Oddly enough, having Fall Regionals rather than Christmas/New Year Regionals (or in the case of Region VIII, January) might make a difference. With Regionals in the fall in the odd years, the idea of filling the "empty" semester with NCPCs might seem to make more sense.

Fall Regionals wouldn't work for my Region (its been considered). I can't speak for other Regions and how it would work/not work for them.

Why not?

Problem would be *when* during the Fall. With football schedules in the South (we have a LOT of football schools), it wasn't possible to find a date that would work, plus the issue of travel from around the Region.

We have considered it. And usually after everyone yet again looked at it, we go back to our usual date.

So for us, the period between Xmas & New Years has worked.

In Region VI, our Regionals are in the fall and we have several big football schools (Michigan, Michigan State, Purdue, Indiana, Illinois, Northwestern). If Christmas/New years works for your schools, then it works for your schools. I think we prefer to give that time to our students to be with family and/or go to their respective bowl games instead :)

We used to do a Region Rally in the fall leading up to convention that was not well-attended. Sections 53/55 have a fall bi-sectional conference in non-regionals years for a very long time, as does Section 50, although it is more of a single-day event since the 6.5 chapters in that section are only about an hour to 1.5 hour drive from each other.

I know Region IX has a Region Rally that used to be well-attended, but I do not know since I have not been in a few years.

Again, we couldn't find a weekend during the Fall that works for us. As they say, YMMV.

And I've never found the time between Christmas & New Years to be that important in my family or in the families of any of my friends. Growing up, all our family gatherings with relatives was BEFORE Christmas. Once Christmas was over, relatives went home and there was nothing to do. Many scout councils are now running "winter camps" and week-long youth training during that time of the year and are very successful.

I think it's disrespectful to wear your letters on your butt. I wouldn't ever sit on my letters! and I do agree with pledges having the organization's name spelled out and not wear its letters in any form.

I would never allow a brother to wear my letters on his butt, he's disrespecting me and every one of my brothers by doing that. As far as pledge wear goes, my chapter has a strict policy for it; nothing but the bid day shirt can have anything with ATΩ letters on them. That includes spelled out. For big bro/little bro reveal most of the big bros buy their little bro a stitched letter shirt, but make them wait until initiation to wear it. It works, nobody ever complains, and as a pledge it really put what it meant to wear letters into perspective for me. Just my two cents, and you get the glory of being my first post, so congrats :)

This is more or less APO Policy.

Items that show MEMBERSHIP are restricted to Brothers. Letter shirts/stich shirts, etc, are seen as signs of membership.

Items that show PARTICIPATION are ok for non-Brothers (ie pledges) to wear. Typically such items have "alpha phi omega" spelled out, not the greek letters. These would include conference t-shirts and the like.

there is nothing wrong with a chapter creating a shirt for the pledges. They will usually spell out APO.

PG members must indicate in their promotional materials that they are a PG. They can't wear items that indicate they are members of APO. But items that show they are a PG of APO is ok. So I guess having APO in greek letters AND indicating they are a PG would be ok.

I think most of us agree that it (or something close) should be policy, but if it *is*, we would like to know where it is written down and why it isn't something easily accessible to the brothers.