Sororities look into expansion

The Collegiate Panhellenic Council (CPC) may be growing soon as they recently voted to formally consider bringing another national sorority to Tech's Greek Community.

The vote to start expansion exploration was passed Feb. 5. The next step in the process is to create a committee that includes one girl from each current chapter to look at campus statistics regarding sororities. The committee will then present their findings to CPC.

Campus chapters will then have the option to move to consult a National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) delegate to help advise them on the campus extension. Following this process, a vote will be held to decide on whether to move forward with the expansion process.

If approved, a new committee will be formed to prepare information about Tech and its Greek system for the NPC. The NPC will then distribute this information to the 20 sororities in the NPC that are not currently represented on campus.

Any of the sororities interested in extending their membership to Tech will send their information to the CPC.

The committee formed to forward Tech's information to the NPC will be tasked with narrowing down the field of candidate sororities to a set of three finalists. These three finalists will come to campus and make a presentation about their sororities. A vote will then be held to decide the finalist from the top three candidates.

Once the finalist is decided, another vote will be held to either approve the new chapter, approve but defer the chapter's creation on campus, or to deny the chapter. "Expansion is a very intense process," said Anne Hewitt, the president of the Panhellenic Council.According to Hewitt, some of the members of the Greek community do not fully understand everything that goes into the expansion process. Currently, Tech is on step one of a several step process that could take several months.

CPC expansion is not an event that takes place very often. The last time there was an expansion was 1989. The main reason for the current expansion talk has been the increased numbers in sorority recruitment over the past few years.The CPC recently raised the quota within sororities from 100 members to 120 members due to the increased demand. The process of expansion was brought up last year, but was initially turned down. After the recent recruitment spike, the CPC changed its mind and voted to open the process of expansion on campus.

"I am very excited that we are looking into this. The process of building something is one that everyone can come together over," Hewitt said.