To thetanustew -- Hey, another PSP brother!! Pop over to the PSP forum sometime!!! (Even though it's a bit inactive...)
So, I still have some questions about the colors thing. Like 33girl asked, can you still wear one of the colors while pledging? Like, blue jeans if the org. you're pledging has blue as one of its colors, or your favorite pink sweater if pink was one of the colors?
Could you wear the color on your shoes? (Since I have blue tennis shoes on right now, I thought of that.)
What if you had a job, and your job uniform included the colors of the org. you were pledging? Obviously the org. wouldn't ask you to not wear your work uniform, would they?
For cammykaze1920, you weren't allowed to wear colors around sisters, but otherwise you were...but what if you ran into a sister unexpectedly, at the store or something, while you were wearing a "forbidden" color?
And I know I'm asking a lot of random questions, but I'm curious about this stuff because I had no idea that some groups had the rule about not wearing the colors. I'm just trying to understand how it works, since it seems incomprehensible to me that you would be banned from wearing certain colors.

My sorority colors aerw turquoise and black. Obviously, most people wear black. What I am saying is that you cannot wear the colors in combinations, you are not a sister. They do get a ribbon that is black, cause the sisters have turquoise ones. But, you cannont wear them together, cause everyone would know you are online.

How damn inane, fantastically stupid, and Add on here___!

OH, OH , We as a Soroity dont want anyone on our Campuses to know that we a da Associated New Members!:(

Geeze Get in the real Life of Hello Land! LALA LA, Who are you kidding?

if I"was" to become a Member of YOUR FINE Friggin Organization of which I was Proud to Associate With, but could not show How Proud I am, Then, I would tell you and yours to Kiss some serious Butt!

I am sorry, but I wwant to have All Of My New Associates to Proudly Say Hey, I Associated With LXA!

[QUOTE]Originally posted by TigerLilly
To thetanustew -- Hey, another PSP brother!! Pop over to the PSP forum sometime!!! (Even though it's a bit inactive...)

I did pop over there much earlier and noticed that it was rather quiet. I tend to check out the national PSP page more often. Plus, I check up on my Alpha Kappa brothers at UNC via their site, too!

So, I still have some questions about the colors thing. Like 33girl asked, can you still wear one of the colors while pledging? Like, blue jeans if the org. you're pledging has blue as one of its colors, or your favorite pink sweater if pink was one of the colors?
Could you wear the color on your shoes? (Since I have blue tennis shoes on right now, I thought of that.)


If pink were one of the colors, you would definitely NOT want to wear a pink sweater. You may be able to get away with a sweater that had a pink stripe in it or something like that, but you would be advised NOT to cover your entire top half in one of the sorority's colors--even if it is your favorite color! I'd avoid the shoe thing, as well. But maybe that is just me.

What if you had a job, and your job uniform included the colors of the org. you were pledging? Obviously the org. wouldn't ask you to not wear your work uniform, would they?

I can't imagine that they would. I mean, the idea behind the not wearing colors is that it helps you blend in and NOT draw attention to the fact that you are pledging. If you tried to tell a boss that you couldn't wear a uniform because it had puce (or whatever color) in it, you would draw a lot of attention to the fact that you were pledging! The same thing sort of goes for jeans...how would you explain to people that you are NEVER wearing jeans to hang out in? It would be tooooo obvious! (Now the jeans and pink sweater combo if the sorority colors were pink and denim blue would probably be a beeeeeggggg no-no!)

For cammykaze1920, you weren't allowed to wear colors around sisters, but otherwise you were...but what if you ran into a sister unexpectedly, at the store or something, while you were wearing a "forbidden" color?

I know you asked someone else, but I would like to respond because of the idea that forbidding colors 24/7 is harsh. If you just don't ever wear the sorority's colors, then this NEVER becomes a problem! That's the rationality behind it. I mean, you know how it is...the ONE time that you decide to go to WalMart at 3:00 a.m. in your pajama bottoms with a holey sweatshirt, messy hair, and unbrushed teeth is the same ONE time that the guy you totally have the hots for decides to go to WalMart at 3:00 a.m. The same thing happens when you are pledging--it is Murphy's law! The minute you walk out of your room in the sorority's colors is the minute you run into the president of the sorority or one of the founders or...

