National Panhellenic Conference

The National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) is an umbrella organization for 26 national and international women's sororities throughout the United States and Canada. Panhellenic (lit. 'all-Greek') refers to the group's members being autonomous social Greek-letter societies of college women and alumnae.

The National Panhellenic Conference provides guidelines and resources for its members and serves as a national voice on contemporary issues of sorority life. Founded in 1902, the NPC is one of the oldest and largest women's membership organizations, representing more than 4 million women at over 650 college and university campuses and 4,600 local alumnae chapters in the U.S. and Canada. Each year, NPC-affiliated collegians and alumnae donate more than $5 million to causes, provide $2.8 million in scholarships to women, and volunteer 500,000 hours in their communities.

The organization is a conference, not a congress, as it enacts no legislation and only regulates its own meetings. Other than basic agreements which its member groups must unanimously vote to follow, the NPC confines itself to recommendations and advice and acts as a court of final appeal in any college Panhellenic disputes. One of its services is providing advisors for sororities.

History
Early histories of sororities contain accounts of rushing and pledging agreements or compacts among sororities on various campuses, and many stories of cooperation and mutual assistance. However, no actual Panhellenic organization existed and no uniform practices were observed. The NPC's origin can be traced to 1891, when Kappa Kappa Gamma invited all seven existing sororities to a Boston meeting, with the intention to meet again in 1893.

In 1902, Alpha Phi invited Pi Beta Phi, Kappa Alpha Theta, Kappa Kappa Gamma, Delta Gamma, Gamma Phi Beta, Delta Delta Delta, Alpha Chi Omega, and Chi Omega to a conference in Chicago on May 24 to set standards for collegiate sororities. Alpha Chi Omega and Chi Omega were unable to attend and joined the following year. The remaining seven groups met and the session resulted in the organization of the first interfraternity association and the first intergroup organization on college campuses. The first few meetings resulted in several mutual agreements, especially regarding pledging. Up to this time, no guidelines had been set, and women could be pledged to groups before enrolling in college and belong to more than one group.

Many of the current members joined through the next decade, with Alpha Xi Delta in 1904, Alpha Omicron Pi and Sigma Kappa in 1905, Alpha Delta Pi and Alpha Gamma Delta and Zeta Tau Alpha in 1909, Delta Zeta in 1910, Phi Mu in 1911, and Kappa Delta in 1912. No new members were admitted for the next few decades.

Throughout its early years, NPC members were often racially and religiously segregated and rarely admitted Jewish, Catholic, or ethnic minority members, which led to the formation of group-specific sororities which attempted to provide the same social and academic outlets to groups who were otherwise excluded from membership. These groups included the first Black Greek letter organizations.

By 1922, the NPC (at the time named the National Panhellenic Congress) had an executive committee consisting of a chairman, secretary, and treasurer; a publicity board; and a delegate board with at least one representative from each of its 18 senior members. That year, the Congress also began plans for a centralized headquarters to coordinate and streamline interactions with the separate sororities.

Shortly before its merger with the NPC, the Association of Educational Sororities (AES) was part of a larger multi-panhellenic association, the Council of Affiliated Panhellenics. Created in 1941, it included the AES, NPC, and Professional Panhellenic Association as members.

AES merger and expansion
Members of Sigma Sigma Sigma and Alpha Sigma Alpha organized the Association of Pedagogical Sororities on July 10, 1915. Its members were primarily sororities located on state campuses mainly attended by women entering the educational field. In 1917, Pi Kappa Sigma and Delta Sigma Epsilon joined the association, followed by Theta Sigma Upsilon in 1925, Alpha Sigma Tau in 1926, and Pi Delta Theta in 1931. At the third biennial conference, the name of the association was changed to the Association of Educational Sororities. Later, the word Educational was changed to Education.

From 1915 through 1926, the NPC and AES operated chapters in the same colleges and universities. In 1926, the NPC and AES made an agreement "defining fields of activities of each panhellenic". There was competition between NPC and AES sororities, and dual memberships were often held. By the 1940s many teachers' colleges had begun to add liberal arts programs, and vice versa, which led to difficulties in the organizations functioning separately.

