LAMO!!! :p I know EXACTLY what you're talking about! Lol! I think it gets everyone every time!

Pledging, Mason style :D
 

During pledging last fall a sister either burped or farted, I can't remember which...

And, during a second pledging (some girls came in COB and were pledged on a different night) we lost a sheet that the nm's are supposed to read off of... so, we scrambled at the last second to write it on the dry erase board in the room. During that same ceremony one nm just couldn't say 'tau' right. She kept saying it "toy" and we all tried so hard not to laugh. I don't know if she ever got it right...

When I was initiated this spring, the chapter president of the collegiate chapter wore a white THONG underneath her attire, and she spent the entire ritual trying not to turn her backs to us so we wouldn't know it. The sisters who were standing behind her were turning BLUE from trying not to laugh. At one point she had no choice but to turn her side to us, so I got to see what she was wearing. I called her "Thongelina" for the rest of the day. :D

astroAPhi, I almost said "Oh ISHT" when I walked into the room, too!

My entire pledge class did this, we were all SO scared! One of the sisters stage whispered, "I see we got the Dean's List group." :rolleyes:

The other thing I can mention was, as an alum, when something important started to fall just behind me during initiation. I threw myself backward to hold it up and tried to look nonchalant...

About as good as the male equivalent, "I, William Robert Bada**" (Billy Bob's formal name ;)) . That was the running joke at our degree rehearsals at the Masonic Lodge -- almost guaranteed to mane more than a few of my brethren snicker... :D

During our fall initiation my senior year, our chapter president fell down outta no where. Hard. We were doing so well with initiation up to this point, so when she went down, everyone looked really shocked. I shot a death look to the younger sisters so they wouldn't laugh, and I think that is what put everyone over the edge to hysterical laughter. Yes, it is funny now that I think of it. :)

man, I thought this was just our chapter. apparently it is an ASA thing. I've wished more than once that we had stickpins. And I just want to say, wait till you do this for a whole colony...I see now why they begged us all to come or the poor installing officers would have been there all day.

more than once, we've had people holding candles and the person standing next to them accidentally blows them out.

One year, a girl who was "leaving" the chapter showed up to initiation in white silk pajamas just to piss everyone off! :o

Another candle problem with my chapter - they always go out, so we are constantly relighting. It is going to weird going to rituals at another chapter this year...I wonder if they are as crazy as us.

I belong to the Moose Lodge, and, I don't know if Mason's "compete" to see who's best, we do (thankfully, we are the current international champions...) - but I have seen all kinds of weird things happen...from bowties unclipping, to someone sitting, and literally blowing the seam of his tux pants all the way around AND NOT EVEN NOTICE IT FOR THE REST OF THE RITUAL....wow.

In college, during one LXA ritual - we had two new members going through, with FOOD POISONING. Made for a very long, interesting, nauseating evening.....'nuff said.

In a way, we Masons do. We have annual certification exams on ritual, depending on the level of proficiency "A", "B" and "C" certificates are awarded. The "A" covers everything in the ritual of all three degrees, opening and closing the lodge (both normal and funeral Lodges of Sorrow) and the Tiler's Oath. The "B" covers all of the "A" except the explanatory lectures, and the "C" covers only the categorical lectures, opening and closing and the Tiler's Oath. Members who exhibit proficiency in any level for at least three years only have to renew every three years; those who maintain proficiency for at least 25 years earn a lifetime certificate.

Lodges sometimes assemble degree teams for a graded Entered Apprentice, Fellowcraft or Master Mason degree. Start off with a perfect score of 1000 points, then count off points for errors in the language, floor work etc. To receive recognition in Grand Lodge (and a nice certificate the Lodge can display) you need at least 901 points. On one EA graded degree team we scored 980 out of 1000.

Well, not to brag (well, OK, I AM..)...same sort of thing - we have six individuals on a ritual staff, individual scores of 100 are perfect, 600 perfect for a team (by the way, "perfect" scores are NEVER attained, much of the judging is too subjective in nature)....

At this year's convention, I scored 99.0417 (personal best), and our team scored 593.9375 (also our personal best).

It's all for bragging rights - and with over 2000 lodges, only 66 teams qualified for international - so it was quite an accomplishment. The only Texas staff (Grand Prairie) placed 5th, and no Oklahoma staffs qualified this year.

