. Because the number of women looking to rush is so high and the number of sororities is so low, some chapters range as high as 170 members, and the people in those chapters suffer.
With numbers that high, a Greek organization loses much of its value. Without the ability to form close bonds with all of one’s brothers or sisters, one has to wonder whether that organization is a true brotherhood or sisterhood, or simply a social club.
Many members of The Bucknellian staff have also noticed that the size of sororities leads to a large number of cliques throughout the chapter, while fraternities, which are much smaller in size, seem to be much more unified.
Greek life is a place to form bonds with similar people and to find friendships that last longer than one’s educational years. The addition of a new sorority and decreased chapter sizes will only make Greek life stronger in this regard.