On November 12, 1947, at a conference in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the NPC considered and granted associate membership "with reservations" to the six AES sororities. The AES was holding its biennial meeting when it was notified of the NPC decision and, at that meeting, "completed the necessary business and took formal action to dissolve the Association". The NPC admitted five other sororities at the same time: Alpha Epsilon Phi, Delta Phi Epsilon, Phi Sigma Sigma, Sigma Delta Tau, and Theta Phi Alpha. In December 1951, all 11 of these sororities became full NPC members. Since that time, three AES members have merged with other NPC groups, leaving Alpha Sigma Alpha, Alpha Sigma Tau, and Sigma Sigma Sigma as the remaining former AES members.

From the 1940s to the 1960s, various smaller organizations merged into larger ones. On some campuses with two different chapters from merged sororities, a third sorority would organize on the campus to absorb the smaller sorority's former chapter.

By the end of the 1960s and the civil rights movement, NPC sororities eliminated official policies that prevented minority members from joining, although diversity in Greek life remained an issue.

21st century
As of the 2010s, sorority members and outside observers noticed a shift in sorority culture; though sororities began as feminist organizations, emphasis during the mid-1900s on social reputations and exclusionary recruitment policies (such as a refusal to recruit Jewish and African-American women) led to a reputation for following cultural hegemony and being made up of upper-class white women. Though such issues continue to persist in various ways, sorority and anti-sorority women alike observed sororities becoming more ethnically diverse and moving away from traditional power structures towards their feminist roots. In the 2010s, sorority members began attempts to change how sororities work from within.

In November 2015, eight NPC members (Alpha Phi, Alpha Chi Omega, Phi Mu, Alpha Gamma Delta, Sigma Delta Tau, Delta Phi Epsilon, Delta Gamma, and Gamma Phi Beta) broke ranks from the NPC to withdraw their support for the Safe Campus Act, a controversial bill that would have required campus sexual assault victims to report to police and submit to a law enforcement investigation before their school could begin its own investigation.

In 2016, collegiate members began discussing membership offers for transgender women, which was supported by some national organizations with changes to their national policies;  however, some national organizations delayed membership offers for trans women due to fears about Title IX exemption status, which caused dissent in local chapters. Though the NPC created a gender identity study group to examine potential legal consequences, they concluded that the legal precedents were "incomplete, inconclusive, and inconsistent," and did not enact official policy or recommendations.

By 2021, most national organizations had released political statements on racial and social equity and inclusion, while also developing membership policies regarding gender identity. Delta Phi Epsilon developed a policy explicitly open to trans and non-binary individuals, and sororities open to anyone who identifies as a woman include: Alpha Chi Omega, Alpha Delta Pi, Alpha Epsilon Phi, Alpha Sigma Tau, Chi Omega, Delta Gamma, Gamma Phi Beta, Kappa Alpha Theta, Kappa Delta, Kappa Kappa Gamma, Phi Sigma Sigma, Sigma Sigma Sigma, and Theta Phi Alpha. Sororities open to anyone who identifies and lives as a woman include: Alpha Gamma Delta, Alpha Omicron Pi, Alpha Xi Delta, Delta Delta Delta, Pi Beta Phi, Sigma Delta Tau, and Sigma Kappa, while Zeta Tau Alpha specifies that the individual must consistently identify and live as a woman.

Campus structure
A Panhellenic Council consists of executive board members at each university or college. Each institution holds different executive positions based on its size and the NPC's relationship with it. The basic positions at each institution are President, VP of Communications, VP of Finance, VP of Philanthropy and Community Service, VP of Programming, VP of Recruitment, VP of Scholarship, and VP of Judicial. The number of positions is based on the number of NPC sororities at each institution. Along with the delegates each being a representative from their sorority, the executive board includes a member from each sorority as well.

Chairmen
Throughout its history the NPC Executive Board has been led by a chairman. In 2018 the NPC Board of Directors voted to change its governance model. As of 2021, members rotate onto the board in the order their organization joined the NPC, but the chairman is now elected.