Right before a sister was getting ready to pin her respective new member she dropped her pin down the air shaft on the floor!

We also had 2 people almost slip and fall during the ritual.

All I will say is that in the 80s electric candles were not common, and using "Stiff Stuff" was. Flames + Stiff Stuffed hair = fire danger. Ah, nothing like the smell of burnt hair in the morning.

The chapter my mother and I were advising was picked to help initiate our new chapter at Loyola - New Orleans. We had just been to convention, so were really up on our ritual. During the installation of the colony, this (awful) alumna started hissing "You are saying the wrong word!" Now we KNEW we weren't, but she would not shut up! Apparently she had been doing the ritual wrong for many years . . .

We couldn't do anything. Panhell accepted the girls' story that it was an accident (like every other time there was an issue) and both chapters just went on hating eachother.

two funny stories:

my pledge class wasn't told when our initiation was, instead we were told it was a sisterhood retreat. well the night before was a huge party thrown by one of the fraternities which everyone at the college goes to. so about half of my pledge class was hungover for initiation, and while waiting and spending forever in a classroom they wrote "if you wanna be a ZTA" to wannabe by the spice girls. when i arrived right at the end of initiation and heard all the stories and the song it was priceless. we try now to arrange it so initiation is not after this party. i have also never been to one of our pledge class initiations because they are always when i had a regatta for crew, so i always missed out on all the fun.

this year our pledge class has identical twins and when they did the formal pledge ceremony they were together and when they were repeating things they sounded like one person, it was so freaky.

My Initiation was held in the oldest building on campus which was very pretty most of the time. Lots of things have changed since then but at that time, we used only candlelight, which was no big deal because it was late morning on a Sunday. This day though, it was really stormy so there was no natural light to speak of. There was one part where we individually kneeled on a cushion for a vow. Just as the gal in front of me kneeled, there was a HUGE crash of lighting/thunder and everybody just stopped in their tracks and then the giggles set in. The President got herself composed and continued. When I kneeled, everybody just kind of stopped again, like they were waiting to see if it would happen again. The President and I made eye contact and the giggles took over again.

I can say that, as a regional officer, one of the most interesting parts is going to all the Initiations and seeing how they botch it. I had one chapter tell me one year "We voted not to wear white this year" HUH???

:eek:




I love the lightning/thunder story. So dramatic!

O. M. G. :eek:

after an initiation our chapter performed a DZ tradition of "The Loving Cup" Ceremony. For those of you that aren't familiar with what a loving cup is, it's a 3-handled cup (in our case, it was a LARGE silver urn-type "cup" that looked more like a trophy given to us when the chapter was founded in the 20's) that we pass from member-member and say a little saying as we pass it, simulating drinking (or if liquid was in it, actually drinking). Anyway, it's a really neat tradition and we did it after each initiation.

This one time, the girls decided to put some fruit-punch in it instead of just plain water. Well, we all wear white to initiation and one of the new members didn't realize that it actually had liquid in it (I'm sure you can see where this is going) and when she hefted it up to her mouth, nearly 1/2 of what was in there rapidly moved to the front of her dress. It's a solemn moment, the ceremony, but a bunch of us just couldn't help it and bust out laughing. It was hard to contain it...and we kept sputtering laughter the whole time. Thanks to some bleach and quick-thinking, the dress was saved and no-one was the wiser.

It was hilarious when it happened, obviously it's a you-had-to-be-there moment...but that's the only thing that I could think of.

It was the combination of boyfriend upstairs, skipping initiation and falling down the stairs drunk in front of the chapter and alums.

No real horror stories from my GLO, but during initiation to a auxiliary of an ROTC group, we being led blindfolded into a room carrying lit candles.

Blindfolds
Crowded, narrow corridor
Nervous, giggling freshmen women
Open flames
Farrah Fawcett "wings" with hairspray
= Risk Management nightmare.

The smell of burning hair electrified the few people in the room who were able to see, and brawny ROTC men soon "put out" the poor girl in front of me after I managed to catch her on fire. For the rest of the year, every time I saw her, with her thinning spot, just to the left of her ear, I felt sooooooo guilty. Fortunately, she was unhurt, but I understand why groups don't allow open flames anymore.

The next year, initiation was changed a bit.......and I became known as "Sparky the Wonder Girl"

Stomach growling at inopportune times... And I don't recall anyone ever saying anything like "Oh $%&^!" upon entering initiation, but a lot of times, people (like me!) laughed out of nervousness b/c they were so awestruck.

And to any ADPi's, I'm thinking of a word that makes me laugh everytime I think of initiation...

We never had candles inside our house (electric tapers!), but I have heard horror stories from older chapters!

ETA: I just remembered one more. A girl in my alpha class broke wind during her initiation, but no one knew... until she told all of us later and dubbed herself "Puff Daddy." LOL. I can always appreciate someone who can laugh at herself! :)

This isn't really inappropriate, but it is rather sweet. My chapter has a lot of girls, so they are initiated in small groups on the same day. At Alpha Initiation (new member installation), I was in a group with 8 or so other alphas. We had just gotten our bids the day before, so no one knew each other. As we waited, we had a prime opportunity to talk and learn about each other.

One of the girls revealed that she had missed her high school graduation back in May b/c she had an emergency surgery. We decided she needed to have a make-up 3 months later (it was August). So we made her a graduation cap out of paper plate and construction paper, threw a bathrobe over her shoulders (we probably shouldn't have b/c it belonged to the house girl whose room we were assigned to while we waited!), hummed "Pomp and Circumstance" and called off the roster of graduates (just her!). I handed her a "diploma," which I think was just a rolled up copy of People magazine.

It was so funny, and she's one of my best friends to this day!

One more... I think I told this story on GC before.

One of our sisters wasn't feeling well on initiation day, and was excused, but she wasn't feeling well enough to go back to her apt. So my roommate and I told her to take a nap in our room.

My roomie had literally just started dating her now-husband, and Bryan took it upon himself to leave the world's longest voicemail (this was in the days when there were answering machines and you could hear the message as it was being left) as an expression of his feelings for my roomie.

That poor sister was having the worst migraine of her life and she had to suffer through Bryan playing "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" in its entirety for my roomie on the answering machine!

Well, it was sweet... and 6 years later, they played the song at their wedding.

And yet another story... ADPi has a special initiation for members who are graduating that is conducted by alumnae members of the local alumnae association.

It isn't necessary to go through this ceremony to be considered an alumna, but it is very pretty, and most women regard this as their favorite ritual.

When I lived in LA, I regularly participated in this ceremony at USC with other members of the alumnae association. We'd get there early to help the ritual chair with set-up. Every year, somebody knew would find "the photo."

Years ago (I'm talking 1960's), the alumnae conducing the ceremony took a picture of themselves in full ritual regalia. The hairdos are priceless. No one seems to have the heart to throw the photo away, and the alumnae ritual chair keeps it with the Jewel Degree ritual equipment!