We get hits on words (.25 for each one missed, .5 if you need a prompt to get going again), floor work, unison movements, quality of delivery, etc....it can be very stressful, and is EXTREMELY competitive. Our staff has won first place honors three of the past four years (last year we missed two words, the only hits, and that dropped us down to 5th)...so it's hard to stay at the top.

Moose, Elks, and Masons actually compete...are there any GLO's that do this? LXA does not, but you can be nominated to the Ritual Staff that does initiation at our conventions, so that is an honor to participate in, but not much is done by way of competition at an official level....

bump

Someone gets the pledge and initiation ritual confused, EVERYTIME! They study the wrong ritual. :D

We had a few people SIT DOWN in the middle of a ritual once. There were chairs present, and they took a seat like five minutes into the ritual, then I told them to stand up. :eek:

A few people took out their cameras to take pictures, until our advisor told them to put them away.

One poor girl had her ass stared at while we were pledging her. An active pointed her finger at the pledge's ass and whispered "ooh yeah, look at that ass on her!".



Maybe we should add ritual behavior guidelines during pledge education. :o

Most inappropriate: a couple of members of another campus sorority came into the campus building that we had reserved (where we had initiation since there were unhoused), walked passed the signs that said "Private: Initiation" and sang their own sorority songs. Our NMs had to hear this in the middle of the initiation ceremony. The other sorority members later characterized this as an "accident" when asked by panhellenic and never got in trouble.

Wow. What did you all do after that? That was wrong...

arg, I am officially "that girl" in terms of ritual giggles. We have a *very* serious and important ritual every year, and every single feckin' year, I manage to get delirious with giggles about half way through and i can't can't can't stop. I get all sorts of hell for it, but I can't help it!

When I came back from Ireland, I had a really ridiculous mish mash of accents. I picked up a serious Belfast accent, and I couldn't shake it. The word "four" sounds more like "far" and can't doesn't sound like c-ant, it's more like, "canna" and I just in general have a different emphasis to my words...so my sisters thought it would be HILLARIOUS to make me have the card with all the "can'ts" and "for to" and "for that" and "forward" because, you know, one ridiculous accent is feckin' hilarious in the middle of a solemn ceremony.

This comes from one of my friends who attended an Ivy League school. They were in the middle of initiation when a member who was trying to sneak out of the house tumbled down the steps into the foyer...Drunk...and with her boyfriend in tow.

The next day, she moved out of the house and became inactive.

wait, she went inactive because of that?

and she was sneaking out because she was avoiding going to ritual? or cause she was trying to sneak him out?

i mean sure thats embarassing, but no reason to be inactive over.

Have many people passed out during your Initiation?

I had a bizarre experience when visiting another KD chapter for initiation. I had always thought that initiation decorum would generally be the same at all chapters. I was mistaken.

First, one of the collegians was wearing flip-flops. :eek: KD's former National Vice President was there and the two of us both noticed the shoes at the same time then looked up at eachother. The look on her face was priceless. She didn't do or say anything about it. Personally, I would have kicked the girl out and told her not to come back without proper attire.

Later on during the same initiation ceremony one woman (I think she had just recently graduated) was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt under her, um "catsuit". ;) About half way through the ceremony she just crossed the room and walked out. Maybe 5 minutes later she walked back in and crossed the room again. I couldn't believe it. She did it so nonchalantly. I couldn't help but wonder what on earth she left for. Bathroom break? It was a small pledge class! Phone call? Attack of the munchies? :confused:

Finally, at one point one of the initiates pulled a camera out and took a picture! No one said anything at the time but as soon as initiation was over I saw one of the chapter officers run up to her.

I'd have to say that this was unlike any KD initiation I'd ever seen (or hope to see again). I'm not without my own initiation mess ups though. As a collegian I did have a laughing fit once when it came time to do my part. It didn't help that one of my sisters was making faces at me and trying to fix something that might have appeared that I was botching, but actually had under control. In between laughing I kept whispering to her, "no, no. stop it. it's fine!"

Right before a sister was getting ready to pin her respective new member she dropped her pin down the air shaft on the floor!

We also had 2 people almost slip and fall during the ritual.

All I will say is that in the 80s electric candles were not common, and using "Stiff Stuff" was. Flames + Stiff Stuffed hair = fire danger. Ah, nothing like the smell of burnt hair in the morning.

