For real!

I don't care what hazing law says. If you're not a member of my organization, you're not wearing my letters.

And THIS, ladies and gentlemen, is where the real issue comes in. In NPCs, it is a generally accepted rule that new girls are new MEMBERS. Members is the key word in that sentence. In other organizations, this is not true - your pledges or aspirants or whatever the heck you call them are NOT members.

If someone doesn't know the full scope of your (general you) organization and what everything means, I don't see how they can be viewed as members. Giving someone the perks of being in your organization when they don't understand it is a bit odd.

Not wrong, just different.

I think it all depends on how you define "member". There are stages of membership in many GLOs. Some define some of the stages as non-member stages, some don't. NPCs consider their "pledges" as members from day one - other GLOs don't consider their "pledges" as members at all, but as aspiring members.

I think it is a bit odd to have someone who is sort of a member, but not really - it's kind of like being a "little" pregnant. To me, you either are or are not. You don't "know" what you know about the baby at 8 months when you are only 6 weeks along, but at both stages, you are pregnant.

The ole "different strokes" cliche.:)

Right. That's what fantASTic was saying. I get it, but it's different.

LOL @ being a little pregnant. I was thinking of it like an engagement/marriage. Yes, there's obviously a bond there if you're married. Yes, you can try to behave like you're married. But you don't get the "perks" of marriage and can't really say you've experienced "married life" until you're actually married.

ETA:

They're not sort of members -- just non-members ;)

Soooo - I'm a non-member, too. How are they different then me - They are aspiring members? Seriously, what do you call them?

That's exactly the point I was trying to make in my post *about my local organization TLS*, why we never used the 'new member' terminology when the word 'pledge' was dropped *at the time I was in college*. In a way they were still potential new members, even though they had been given a bid. Potential members, prospective members, aspiring members, etc. But not members, and therefore not 'new' members.

ETA - in our case, after we stopped calling them pledges, we called them Taus.

*Edited again to specify the organization and the time frame, since as I mentioned in the first post I do not know what the exact current policy is.

You might want to specify ( again - I know you did in your original post) that you are not referring to Gamma Phi Beta, which does indeed refer to what were "pledges" as "new members"(www.gammaphibeta.org) , but to Tau Lamda.

We call them aspirants.

Sorry, I should have specified again so there wouldn't be confusion. :o Definitely I was only referring to TLS, since that is the organization that I had first hand knowledge of in college.

I was confused at first, then went back and re-read your previous post - it was clear to me, but since you list Gamma Phi first in your signature . . . :)

So to tally up based on my question:

NPCs that allow new members to wear letters but not the crest (or maybe it would be better to say display the crest):

AEPhi
ASA
AST

Ones that allow letters and crest:

Pi Phi (never heard anything differently anyway)

Anyone else want to contribute to this list? I had never heard about the letters-not-crest thing and find it fascinating.

I know D Phi E at least at my campus lets their pledges wear letters.

Only initiated Kappa Deltas may wear the crest. This is because our badge is the center of our crest, and only initiated members may wear the badge.

Here's where I'm intrigued. If, as has been said in this thread, new members are members and, therefore, can wear letters, why can't they wear the badge or crest? Isn't that hazing too?