Not to harp on the greek alphabet thing, but WHAT?? Are you SERIOUS??

Among the points of new member education is (or should be if it's not) that no one lives in a vacuum. There are more chapters on campus than yours; there are more greek organizations in the world than yours; there are more chapters of the organizations that are on your campus in the world. it would behoove you, if you plan to set foot off that campus OR if that campus decided to expand, to be able to identify organization and chapter nomenclature.

You know you whole regular alphabet even though the names of most of the people you know and most of the words you use don't have all the letters, right? Same thing. I'm pretty sure you used a week as an example, but if it really takes a week to teach "educated people" the entire greek alphabet, there's either something wrong. Thetagirl218 pointed out half of them are already known from math and science. It should only take a day to learn them. Make up a song or borrow a song from another chapter. As tld221 said, it's embarrassing to be greek and not know the greek alphabet. If you're ok with that sort of thing..........

Wow, the wheels are REALLY well oiled on your skates.

So basically, you wouldn't know whether Xi Epsilon chapter came before Rho Beta Chapter -- of your own organization?

I think you are underestimating women. I am perfectly able to identify greek letters without having to check a book. My point has been that people have argued that the 6 week NM period is too short to make NMs ready for initiation. My argument was that the semester pledge period included no more important information than during my 6 week NM period....they just spent a week on the greek alphabet, and we did not! Being able to recognize greek letters is one thing, but I fail to see the importance of being able to recite it like a kindergartener in order to get initiated. Please next time read a statement within it's context! We didn't have to learn the greek alphabet as part of our new member education, but that does not mean we were unable to decipher the names of other groups or other chapters of AOII, so you can get off you little soapbox! The people you mention asking stupid questions about greek letters probably had to memorize the greek alphabet as part of their education but are just morons.

AOII chapters are not named in order. Each chapter chooses its own name with its own special meaning, so to know which one came first in alphabetical order would only be useful for filing!

No one, before you, said anything about reciting the greek alphabet "like a kindergartener". That's your interpretation of what we're saying.

This is GC, folks around here stand on soapboxes hourly. Get over it.

Learning the Greek alphabet takes no time at all - and being able to identify other groups, or even other chapters of your own GLO - is important. If you are going to belong to a GLO, you should at the very least know the Greek alphabet. Who would want to remain willfully ignorant of the meaning of letters used by your own organization? And any one who had to learn Greek letters as part of their new member program would NOT be asking stupid questiions (at least not if they had truly learned it.) If your new member program taught you nothing more important than the Greek alphabet, the problem is the new member program - not learning the Greek alphabet, but failing to have any programming that taught you anything more important. Perhaps you should address the issue with your HQ.
Oh - and the possessive form of "it" is "its", not "it's". One of my personal pet peeves . . .

Before things get any more out of hand, may I mention that AOII's new education program was rolled out last fall? Called "Fulfilling the Promise", it serves as our New Member program education and also is used for total chapter education and programming needs. The New Member information is fully available on our public website, under the Lifelong Learning drop-down menu.

Week three includes NPC education, college PH info including other chapters on campus, and so on.

well, in that case, i REALLY hope that NMs know the greek alphabet... i mean, chartering members wouldnt their chapter ending up as (for example) Tau Omega, only to think they were getting Theta Omicron...

I'm surprised at the vitriol in this post. It seems as though you are truly offended that my NM program did not include memorizing the greek alphabet in order. The alphabet was listed in our NM book, but we were not asked to memorize it. We didn't have time. Unfortunately, when you have six weeks to prepare for initiation, somethings have to be sacrificed. At the time our HQ apparently felt that giving us a source to find the information was good enough. Maybe you should improve your reading comprehension skills. If you look back at my prior posts, I said we had too many important things to learn to bother with trivial information (ie. we'd have time to learn that after initiation.) I don't feel the least bit embarrassed or "willfully ignorant" for not being able to recite the greek alphabet. As I said in multiple posts, we were very capable of correctly recognizing any greek letter that came our way. If we forgot one of the more rarely used letters, we had a source to look it up. Forgive me if I think placing so much emphasis on this small matter is ridiculous since the way we were taught served us just fine. Just because you were taught one way doesn't mean that everyone has to be taught the same way. As for my statement that people who ask others what their letters say probably had been taught the greek alphabet, that was in reference to other posters who mentioned such events. My point is that most sororities have the greek alphabet as part of their NM education so it doesn't always stick with them. In the end, all of this has been taken out of context. The matter at hand was whether or not our NM education programs should be changed to included hazing to make members feel more special about being initiated. I also suggest that you consider that criticizing what my sorority found important about NM education implies that you think your own sorority is the best. I thought at GC we tried to shy away from that kind of mentality...or was I wrong?

Thanks for being the devil's advocate...I'm sure that's a really big problem!

That's exactly the point others are trying to make. Because of the shorter NM period, things have been sacrificed. Generally, when one uses the word "sacrifice", they mean that something important has been given up for something else. Unimportant things aren't considered sacrifices. So, most of us see proper Greek-related education as important. Thus, it saddens us (maybe even angers some) to see it get tossed. It's being considered dismissable.

Trying to get back on track, here:

Sigma Phi Epsilon's Balanced Man and Sigma Sigma Sigma's Essential Sigma are very impressive programs. I hope all organizations go this way in the next few years. I fear that we will make ourselves obsolete if we don't. I will say it again and again, in the hopes that our HQ's are all listening.

On the other topic, you can't say that fewer men leave because they are hazed. There are too many other factors. Men rush differently, maybe they do a better job of placing people in the right chapters. Men bond differently, they tend to be closer with their pledge classes as opposed to older classes. And men are just different, there is more of a stigma around dropping out.

My only response to this is that knowing greek trivia has its place, but it's not the most important part of NM education. I think others can make the point that learning the greek alphabet is important without making it seem like it has more importance than it does or getting angry about it. I personally agree that you should be aware of the greek system and its members. Does all of that have to be done during the NM period? No...that's why we have member education throughout the four years.

Maybe we're sort of missing the forest for the trees in this discussion. One of the most important reasons why all GLOs are having increasing numbers of members not inititate, terminate or resign has to do with the recruitment process as much as the membership education process. Although we've made tremendous strides with dry fraternity rush, and no-frills sorority rush, and efforts to eliminate hazing....we're seeing people treat our lifetime membership organizations exactly the same as a temporary country club membership because that's the way we sell the membership experience to PNMs.

So what can we do to improve the way we market what our organizations really are at their core, instead of the short term party circuit, and therefore attract and retain the type of people who respect and want to make our organizations better???

A O II Angel - speaking of reading comprehension - I didn't criticize your NM program, and I was not vitriolic. You seem to be rather defensive with everyone.
You implied you were unhappy with the time you spent learning the Greek alphabet in your post, so my point was that instead of arguing whether it was important or unimportant the focus should instead be on improving the program. I know nothing about the A O II program other than what you have told me of your experience with it. I still believe that if you were unhappy with spending a week learning the Greek alphabet that you should take that up with your chapter or HQ instead of criticizing an element of everyone else's NMP. Perhaps you simply chose a bad example in trying to make a larger point - that sometimes the focus is not on what you consider important. Instead of arguing about the Greek alphabet, why not suggest what you would include in a NMP program, or if the new AOII program addresses this problem tell us about it.
I think everyone here agrees that a successful NMP should prepare you to be an involved active and alumnae. What those elements should include is certainly up for debate. I will go on record for believing that the Greek alphabet should be one, albeit one small, element of the NMP.