Side-swerve: with due respect to each organization on here, does your GLO have public ceremonies that can be attended by family members, friends, co-workers outside of the GLO?

And there are places outside that are quite guarded. People have private property, high fenced yards, and neighbors miles away. We aren't talking about initiation outside of Whole Foods.

I would never want our private ritual of chicken legging and goat milking to be viewed by the public. Our public ritual of ox tailing is fair game.

We do have Candlelighting ceremony at convention that is fantastic outside. I've seen it in Phoenix against the Camelback mountain and in Tucson against a backdrop of mountains with our logo in lights projected on the mountains. The ceremony is open to the public. AZ Theta and AZ-Alpha Xi attended the Tucson ceremony with me. It's just not the same when it's inside. It really loses something in translation.

There's at least one thread on that, maybe more. Maybe later I can look.

I will look also; apologizes if the thread exists already.

Given the supreme beauty of our Initiation, I wonder how amazing it would be outside (given correct weather) or even on a beach, seaside, or equally majestic natural setting? not practical at a big State university but I imagine it would be fantastic.

Of course once we started taking the fuzzy kittens out, I'm sure people would change their minds...might be best kept indoors as the little suckers sure can run!

I'd like to imagine that every semester your nationals ships a box of kittens to every chapter to be used in ritual...official, Alpha Xi Delta approved fuzzy kittens. Their fuzziness has to be measured first to make sure they're up to snuff.

Well, I have looked some and can't find it; maybe it's just buried in a thread somewhere, though I know it's been talked about. Hmmm.

The pledging/new member/associate member ceremonies of a number of groups are open—Lambda Chi and KA Order come to mind as examples.

We have open versions of our Founder's Day ceremony and our memorial ceremony.

Our Founders' Day, chapter installation, and memorial ceremonies are open. Ribboning, pinning, and initiation are closed to all but initiated members and new members.

Everything but initiation is technically open for us, but we typically didn't invite anyone except our house mom.

Yup. Bessie the Lambda Chi Sheep would be too much trouble to keep track of outdoors.

Our initiation is not secret, but I've never known it to be "public" either. The local I initiated into held their initiation outside in a specific location that was special to the founders, but there were so many other people around that we had to keep stopping and waiting until they were gone. A ceremony that should have taken 45 minutes took 3 hours.

We have a Ritual ceremony that can only be done outside since there's a lot of fire involved. It's a public ceremony, but my chapter chooses to do it privately.

Nonetheless, here's an example of what it can look like:
http://i42.tinypic.com/2j9mja.jpg

As for initiation, we had done it outdoors a few times. There was only 1 small thing that needed an indoor element, but we easily made due since we're resourceful. I love it outside, actually. It's still serious and meaningful, but more relaxed.

And yes, we do that on private property, far from the public.