And I know I'm asking a lot of random questions, but I'm curious about this stuff because I had no idea that some groups had the rule about not wearing the colors. I'm just trying to understand how it works, since it seems incomprehensible to me that you would be banned from wearing certain colors.

I can see how it would seem weird. At first I thought it was just a power thing ("Ha! Let's not let our pledges wear our colors. That'll make their lives more difficult!"), but just as the Greek letters have a special meaning to the organization's members, the colors do, too. It's sort of the same principle.

And by the way, ask questions all you want! When I was an undergrad, I knew only about NPC sororities. That is why I got involved with PSP--it was MUCH more diverse than ANY of the NPC sororities at my large, Southern university in the 1980's and I wanted that diversity. I learned more about the NPHC organizations years later as I pursued membership in Theta Nu Xi (which is not an NPHC organization) and met more and more people who were either involved in NPHC groups or who had close friends who were. A lot of the NPHC traditions and so forth seemed odd to me, too, and I asked lots of questions about the "how" and "why" behind them. I found it fascinating (and still do find it fascinating) to learn about NPC, NPHC, and other Greek groups in order to understand exactly how my sorority was influenced by their traditions as well as how we were doing something that is totally new and different.

All of this conversation is truly enlightening!

Well, one way you could show your pride in being "a Member of YOUR FINE Friggin Organization of which I was Proud to Associate With" would be to respect the rituals and traditions of the organization and to protect its secrets...

Tom, different organizations do things differently. While we might not always agree with the way our Greek friends in the NPHC or NALFO or other councils do things, we still need to show them the same respect that they give us. :mad:

Also, I know of plenty of chapters of NIC fraternities who don't allow NMs to wear anything with letters other than maybe a pledge book, yours included. :rolleyes:

Let's let everybody do their individual thing - it's not going to offend my sisters if I come to the house in a brown sweater and khakis as a NM, but it would obviously offend an AKA if I was online and strutted over there in a pink&green polo shirt.

To each their own.

Re: Re: Pledges wearing letters
 

co sign...in now way shape or form. there's a reason for the letters chosen. if i see someone who isn't frat with my letters on, best believe that can and will be handled. intakee's aren't frat, prospective's aren't frat. in addition...none of my frat will EVER wear our beautiful letters in anything outside of the colors of our organization. that's something i've noticed, a lot of organizations will allow members to wear the letters in all different colors.

Re: Re: Re: Pledges wearing letters
 

We had this discussion before...I think a large part of it is that there are only 9 NPHC groups, each with their own unique color combo. (at least among girls and guys) There are 26 NPC groups and like 65 IFC groups. I mean, when I wear my colors, I'm also wearing the colors of Chi O, Theta Chi and probably a lot more. Therefore it's just not as big a deal if I wear someone else's...I mean, you can't say I'm dogging DZ if I wear pink & green, cause you could just as easily say I'm dogging Chi O when I wear my own colors. Comprendez?

A wholehearted co-sign!

I have a couple sweaters with letters on it.

One is Green, white to celebrate our Fraternity colors.

One is Blue and black to celebrate my lil/big bro family colors.

One has the letters in an American flag design (kinda hard to explain if you haven't seen it).

So, they all have significance.

Stan I have the American flag letters too - I really like them! :)

Re: Re: Re: Re: Pledges wearing letters
 

kappa alpha psi and delta sigma theta have the same colors. so regarding wearing colors, that has nothing to do with it. they still wear their respective colors. i'm talking about an organization wearing their letters in all different types of colors.

The argument that never ends...
 

You know what, we've reached the point where there isn't going to be an agreement on this. I disagree with some of your procedures, you disagree with some of ours. It is in no way shape or form disrespectful to our ritual for me to wear letters in colors other than brown and mode. The meaning behind our colors is completely open. I am not violating my protocol, so it should not be a problem with you. Thank you, drive through.

Re: The argument that never ends...
 

whoa, you need to calm down. i didn't disrespect the procedure so i'd appreciate it if you got your panties out of that bunch. clearly, i'm speaking on me and my bruhs not wearing our letters in anything but our colors. i didn't say anything about it being ridiculous or stupid and i didn't say anything about about agreeing or disagreeing with anything you do, so why not relax, rub your ears and woosaah.

