I was a member of Pi Theta Epsilon, an honorary society for OT majors. Not all OT students were invited as there were GPA requirements and professor recommendations involved. We did have some meetings and do some community service, but it was nothing like my Alpha Gam experience. Our OT class was close though, because there were 50 of us in the same exact classes for two years straight.

OT = ?

Yes, Occupational Therapy

We have multiple professional frats and sororities. We have 4 music ones, two are considered service and the other two are considered social. I know for a fact that at least 3 of them have big/littles, formals, wear their letters, and have social functions at least once a month. Some of these functions are all four combined and I can tell you they are a blast.

That was exactly what I was talking about. The one I know of when so far as to try to put it in their by-laws that joining a social GLO was not allowed. That didn't pass but there is a very large anti-greek sentiment and all the "social" greeks feel it

Same here for Phi Kappa Phi. Oh, we had a nice dinner as well. My mom liked it. :)

When I was living in NYC, between undergraduate and graduate school, my dad's Phi Kappa Phi badge was stolen in a burglary along with his fraternity badge. :( I called my mom to report this...I was sobbing. He died when I was a kid and I really treasured his badges. She told me that what he would really care about most was my safety. Her words comforted me.

Years later, in graduate school, I was presented with my own Phi Kappa Phi badge. It was identical to my dad's. I felt like dad found a special way to get it back to me.

I'm a member of Sigma Alpha, a professional sorority, as well as Alpha Zeta, a co-ed honor fraternity, at UGA. At Sigma Alpha, the main difference between us and Panhellenic sororities is the fact that we do not have weekly socials. We do get together weekly for meetings, but most of our priorities revolve around promoting academics and leadership opportunities. Unlike Panhellenic sororities, which have their own stereotypes, Sigma Alpha (and Alpha Gamma Rho, our brother fraternity) have to deal with stereotypes based on the fact that we promote agriculture in a modern world. Many of our events deal with this.
Alpha Zeta focuses mostly on philanthropy and service; I am not sure if there are socials other than initiation. We do have letters, obviously, and merchandise that members wear, but I guess we are supposed to feel "elite" among our peers, and so we don't do many things social or even professional sororities do.

I still feel like purist "honor societies" are not social. I was/am in Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Eta Sigma, ODK, and Order of Omega. No social events except for networking stuff at the most.

I do think when honors/professional fraternities are for a single discipline, there's more likelihood there's going to be actual socialization and a real organization beyond just a nice induction ceremony. The history honors fraternity at UT (we didn't have a chapter of it at W&L for whatever reason) is fairly active, but mostly I think because they have to be to earn points to wear cords at graduation. Which I consider lame, but hey, if it's motivational to them, cool.

There seem to be some orgs on some campuses which have really broken out of the honors/professional mold...

I've kind of skimmed through this thread, so I'm gonna add my two cents.

The biggest difference I see between pure honor societies and say, Phi Sigma Pi, an honor FRATERNITY is the secrecy of the ritual. The only people that know the inner meanings of Phi Sigma Pi are initiated brothers. We have a secret grip, password, meanings for all of our symbols, etc.

Compare that to Kappa Delta Pi, the education honor society. The 'initiation' ceremony was totally public--everyone and their momma was there to see every one take a 'vow'--whatever. There was no recruitment, no pledging ceremony, no pledging period. All I had to do to get in was maintain a 3.0 (I believe), which I would have done anyway.

Phi Sigma Pi
 

www.phisigmapi.org
I came across their website today. Their history is well-presented and comprehensive (and fairly candid, given the number of times their Alpha chapter has been revived).

There is a link to a fraternity that Phi Sigma Pi had crossed with in its early days: www.philambdaepsilon.org . . .I understand that it might have been a genuine fraternity at one time; is this contemporary site a spoof?

When I was a freshmen I was dating an older engineering major from a different school. He joined tau beta pi and engineering honor society. They sort of did some hazing by making the pledge class file and polish their metal symbol thing and do these projects before being initiated or whatever. And then afterwards they had social events and did community service and stuff like that. They did engineering stuff too. No big deal I guess except for the fact that this boy was the reason I didn't rush my freshmen year because "what would my friends think if they knew my girlfriend was in a sorority?"

Well I know that when I was president of STD, we hazed quite a bit (if that makes us wannabe social greeks.) :)









I kid. Though it wasn't through lack of my trying. I was tired of initiating members that never showed up for a meeting after initiation, so I wanted to have would be members do some organization service before we initiated them. I was told that we could not, because that would be hazing.

In addition to my sorority (which is Social and Professional), I'm a member of Beta Beta Beta Biological Honor Society. Tri-Beta does socials, but the socials are like a pizza party or going out for ice cream before our meeting. The president is a Tri-Delt and we have a even mix of Greeks and Non-Greeks, so we all pretty much understand the distinction between Honor Societies, Social Fraternities, Professional Fraternities, and Social/Professional Fraternities.

Like others have already noted, there is a difference between "professional" GLOs and "honorary" GLOs.

There are (4) types of GLOs:

* Social - e.g. Lambda Chi Alpha, Phi Mu, etc - mainly social, though there is a component of philanthropy/education/etc in there

* Professional - your Delta Sigma Pi's & Alpha Kappa Psi's of the world. In addition to the professional aspect, there is also a social side and some chapters are more social than others. One of my favorite Deltasig chapters was on the UT campus. Fun group :)

* Service - Alpha Phi Omega - they focus on service projects, but from what I've heard some chapters are more social than others

* Honorary - I was never part of one, but these usually recruited people from, say the college of business or education or engineering, that had a certain GPA. There is no "new member" period there.

I've never heard of Honorary GLOs doing bigs/littles or anything like that.