The chapter my mother and I were advising was picked to help initiate our new chapter at Loyola - New Orleans. We had just been to convention, so were really up on our ritual. During the installation of the colony, this (awful) alumna started hissing "You are saying the wrong word!" Now we KNEW we weren't, but she would not shut up! Apparently she had been doing the ritual wrong for many years . . .

We couldn't do anything. Panhell accepted the girls' story that it was an accident (like every other time there was an issue) and both chapters just went on hating eachother.

two funny stories:

my pledge class wasn't told when our initiation was, instead we were told it was a sisterhood retreat. well the night before was a huge party thrown by one of the fraternities which everyone at the college goes to. so about half of my pledge class was hungover for initiation, and while waiting and spending forever in a classroom they wrote "if you wanna be a ZTA" to wannabe by the spice girls. when i arrived right at the end of initiation and heard all the stories and the song it was priceless. we try now to arrange it so initiation is not after this party. i have also never been to one of our pledge class initiations because they are always when i had a regatta for crew, so i always missed out on all the fun.

this year our pledge class has identical twins and when they did the formal pledge ceremony they were together and when they were repeating things they sounded like one person, it was so freaky.

My Initiation was held in the oldest building on campus which was very pretty most of the time. Lots of things have changed since then but at that time, we used only candlelight, which was no big deal because it was late morning on a Sunday. This day though, it was really stormy so there was no natural light to speak of. There was one part where we individually kneeled on a cushion for a vow. Just as the gal in front of me kneeled, there was a HUGE crash of lighting/thunder and everybody just stopped in their tracks and then the giggles set in. The President got herself composed and continued. When I kneeled, everybody just kind of stopped again, like they were waiting to see if it would happen again. The President and I made eye contact and the giggles took over again.

I can say that, as a regional officer, one of the most interesting parts is going to all the Initiations and seeing how they botch it. I had one chapter tell me one year "We voted not to wear white this year" HUH???

:eek:




I love the lightning/thunder story. So dramatic!

O. M. G. :eek:

after an initiation our chapter performed a DZ tradition of "The Loving Cup" Ceremony. For those of you that aren't familiar with what a loving cup is, it's a 3-handled cup (in our case, it was a LARGE silver urn-type "cup" that looked more like a trophy given to us when the chapter was founded in the 20's) that we pass from member-member and say a little saying as we pass it, simulating drinking (or if liquid was in it, actually drinking). Anyway, it's a really neat tradition and we did it after each initiation.

This one time, the girls decided to put some fruit-punch in it instead of just plain water. Well, we all wear white to initiation and one of the new members didn't realize that it actually had liquid in it (I'm sure you can see where this is going) and when she hefted it up to her mouth, nearly 1/2 of what was in there rapidly moved to the front of her dress. It's a solemn moment, the ceremony, but a bunch of us just couldn't help it and bust out laughing. It was hard to contain it...and we kept sputtering laughter the whole time. Thanks to some bleach and quick-thinking, the dress was saved and no-one was the wiser.

It was hilarious when it happened, obviously it's a you-had-to-be-there moment...but that's the only thing that I could think of.

It was the combination of boyfriend upstairs, skipping initiation and falling down the stairs drunk in front of the chapter and alums.

No real horror stories from my GLO, but during initiation to a auxiliary of an ROTC group, we being led blindfolded into a room carrying lit candles.

Blindfolds
Crowded, narrow corridor
Nervous, giggling freshmen women
Open flames
Farrah Fawcett "wings" with hairspray
= Risk Management nightmare.

The smell of burning hair electrified the few people in the room who were able to see, and brawny ROTC men soon "put out" the poor girl in front of me after I managed to catch her on fire. For the rest of the year, every time I saw her, with her thinning spot, just to the left of her ear, I felt sooooooo guilty. Fortunately, she was unhurt, but I understand why groups don't allow open flames anymore.

The next year, initiation was changed a bit.......and I became known as "Sparky the Wonder Girl"

Stomach growling at inopportune times... And I don't recall anyone ever saying anything like "Oh $%&^!" upon entering initiation, but a lot of times, people (like me!) laughed out of nervousness b/c they were so awestruck.

And to any ADPi's, I'm thinking of a word that makes me laugh everytime I think of initiation...

We never had candles inside our house (electric tapers!), but I have heard horror stories from older chapters!

