Kappa Phi Chi???
 

I agree that having your own "Cartoon" mascot is pretty childish. I get it why Zeta would want Ariel to be an unofficial mascot...If it was up to me-my sorority would use a disney mascot unofficially because one of our sisters/ alum was the voice of a certain disney character in a certain movie, as well (no-not the little mermaid-I wish it was, though)....Even if Zeta, ASA or DG did do something similar to that-I would have to say that the fact they are NATIONAL and well known throughout the world would make it much more alright than some girls who threw some letters together, with a mascot from Disney and called it their own....

Another thing I find a bit irritating is the fact that the girl had the audacity to say they "pay" Disney....okay-I'd love to see that happen. That's pretty hard to believe considering I graduated from Penn State and even though I paid TONS of money to go there-bought lots of PSU merchandise and even worked on campus for a little-if I went to the local Greek shop-unless Panhellenic needed the shirts-no group or one person could have the Nittany Lion head printed on anything they wanted. In fact, in my internet class we were told that if we put up a website that talks about us going to Penn State-we cannot have the head anywhere or we could get in trouble for copyright infring....so, please explain to me (unless someone in your chapter is a descendant of Walt Disney himself) how you are all able to use ARIEL the Little Mermaid?

Very Original-by the way....

Tell me more. What kind of benefits does Disney give you?

I'm pretty sure that there is a performance fee when a hs or college puts on Grease or another recent play (guessing R & J is public domain at this point).

"Infringement rights" = oxymoron. If you're paying for the right, it's not infringement.

LOL!

And why did it take me a minute to decipher what this meant:

Lord.

I still don't know what that means.

I believe the translation is "what benefits?" which leads me to believe that not all members of the organization are clued into the infringement situation.

Another local there, Alpha Simga, uses Babs Bunny :)

Disney has actually sued day care centers which used their characters without permission, even though they were rather small operations. I can't imagine Disney licensing one of their characters for a local group - licensing fees are very high, and they have a very clear idea of what and how they use their characters. I'm pretty sure they don't need a local sorority to promote their characters. ROFL. Without any assurances of how it would be used, I would be shocked if it were indeed the case that WD has given the group carte blanche. Sorry, short of posting the agreement (and then I'd have to make a few calls) I don't buy it.
One reason cited by the artist for discontinuing Calvin & Hobbes is because of all the unauthorized use of Calvin (all those little peeing Calvins? Illegal - and I'd be shocked to find out the sorority using it has authorization.)
I'd think less of a group which used a trademarked, copyrighted character without the proper authorization. That's ILLEGAL - how can you claim to have high ideals and principles if you are willing to break the law?
There is a difference between using a mermaid, even one based on Hans Christian Anderson's story The Little Mermaid (which is in the public domain) and using Ariel, the character created by and vigorously protected by) Disney. There are lawyers who make a good living "helping" those who don't understand this.

I can say with 100% certainty that this is not the only illegal thing that they do. hazing is illegal also I don't think many people see using a copyrighted character as illegal because they are all over the place these days. It's sad.

*gasp* SWTX, do you mean they WOULDN'T be thrilled to have their sweet little mermaid associated with a girl giving the thigh-flash on their site? Or the all-in-bikinis-shot? I'm shocked. I would think that's exactly the image they're going for there at the family-friendly Disney-Giant-Corporate-HQ... :rolleyes:

Wait... ok, I take back the family-friendly part. Yikes!

That's too bad because being that it's a local organization, if Disney were to ever sue, the school would be just as liable.