None of the fraternities at my school put their letters on event shirts. For example, all my Sigma Chi Derby Days shirts are free of letters. One year, they put all the sorority's letters on the shirts and it was a big controversy.

My roommate, who was the Sigma Chi Sweetheart in 2005, was one of the few girls on campus wearing stiched fraternity letters. The others were lavaliered girlfriends or other sweethearts.

My current boyfriend's fraternity, which is a local, would never dream of putting their letters on anything that would be worn by a non-Cosmo, including event shirts.

I think the acceptability depends on the campus and the chapter.

It depends on the org. and the chapter I'm guessing. For instance, my big sister (sorority) is the TKE 2006 sweetheart and she has a stitched jersey exactly like theirs and she is welcomed to wear any other stitched letters if she wants to.

Another one of my sisters is the 2006 FIJI sweetheart and has the official FIJI jersey as well, but they don't really wear "letters" but FIJI instead and I'm sure I've seen other girls on campus with "FIJI Girl" shirts on so I guess since it's not "officially letters" they don't mind.

I however (even as a long time girlfriend), can not wear stitched letters for TKE, but I am welcome to wear screen printed and iron-on letters if I'd like to (I don't own any though). But I do have a TKE style jersey with MY letters on it because my "big brother" is a TKE and bought it for me.

Some chapters on my campus like Sigma Alpha Mu forbids anyone other than initiates to wear lettters. Pi Kappa Phi allows their Pi Kapp lady to wear them though. I don't think that any other fraternity chapters really have sweethearts on my campus, or if they do it's not a big deal.

AZD here allows thier Xi man an AZD style jersey, but it usually says either a stitched "Xi Man" or just stitched "Xi" on it. But I have seen other chapters give Xi Man an actual stitched jersey.

So like everyone else says: It Depends!

Thats pretty weird, I didn't know so many groups had regulations about it. I don't really wear t shirts, but when I do they are often a sorority formal shirt or something. I've also probably given away tons of shirts w/ my letters on them to girls.

shiner, is that being call a Ho Bag?:D

God if a He GLO and SHE GLO do something together and wear T-Shirts with each name on it how much more PC do Some have to get!

If in doubt, why dont some of You check with Your HQs and get a ruling on it?

If I am not good enough as a new Associate to wear at least the letters, then I am not good enough to be a member of this stiff neck hard nose GLO!:rolleyes:

I chuckle just a little every time this topic comes up in one form or another.

Tradition and history are relative things, depending upon when you live -- AS WELL AS your organization.

Comments like "nobody" should wear/display my letters but a brother/sister fly in the face of many long lasting GLO traditions themselves.

Take, for instance, the tradition of lavaliering and/or pinning. In both of those a fraternity man gives a (sorority or other) woman a piece of jewelry which is very likely to have his fraternity letters on it. If the pinning was between two Greeks, the woman was likely to wear both her and his pin or badge with a chain between the two. I can't recall ever seeing a man wear both, but it would not surprize me.

I always thought it was great when a beautiful co-ed (like Mrs. DA) wore a Delt sweat shirt because it said something good about her boyfriend and his fraternity as well.

The way it worked in every fraternity I know of when I was an undergraduate was that pledges, girlfriends, etc. could wear fraternity letters -- but only an initiated member could display the crest or coat of arms -- because of the secrets involved the the latter two.

As I look out my office window at my car, it strikes me that if I were that touchy about the letters, my wife could never be allowed to drive my car because the Delt letters are proudly displayed in the rear window.

I'll just go on chuckling.

I think this depends on the school. At UCF, plenty of groups swap letters. Although there are no formal auxilary groups, there's an underground Big Bro/Lil Sis and Big Sis/Lil Bro movement where members of different GLOs call each other family and exchange paddles and jerseys with one another's letters. During football games, many girls wear fraternity jerseys with stitched letters. During sorority recruitment, the guys wear sorority jerseys and sorority event shirts, including Bid Day shirts. In some cases, sorority women will have shirts made for their friends in other sororities with the other GLO's letters stitched and their own sewn through (written in italic Latin characters). I'm sure someone from another school would think this was really bizarre, but it's helped promote Greek Life on our campus and the Greeks have strong relationships within chapters.

There is only one sorority at UCF that does not allow new members to wear Greek letters (they may wear shirts with the letters spelled out), and this is per their national bylaws. I don't see anything wrong with a new member wearing Greek letters or shirts with the letters spelled out in Latin characters-- as long as it is in keeping with your bylaws, it promotes the organization and Greek Life.

We have a lot of people who do the stitched letters with embroidery of another GLO through it too, but my particular chapter frowns on it. A couple of sisters have our letters with fraternity letters written through it and they were basically told it's disrespectful. My big sister told me never to do it (and I personally wouldn't because I don't need someone else's letters/name on top of mine.)But I don't usually care what anyone else wears that much to frown upon it.

Now, keep in mind that when I was in college NIC still sanctioned "Little Sister" groups for the fraternities. The fraternity where I was a Little Sister allowed us to wear the stitched letters. In fact, my big brother bought me a nice, heavy Champion hoodie with purple stitched greek letters over a gold background. I wore it to death and it finally had to be retired to the Big Laundry Bin in the Sky.