ETA: I just remembered one more. A girl in my alpha class broke wind during her initiation, but no one knew... until she told all of us later and dubbed herself "Puff Daddy." LOL. I can always appreciate someone who can laugh at herself! :)

This isn't really inappropriate, but it is rather sweet. My chapter has a lot of girls, so they are initiated in small groups on the same day. At Alpha Initiation (new member installation), I was in a group with 8 or so other alphas. We had just gotten our bids the day before, so no one knew each other. As we waited, we had a prime opportunity to talk and learn about each other.

One of the girls revealed that she had missed her high school graduation back in May b/c she had an emergency surgery. We decided she needed to have a make-up 3 months later (it was August). So we made her a graduation cap out of paper plate and construction paper, threw a bathrobe over her shoulders (we probably shouldn't have b/c it belonged to the house girl whose room we were assigned to while we waited!), hummed "Pomp and Circumstance" and called off the roster of graduates (just her!). I handed her a "diploma," which I think was just a rolled up copy of People magazine.

It was so funny, and she's one of my best friends to this day!

One more... I think I told this story on GC before.

One of our sisters wasn't feeling well on initiation day, and was excused, but she wasn't feeling well enough to go back to her apt. So my roommate and I told her to take a nap in our room.

My roomie had literally just started dating her now-husband, and Bryan took it upon himself to leave the world's longest voicemail (this was in the days when there were answering machines and you could hear the message as it was being left) as an expression of his feelings for my roomie.

That poor sister was having the worst migraine of her life and she had to suffer through Bryan playing "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" in its entirety for my roomie on the answering machine!

Well, it was sweet... and 6 years later, they played the song at their wedding.

And yet another story... ADPi has a special initiation for members who are graduating that is conducted by alumnae members of the local alumnae association.

It isn't necessary to go through this ceremony to be considered an alumna, but it is very pretty, and most women regard this as their favorite ritual.

When I lived in LA, I regularly participated in this ceremony at USC with other members of the alumnae association. We'd get there early to help the ritual chair with set-up. Every year, somebody knew would find "the photo."

Years ago (I'm talking 1960's), the alumnae conducing the ceremony took a picture of themselves in full ritual regalia. The hairdos are priceless. No one seems to have the heart to throw the photo away, and the alumnae ritual chair keeps it with the Jewel Degree ritual equipment!

Last semester, one of the MITs was out of town during a wedding when the rest of her class was initiated, so we initiated her the following Sunday.

We didn't have a pianist, so we had to use a tape of the music for the ceremony. The president asked, Lucy (we'll call her), the girl who was running the cd player, if she knew how to do it 500 times, I swear. Well Lucy swore up and down she knew how to do it and even got mad at our President for being so nervous about it. There's this part, w/o giving away too much, where this music is played and the sister's taking part in the ceremony circle around the initiates telling them more and more about our secrets. Well, time comes for Lucy to play the music and it never started. We all stood there in silence kind of just looking at each other for half a minute. The president, who thought very quickly on her feet, began humming the tune so that we could begin the procession. I swear I almost laughed my ass off. Finally, two rounds later, the damn music began.

I felt so bad for that initiate. Not only did her ceremony get a little screwed up, but she also had mono. :o

That was the exact point at which I completely cracked up during my own initiation and started laughing hysterically. I was really nervous and just kind of went over the edge. Oops. I guess there's a wildly inappropriate alpha in every class. :)

Also, my chapter used to run two initiation rooms at the same time, since we usually had new member classes of at least 50 girls. We would use our suite as "home base" where everyone could leave their stuff and the new members could wait, and borrowed the two neighboring sorority suites to run initiation. Girls in those chapters were warned NOT to enter their suite on that day, and we blocked off the hallway and put signs up all over the place - including OVER the doorknob. But still, every year, someone from one of the neighboring chapters would wander in during our initiation ceremony, stop like a deer in headlights, and turn around and run out. I never understood it - they would have to get past the sheet blocking the hallway and REMOVE THE SIGN covering the doorknob - wouldn't you maybe realize you shouldn't go in??

ok, just one equation: moths+candles= really priceless moment and nasty smell....

really kinda makes for a good ritual blooper if you think about it...

That would be priceless! We just have ordinary pictures of the pattern, not the people doing it.

I don't know why, but it's tradition at my chapter to have at least one woman pass out during initiation. Unfortunately, I was one of five during mine. :(

While I can not say a whole lot one of my Sorors almost knocked over a table.

Then no later than 5 minutes later I walked out of one of my shoes because they were too big and I had to have them at the last minute. That part was really funny:), but I dared not laugh.