Family Trees
 

How important are they in your chapter?

In my chapter there is a lot of emphasis placed on which family you are in. By family, I mean that there are about 4 big families (about 3 small ones) that everyone can trace their roots back to . By roots I mean a common big brother. In most cases you have to go back about 8 years or so, but at fraternity education events we sometimes segregate into "families" for group work or whatever it is were working on. Teams I guess. Its funny, because each family has its own distinct personality.

Families werent a big deal till about 4 years ago and they just kinda grew outta that. I think its acceptable for our chapter. Were not real old (25 years) so its a cool tradition for our younger chapter. I feel it grounds the guys in a bit of history and tradition.

Does your chapter organize like this, or something simular?

Re: Family Trees
 

I think Family Trees are such a great idea! I hadn't seen the idea until I transferred to this chapter. This chapter puts emphasis on their family trees and it is so neat to see how much they have grown after each new member class !

I'm in a sorority, but we're sort of trying to do the same thing...we were recolonized a few years ago, and our new member educator had the idea for each family to have distinctive letter shirts done up. Unfortunately, some of our family trees are a little crazy because a lot of the original members had to take two, even three, littles. That means some families are really close, while others (like mine) are not. The people in my family hardly ever hang out together, so my co-littles didn't want the same kind of shirt that me and my little have. Just going by the shirts, it seems that we have tons of families, when we really don't.

Yeah, I forgot to mention that. The big is responsible for getting his little a letter shirt. It has to be done in the family pattern. Kinda cool how you can tell who is in what family just by their letter shirts.

If my chapter did that, I'd have been scrod... I'm a chapter founder, so I had no big, and my little deaffiliated without taking her own little, so I have no family :(

I know what you mean...
 

I know my great great grand big, my great grand big, my grand big and my big, and now I have a ltltle. :D I love this family thing

ronnie

My Family Tree
 

My chapter names our Families, mine is "The Ashby Tree." The first person on this tree pledged APO in Spring 1966!

At first, I thought trees were corny, but they definitely connect you to the past and the traditions of the chapter.

Random fact: my great great big, great big, big, and little are all Asian! (I am black.)

i love my family tree!! we are all matched up by personality, and i am in the "leadership tree"... so proud to be! i love my big, my big big, my big big big, my big big big big, and my big big big big big! all of whom i've had the pleasure of having dinner with... we had a family tree night :D
we all take pictures together at formals and stuff, but we don't do the same print letters thing, just cuz my big big had three littles, and some even have had more than that... it woudl get confusing :)

I'm in a colony and we have twin sisters since we don't have any "bigs." It's still so awesome though, my twin is the cutest thing ever! Twins were selected completely randomly - I got so lucky!

We have families in our chapter. We are pretty new (2001) so some of the founding sisters are twins or tripplets.

Each family has chosen a family name. Some of the families have like letter shirts, others do something else to identify the families.

It's really cool, each sister gets a smaller group of "special sisters" It's especially cool for the new members. It is really hard to get to know everyone well in the new member period. This makes the group a little more 'manageable' and begins the bonding experience.

I do see how this could get strange, especially if one family is exceptionally large (we have one family that is large because non of the sisters have graduated yet) or exceptionally active. But, thankfully we are doing just fine.

Currently there are 6 members in our family. My grand big, my big, my little, my grand big's new little, me and another sister who we have "adopted" since her big (along with her big's twin) graduated.


My family is so cool. I love this family thing.

Large Family
 

Im in the largest family in my sorority. Its kinda cool but I don't even know most of the girls that are active! :( My great great great great granbig took 2 littles so we have kinda 2 seperate lines in our family. My great gran big also took 2 littles and my gran big took 2 littles. My gran big, big, big's twin, big's twin little and gran little and me are the actives on my side of the family. There are three actives on the other side of hte family too so its quite large. :) :) I hope I didn't confuse anyone too much - I have a family tree drawn out for me so I can figure it all out. I love my family and our tradition is on intiation, you pass down your bid day shirt to your little!

We had families, so I think I can talk intelligently about this topic even though I am not in a sorority (yet! *crosses fingers*) :)

A lot of emphasis is placed on which family you join at my college. There were some that could trace their roots back to the 50's and some even earlier. All of our families were named after animals. One of my close friends was a member of the oldest family on campus, aptly named the dinosaurs.

I started my own family, so I am the grand matriarch of the parrots. I started with two little sisters, who each had two little sisters. We were pretty small and new, but now we are one of the larger families on campus, which is really amazing to me. I even have my roommate's biological little sister in my family now, which is neat. I gave her all sorts of parrot junk I had collected.