I don't like that. To me it seems kind of disrespectful to cover your lovers with another orgs. I think embroidering it underneath our letters is a cute idea though.

To the girls at UCF... dumb question but do you guys have a Panhel Advisor? If so, how do you get around guys wearing recruitment shirts? Before I got initiated, on Bid Day fraternity men used to dress in tuxedos and escort the new members across the stage when they announced their new home. (no house, use a big room for Bid Day) They had to stop it though per NPC rules and the whole men can't be involved in recruitment thing.--- sorry for the hijack, you can PM me if you want.

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Tuxedos? That's awesome! When I ran down Greek Park with my bid, we had Pikes sitting outside their house in lawn chairs in their swim trunks.... holding up placards to rate us on a scale of 1-10! Very different.

The guys are not part of Bid Day; they just stop by outside the house to visit their girlfriends and Lil/Big Sis's and friends to congratulate them and show their love. They stay outside-- most of the guys are actually wandering down the street. I seriously think they do it to collect tshirts and get into the photographs!

Yes, there is a Greek Adviser and a graduate assistant. In 2000, UCF was selected as Greek Campus of the Year by a Florida student leader trade magazine. Our campus culture promotes wearing one another's t-shirts and letters. Obviously we don't have ADPi's going around wearing KD jerseys and date function tee shirts, or ATO's decked out in Pi Kapp jerseys and rush shirts, but you do have girls wearing guy's letters and vice versa. But it wouldn't be unusual for your best friend in another sorority to sneak over and shoe-polish your back window with "ABC loves XYZ"-- we did that on a regular basis for the fraternities, too.

Like I said, this is the campus culture and it works for us. I'm sure it would be radically opposed at another campus. In this case, our campus is very Greek oriented and the Greeks have really good relationships with one another. So much so that they want to promote one another with their letters-- years ago, we had a sorority close and immediately recolonize. Every single UCF Greek was wearing "Ask Me About ABC" buttons and helping support the "new" chapter. It was amazing and every time a new sorority colonizes, you see that kind of support. I was actually a little shocked when I visited other chapters on different campuses-- some of them don't even talk to their house neighbors! Again, that's what works for that school. But that kind of support made me very proud to be a UCF Greek while I was a student.

UCFPNM: All of the fraternities have rush tshirts and all of the sororities have Bid Day tshirts. There's also an all-Panhellenic Tshirt that sorority PNMs will receive at Greek Forum-- if you go to Bid Day, wear this shirt-- you'll be given a Bid Day tshirt at the sorority! Bid Day at the house is casual-- there is a break, you change into a cute dress and then go out to dinner with your new sisters at places like DisneyQuest, Hard Rock Cafe, House of Blues and Pointe Orlando.

Oh honey, I didn't mean actual embroidered greek letters. I meant that the name is spelled out over the Phi Mu letters. Once again, in our chapter it's considered very taboo. If someone was to actually just wear double letters (theirs and someone elses on one shirt) I think there would be an uproar!

This is a little off topic but it has to do with letter wearing and me yelling at a girl :)

A sister in my sorority and her boyfriend ( A sig tau) had lavaliered each other. For valentine's day she made him a black hoodie sweatshirt with his letters in our colors, green and white, and on the hood she had our letters embroidered on the side. It was really unique and looked really nice. Unfortuantely she went to a place in her hometown( same as mine) that usually doesn't do greek letters, so they accidentally put an episilon instead of a sigma. She got the sweatshirt redone and we all forgot about the first ruined sweatshirt. Well I live at home now and commute to chicago for grad school. One day as I was waiting for the train I saw a girl in a black hooded sweatshirt with MY letters embroidered on teh hood. I then look and it's the ruined sweatshirt for my friend with the epsilon tau gamma stitched on the side. I asked her if she was a kappa delta and she said no that her mom runs a sports shop thing, im not sure what they're called and that she always gives her the stuff she messes up. I was really irritated and told her that those letters on the hood mean something to people and others aren't supposed to wear them and also that I knew the girl who designed the sweatshirt and she would not be happy to know that someone out there was wearing it. I somewhat felt bad because the girl looked confused but I think it's horrible that her mom just gave her something with out okaying it with my sister.

Thinking back when I was in high school my older brother was a member of a GLO (avoiding the name in case in makes anyone mad) but he had a hat with his letters stiched on it and when he washed it it shrunk so he gave it to me. I wore it a lot (I missed my brother a lot since he was 3 hours away) and never had anyone say anything to me about it. Of course since I was not greek at the time I didn't know if it was okay or not, but he seemed to not think it was a big deal to give it to me.

If anyone has a problem with that they need to get a life. Someone's little sister, I would treat them like my little sister, because that is what I would want. Little sisters are allowed to wear letters.

I think it may be different in many places. I've always heard shirts made out of heavy, close knit cotton (i.e., made out of jersey) with embroidered letters called "jerseys," and except for NPHC groups, I've rarely seen numbers or nicknames on them -- just the letters and (usually) contrasting collars and cuffs.