Re: Re: Re: Pledges wearing letters
 

I have one sweatshirt in our colors and it is the most hideous shirt ever-- it was our Bid Day shirt, and we all had to get it when I was a younger sister. Thankfully we abolished it when we were seniors and got cute T-shirts. Red and Green are just nasty together, and they remind everyone of Christmas.

needless to say, most of my letters are NOT in red and green. My favorite set of letters is a black hoodie with blue background and the letters themselves are a star pattern. all the NPC sororities on my campus wore a variety of colors of letters.

I DO notice my sister, who is a DPhiE, only wears actual stiched letters in her colors, i should ask her why she doesnt have any others. im getting her pants for Hanukkah and she told me to get them in Purple and gold...

Re: Re: Re: Re: Pledges wearing letters
 

wow, you think your colors are nasty?

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Pledges wearing letters
 

She would look like CHRISTMAS if she wore them together. I don't think my colors look particularily cute on sweatshirts either, which is why most of my letters are pink rather than brown and brown. :p

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Pledges wearing letters
 

yes.

I didnt choose my sorority because of the colors, I chose it because of the sisters....

if that makes you think I'm a bad sister, then you need to get your priorities straight...

Edited because I'm horrible with grammar :D

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Pledges wearing letters
 

whoa, slow your roll. didn't say nothing about you being a bad sister..just never heard that before. hey, do your thing.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Pledges wearing letters
 

sorry for being on the defense... i just dont think colors are important.... but thats me.

i'm thinking that the difference in wearing the colors is that (once again, this is a guess) for many NPC groups their colors, for the most part, don't have a super significant meaning/ritualistic meaning. Some groups, if there is a meaning behind the color, it is public information.

That might be part of the difference in views here......

One thing I have noticed that differentiates the NPHC groups from the NPC/IFC groups when it comes to clothing is this wearing of these:

http://www.stuff4greeks.com/jackets/...odel-front.jpg

and
http://www.stuff4greeks.com/images/h...-700_r9_c1.jpg


I've always thought they were very creative!

I was told by someone (NOT a Delta Sig) to NOT buy a jacket like that because I'd look too much "like one of those cultural greeks".

I'm still buying one.

Hell, I get siht cause I had my pledge class embroidered on the sleeve, my last name on the hood, and my nickname on the back

Well, they are certainly noticeable. And they appear to be very expensive from what I've seen. I've always thought of them as being half written in secret code. but certainly fun!

i wasnt thinking that maybe the colors had significance.. i mean, I know the reason why our colors are red and green, and I suppose its somewhat important, but I just dont care for them. In fact, our chapter dislikes them so much that we changed it into Rutgers colors-- the new bid day shirts are these in t-shirts:

http://66.105.98.35/tsweb/greek101co...fc7-pat012.gif (this is on black)

hehe, and to show you all what my favorite hoodie is:

http://66.105.98.35/tsweb/greek101co...56e-pat655.gif (as is this)

just having fun with greek101.com letter generator, haha.

*edited because im not used to this vB code thing*

Actually, they're cheaper around here.

What does all the embroidery/symbols mean (well, unless secret!)

My sorority has jackets like that. They are hot. Our colors are turquoise and black. We crossed in the Spring so we got White jackets with turquoise letter with a Black border. I got my big sister name, my number and my lines' name on the back. On my sleeve I got the semester I crossed.

Yay to jackets! I have one that's all in our colors, and another that's gray w/ all of the embroidery [sp????? it's late ;)] in blue and gold.


Booooooooo to letters on the butt. :( People will be trying to read the letters when you're wearing them, and I don't want to bring that much attention to my nether regions in public.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Pledges wearing letters
 

Yes, but one is female and one is male. I pointed that out. :)

I've got a crest sweatshirt that is pink, and no one ever said "oh you are trying to be like DZ or Phi Mu." I simply liked the way it looked on pink.

My point was that no, I don't think colors are as important to the NPC groups, because there are just plain more of them so the same colors get used over & over, and because the meaning usually isn't secret.

Hmm, the idea of not wearing the colors while pledging makes more sense after people explained it more. (Thanks zetagymnast and thetanustew for answering my specific questions.) That seemed so weird to me when I first read about it, since I'd never heard of being forbidden to wear the colors -- it sounded a bit harsh! Now I guess I see how not wearing the colors in combination would go along with the secrecy with y'all's pledgings...makes a lot more sense now!
And AXORissa, I really love that print you showed on the X, with the stars. I have that as the print for the letters on my AXiD bag! I guess it's kind of AXiD colors, with the different colors of blue and then the gold stars!

