no room in the house!

Her sorority should (and thankfully did) tell her now if space is available. No one should have to wait to find out, for how else will they find other suitable housing for next year.

Something to think about: living in the house may become a thing of the past if class sizes continue to swell. Lots of other campuses deal with that without opening new sororities. If a sorority member only lives in the house for one year it can't be the end of the world, as sisterhood means so much more.

Yeah that's not really feasible

The main question should be what is each sorority doing to keep its members active and happy as sisters and friends OTHER than having them live in the house. What if your sorority went up in flames tomorrow and you had no sorority house to live in next year? A sorority is more than its house, and the cohesiveness of each group is independently attained. Surely living in the house is not the be-all-end-all of belonging to a sorority. I'll bet some women join and then hope they do not have to live-in due to the high cost and loss of independence.

Two items for sleepy: First, panhellenic will definitely have more recruitment counselors available this Fall so no group(s) have an unwieldy number of PNMs. This should suffice if a large Fall 2017 recruitment number appears.

Second, the uneven number of live-ins per house is finite. Each house is individually responsible for its own finances, furnishings, food and repairs or lack thereof. No one from Cal's panhellenic or in Cal's administration tells a house what to charge their members or how many women must live in their home.

Truth be told, at Cal no one can tell any sorority how many members it must take in a formal recruitment. Quota is set by panhel, but a house can bid fewer women than quota and not have to give reason. That's how the system works for 99.9% of campuses nationwide.

Cal's sorority house system allows each individual group their own special design for gracious living, dining, studying, paying their bills, making home improvements. Think of the variety of sorority housing one views during recruitment! And if in the past a sorority chose to build an addition to their home but they now have trouble filling their house, no one outside that organization should or will tell that group how or when to 'fill up or else'.

No one wants to put all sororities under one dorm roof with equalized dorm-floor size and a defined identical sleep-in number. Too much sorority housing tradition has been set-up in the 130+ years of Cal's sorority presence.

Thanks for you view as it got me thinking along different lines. I kept thinking about the housing issue in general and am not so sure that the 'vacancy' disparity, for lack of a better term, amongst the houses is a 'capacity' differential between the houses so much as a 'demand' issue overall from PNMs for certain houses. It seems like if we had more equal 'demand' across the panhel members then all houses would at least in theory be at or close to capacity at all times. Maybe this theory is half-baked but there has to be some explanation (partial or otherwise) for the situation we have. The situation in my house is now quite contentious and many are finding the entire situation upsetting. I know housing isn't a 'right' but historically I don't think its ever been the issue its become in certain houses. Will keep thinking about the issue but would appreciate any/all thoughts on the overall situation as if we have another big year next fall then it will get even more complicated.