My chapter does not allow pledges to wear letters either for the same reason... Why should you wear something when you don't understand full meaning

EMB021
I agree with you and do not understand what is so deamening about the word pledge, to me a pledge is like an athlete who has been asked to go to pre-season this athlete may not make it through pre-season and there fore will never be considered a rookie (new member) a new member is intern like a rookie... finally on the team but learning everyday how to put in the hard work to stay on the team......

Our girls are not allowed to wear letters until after initiation becuase as several people have said, they do not understand their connotations and history. THe other thing is that if a girl DOES decide to drop or leave school, she has a set of letters laying around that end up in goodwill or as a dust rag, and that's no good. But the ceremony and tradition of bigs getting shirts for littles is very exciting...typically the girls recieve letters in their "family fabric", to represent their branch of the tree (mine is a crazy bright hawaiian print!) and they get a hunk of fabric to use for their own stuff or to hand down to their future littles.

Until then, they have stuff that says TAU DELTA written out, but they are to avoid using the greek letters. Motto, mascot, flower, colors, names, phrases, everything else is fair game, but the letters are for later. When designing their class shirts (one of their first tasks as a group), that is the material they have to work with. The tradition of designing the year's shirts is awesome...I have a couple of hand-me-down pledge class shirts that are hillarious and cute. THe active chapter usually buys them too, as its cheaper than getting huge orders of letters or what have you. Other chapters here give the girls their class shirts, I think ours are the only ones who design their own.

Also, we use the term Pledge. You are a Pledge until you are initiated. "New Member" refers to your FIRST ACTIVE YEAR (for me, my Soph. year). As this is the first time as a member you are going through rush, organizing events, and having the full burden of membership.

This is actually an unwritten policy in APO. Only Brothers may wear letters. Pledges may wear items that have the full name spelled out, but not the greek letters. (event t-shirts are ok, because they aren't an indication of membership) In most chapters, once a pledge is initiated as a Brother, typically that is when they are presented with their first letter shirt/jersey/jacket, typically from their Big Brother.

Phoenix I think that its really cool that your pledges design there own pledge shirts I had never heard of that before

The topic of whether new members or pledges are allowed to wear letters comes up from time to time. My view is that it's a question for each organization to decide -- not an issue of better or worse, or right or wrong. It might not be a bad idea to remember that there are NIC and NPC groups whose official new member / pledge / associate member pins proudly display the fraternity's or sorority's Greek letters. For example (forgive me if I've forgotten some):

Alpha Omicron Pi
Alpha Phi
Alpha Sigma Alpha
Alpha Sigma Tau
Alpha Xi Delta
Chi Omega
Delta Delta Delta
Delta Phi Epsilon
Sigma Kappa
Sigma Sigma Sigma

Delta Chi
Delta Upsilon
Kappa Alpha Order
Phi Kappa Sigma

And at least two sororities that have merged into other NPC groups displayed their letters on their pledge pins: Delta Sigma Epsilon and Pi Kappa Sigma.

I hope we can all appreciate the different traditions and policies in the Greek world.

Well, APO's pledge pin has our 3 greek letters. Typically, our policy is that if the letters are used in a 'decorative' manor, they may have the item, but if the item would indicate membership, they can't. Letter shirts indicate membership (as do most jewelry items, unless its a sweetheart pin), so they can't have them. Event shirts don't indicate membership, but attendence at the event, so its not an issue. One chapter I know gives their pledges paddles to gather signatures on. At the top it has the greek letters for Alpha and Omege, but instead of the greek letter Phi, they spell it out "P H I", to avoid the issue. (however, we have some Brothers who don't understand this and think pledges can't have ANY for of the letters).

Re: Re: Re: Re: New Member Education: What do you think?
 

I am late to this thread but I am going to speak my mind anyway.

I don't understand why you singled out Latino/a GLO's and wrussel here. Did you actually read his entire post before you jumped down his throat?

And lets not be naive here, many orgs national governing body has anti-hazing rules, as well as the college or university it is located at, but that does not mean that every chapter of the organization follows those rules. While hazing may have been against the rules/law for a while, orgs have only recently (re)implented the laws and created or revised their intake process. And while I do not know any of your orgs personally (as no outsider would) you cannot speak for every chapter of your organization. Hazing has been around for a long time and it is going to take a lot more than a new intake process and a few years before it is entirely eradicated (if that is even possible).