Here is a basic run down of what the embroidery and sewn-on stuff means. Keep in mind that I am talking about my sorority, so some things may be slightly different for some other groups. Also, there is a lot of flexibility, so not everybody even in the same organization has the same thing in exactly the same spot on every jacket.

In Theta Nu Xi, jackets are typically black or white with the big Greek letters down the front right side with the lavender on top and Carolina blue on the bottom. On the left side, over the heart, they usually have the crest and the sister's name. You can see pictures here.

On the left sleeve, as you can see in the pictures, is a stiched on Greek letter that shows the chapter the sister pledged into. My chapter is Gamma (and these are my beautiful sisters!!). Sometimes sisters will have the name of their school and/or the year the chapter was founded embroidered on the left sleeve above or below the chapter designation.

On the right sleeve, as you can also see in the pictures, is the term (SPR for spring, FA for FAll, or SU for summer) and the year that the sister pledged into the organization. ln our organization, we have a special kind of respect and reverence for sisters who pledged into the organization before us.

The back of the jackets (which you cannot see in any of the pictures) generally has the sister's line name first. A line name is a name that the rest of the sisters in her pledge class give her. The meaning of ours is secret (my line name is Egyptian Breeze) except to other sisters. Unlike the pledge names given in movies like Animal House, the line names actually have significance. Usually under the line name is a big number. Our pledge classes are VERY small by design and our intake process teaches pledges to become VERY close to and dependent on the other ladies in the same class. Without getting into too much detail, I'll just say that the number reflects part of that. Often, under the number you will see the pledge class's line name. That is, instead of just calling a pledge class the Beta class, they may be called something like Millennium Project (the name of my line).

Again, all of this is sort of general, and people to vary this in any number of ways. For example, some of my sisters have 1997 sewn on the collar of their jackets so that when they wear them with the collar turned up, everyone can see the year the sisterhood was founded. Also, some sisters have their line name on the front of their jacket, the name of their line on the back, then their number, then some sort of symbol to represent their line and their place in it. One of my sisters from UNC, for example, has six butterflies across the bottom of her jacket, and since she was the 5 on her line, the fifth one is on a blue background while the others are on no background at all.

Again, none of this is really set in stone, but it might give you some sort of idea about what you are looking at when you see someone in a line jacket. Because our pledge process is unique and designed to build extremely tight lifelong bonds, our jackets reflect more than just membership in the organization; they reflect the people that we went through the process with as well.

Sorry if this description is confusing. Perhaps some other folks in organizations with jackets can help clarify!

Cheers,
S

Your welcome Tigerlilly. I did get away with wearing a turquoise design on my nails when I was pledging it was the week before I crossed. :eek: :D

Can I just thrown in there as a point of reference that some NPC orgs also have nicknames where the meaning is secret and/or means something? It's not really a nationwide tradition like it is with other groups by my chapter definitely does it. ;)

What you describe is usually true for letter shirts/jerseys.

In my fraternity, what is usually done (this can very from chapter to chapter) is:

Fraternity letters on front.

Left sleeve chapter letters

Right sleeve pledge class designation. Usually as you describe: semester & year. My chapter decided to go with pledge class greek letter name instead.

Back of shirt usually has the person's nickname at the top (similiar to your line name) with their chapter number below. Chapter numbers are assigned by National, and indicated your 'order' in the chapter. One chapter I encountered put weird numbers on the back (like negative numbers).

Shannon:

Thank you so much. I found this very informative and I appreciate the time it took you to type all of that. I can appreciate the significance of these jackets more now that I can understand them better!

Marie

I think it's kind of funny that there are rules about not wearing stitched-on letters. Here, nobody in NPC or IFC groups ever wear their stitched-on letters except in bid day pictures, riding on the homecoming float or playing intermural flag football.

you're such a new yorker :D

your colors are my high school colors, whenever I see them it reminds me of the football team uniforms, haha.

i have a similiar pattern (not really clouds, more like the sky with moons, i i have a lot of shirts with similiar patters, hehe) with silver backing on a navy shirt, in fact im wearing it now...

I miss shopping for stiched on letters...