We also have family "friends" of sorts (certain families always hang out together and do special events together). In my circle of friends, we had three different families represented (dinosaurs, koalas and parrots). We all knew each other and genuinely liked each other, which some of the other groups didn't understand.

I'm actually glad I just typed all this, even if it's boring. It reminded me to send my traditions manual over to my baby parrots.

Our family name has changed alot during the years...(all 10 of them!) at first we were the Theta Family (they went by the greek alpha.) and then we became the panties...(yes, as in underwear because my great great gran big started "the panty award", a kind of the girl who always covers her a**...award) then after my big and i kind of parted ways, my lil and i decided to change our names to the westies (bc we always went to the bar called West End)...and then my grandlil', great grandlil' and great great grandlil' have deemed them selves the Britney WannaBe's...(they are all dancers)....

But we have our family traditions that not all the other families have, esp. articles of jewlery that get passed down to the youngest of the group, like a silver bracelet with AZD inscribed in the middle of it and the initials of our founding sister of our family inscribed in it.

I'm an Alpha Phi who went to school in the Midwest and now advises on the West coast. Families were/are HUGE in both places! When I pledged (we were still called pledges so I'm semi-old :D ) one of the first things my big gave me was our family tree and the family bear which I still have because my little dropped out of school before she could take a little...end of my tree. The chapter I advise is huge on families and does "family letters"...the first set of block letters your big gives to you is done in the fabric print of your family. The scrapbook she makes for you is usually done in the same print too. They keep each other in line too...."that's not something a member of THIS family would do!"

Cool. I am pretty proud of my family. Most chapter presidents, most student leaders, etc. We are the biggest. We dont have names tho. My family was an import. I am a transfer, so I cantrace my family roots back to my old school and a few peeps back there. So its wierd because all the family members in my tree after me can identify back to my original chapter...they even know names of people there.

13 years ago we started out with 12 branches of our tree...only three of them are now active. I belong to the largest branch in our family tree (68 members) and I can trace myself back to a Founding Member.

Jill - Founder
Stephanie
Joanna
Michele
Jeanna
MaryAnn
Sontonia
ME :)

Plus, I have three little sisters and they have little sisters and so on and so on.

Family trees are not emphasized so much in my chapter, but we know who is in our immediate family tree (big, lil, grand-big, great-gran, etc... and a lot of us are connected as "cousins" or "aunts," jokingly.) My grand-big has been doing a little research into our family tree though, and she's been able to trace it back to the early 90's. It's so cool to see those faces on the composites, and to know that you're a "descendant,'' so to speak.

I love my family. At this point, ours is one of the largest and most extended in the chapter.

hhaha.

The second largest/most powerful family approached me about a merger. I told them we werent interested. They had nothing to offer us. They can offer diversity and potenital leadership. We offer a track record of leadersip and the most esteemed traditions.

We'll see whats up...

I think my family is sort of out on our own limb. My grand-big went alum b/c she married, and my great grand-big was gone before I joined A-Phi. I have recently been thinking about getting a family tree going for my family.

When my chapter was founded a little over 5 years ago, there were 5 families (with a few girls per family), each with a different family name. Now, I want to say that 1 or 2 families have already died. My family name is the most popular family. All the girls who have my family name and are not in my "immediate family" are considered, aunts, cousins, etc, because we know that somewhere down the line we are related.

All this family stuff is really cool! :)

I have one little.. And that's my family tree.

I don't know how it'll shake out over the long run but so far I think my family's going to be one of the top ones.

I traced my family all the way back as far as I could find and my branch is the only one still "alive"! That's okay though because we expanded BIG time :) My Big has twins, my twin has twins, and I have twins; one of my littles has a little and one of my twin's littles has a little LOL talk about confusing... but we're still pretty close and like hanging out and stuff--so much FUN!! :D

Each family here has different traditions--shirts they give at Big Sis Revealing, places they go to celebrate. It was more intense when we had a full blown clue hunt that was huge and went all over the house--pledges had to dress up in weird costumes as they went along (ex: one girl dressed like Barbie as she went along in her search, another like a fireman)... those were big traditions that got stamped out with the rise of hardcore anti-hazing. In a way, I think it's sad b/c those were fun things and I never got to do them because we couldn't be "hazed."

~april

my family is one of the only families in the house that is close.. we all go out partying... my grandbig.. her triplets (including my big) and us new littles... i guess some others in the house get jealous that we are all so close... some big/lil pairs arent even as close as we are as a family.. I LOVE MY FAMILY! specially my BIG!