Ebay--this is bad
 

Good evening, folks.
I'm not entirely sure where this belongs but I'll give it a try.

Just for Ss & Gs I was surfing Ebay and found the following listing:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...category=11145

This isn't just selling badges anymore--this dude is selling private ritual attire and is threatening to sell other "equipment".

I don't know who it belongs to, I dont' want to know, but if someone wants to take the initiative to grab some of this, here it is.

Good luck, people
Adrienne
:(

Bad news! :mad:

can anything actually be done about this? This is HORRIBLE!!!!:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

ok that is definately not cool.. where do they find this stuff?!?!

uhm, if you can all stop freaking out for just a moment, he's selling stuff that is NOT secret crap... you don't see a ritual book, but a robe or some book that you can buy on the fraternity's website... jesus... anyways... the robe is not what makes or breaks the brotherhood, nor does that robe contain secret recording devices that will tell the whole world your ritual.. jesus... think before you post and go bonkers...

Fraternally yours, (and definitely NOT freaked out) Dragos

My question exactly.

oh yeah.. if you're really up & up about seeing people's "secret" robes... just go to their chapter meeting... i'm pretty sure you'll most likely get beaten for intruding, but if you're that hardcore on seeing a robe that has the GLO's colors on it (it's not that hard to figure out if you think about it for a moment)...

IMHO, I didn't think I was "freaking".

But 2 things:

1) The whoeveritis selling this says that he DOES have ritual books to sell.

2) The robe itself being on sale is a symptom of a downhill trend. It started w/ just miscellaneous paraphenalia that anyone could buy. Then it was badges. Now it's up to ritual clothing. If privacy of your GLO (or whatever organization) is important to you, this trend could eventually spell major problems for your group. Perhaps a response (if not actually "freaking out") could stem the tide before those bigger problems occur.

Just my $0.75
Adrienne

outraged
 

I have been checking ebay for a while now to see what pins and other greek things show up. Ever since it was posted on my sororities' national website that some of our badges had been up for auction. It's a shame that there are so many on ebay ! Some of the badges end up going for well over one hundred dollars ! It has gone too far with the ritual equipment ! Whoever is selling it isn't fully to blame though. The chapter who lost it is also partly responsible. Ritual equipment should never be out of the hands of the chapter ! I can't believe that this is on there now ! But is there any way of stopping it ?

I don't know about your GLO, but in ours anything to do with ritual is secret -- not just the words to the ceremonies -- and the items are certainly not available on any website for purchase.

Chapter ritual items are always kept in a safe place as well, and I've always just assumed that other GLO's handled their things in the same manner --- which is why I'm wondering how this person got his/her hands on the robe in the first place.

yea i have to agree w/ theta_phi.. where do we draw the line?!

I think badges, ritual wear and ritual *books* are getting a lil personal, if you know what I mean.

Geez, if you want to know what is going on, you should have joined the GLO to see what it was all about. You shouldn't randomly put the values of the GLO's up for sale on EBAY.. I don't know.. to me it's just plain wrong.

I don't blame the guy selling the stuff one bit. I do blame the chapter that lost the robes fully.

-Rudey

I'm going to get the listing pulled simply on the basis of keyword spamming, which the seller did very blatently, and which is against eBay rules, (ie; "Key words: Fraternity Sorority Society Greek Pledge College University Alpha Beta Gamma Delta Epsilon Zet Eta Theta Iota Kappa Lambda Mu Nu Xi Omicron Pi Rho Sigma Tau Upsilon Phi Chi Psi Omega Deuteron")

I'll leave it to the rest of you to bitch him out personally if you want.

LXA

heh.. all of our stuff is secret too... i can't say the same for some of the other fraternities on my campus... i know one of them held ritual outdoors one time, and one of my friends, who btw is non-greek (weird, huh? greek has non-greek friend... j/k) took pictures of their ritual... maybe some people really don't give a rats behind about their organization... i know one of my friend's grandpa was buried with his badge on and his paddles were put together into a collage type thing and made into the lid of his casket... it was hella cool... but i guess some parents leave their kids all the stuff they had, like letters, etc... ritual books, robes, and all that kinda stuff is usually supposed to stay with a ritual committee or something of the sort, that takes care of it...

In the future, I don't think we should be posting links to this kinda stuff on Ebay. If someone sees ritual equipment/anything that can be construed as esoteric on Ebay or any site, we should really PM someone in the org, not post something on the general board; it could bring attention to this item to people who really have no business knowing about it. I know if there was Kappa Sig material online, I'd rather that someone PMd me than if they posted it to the board as a whole.

Just my opinion, feel free to disagree.

Collin

I don't know.. that's pretty damned cheap for a ritual robe. If I were of that GLO I'd be snatching an extra robe up for my chapter:D Seriously though, the robe designs aren't secrets. At least in Sigma Nu's case.. There's a fella in Rhode Island that makes the robes for MANY GLO's. I've done business with him actually. Damned things are very costly.

Yeah, tell me about it. I can't imagine how a chapter would lose something that expensive.

-Rudey

Maybe it's just because I'm Chaplin of my chapter and in charge of all ritual, but I would be royally pissed if any of my stuff got out in public. My chapter keeps all of that stuff extremely hush-hush. When I was initiated and I opened my eyes, let me tell you I was not expecting anything of the sort! I have only one bag of ritual stuff in my apartment because the rest stays at our house, but my boyfriend knows not to go near that bag for any reason because he understands how sacred it is to me. He is also very careful to not reveal any of his ritual to me.

I wouldn't want any sort of ritual dress out in the public eye because I think that cheapens the secret and the surprise of initiation. I understand that some things are mass-produced and that SOMEONE had to see them, but at least our stuff isn't up on the internet for sale.

First off, why doesn't everyone who is unhappy to see this notify the GLO, and let them "make them an offer they can't refuse"? The seller isn't to blame, but if he was a bit savvy, HE should have contacted the GLO, too.

FWIW, my mother bought a building, and we found a LOT of ATO stuff stashed in one of many hidey-holes. We contacted the nearest chapter, who were so happy to retrieve the stuff that they offered to pay for it. My mother didn't accept the money, because not being an ATO or even related to one, she felt that ATO ritual etc is not hers to sell. I found that admirable.

Just my 2¢.

honeychile

I agree with you, but sometimes things get stolen. A fraternity broke into our house and stole our charter cup out of a locked cabinet. :(

I can't imagine how a chapter would loose something that important

Yeah, it's sad, but unless a member of that group (?) wants to do something, we can't really get too upset about it, and just hope that it doesn't happen to our individual groups.

Perhaps the seller is a disgruntled member of the group (or was), has no reverence for the ritual, and feels he has nothing to lose. The best avenue for this in the future is to PM a member, who will know the best way to take care of it. Basically, I didn't click the link because how the robe looks, if it belongs to a real fraternity or sorority, is none of my business.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by honeychile
First off, why doesn't everyone who is unhappy to see this notify the GLO, and let them "make them an offer they can't refuse"? The seller isn't to blame, but if he was a bit savvy, HE should have contacted the GLO, too.. .

How do you know which GLO to contact, if even the seller isn't 100% positive which one it is?

--Adrienne

I would also urge everyone to please not pummel the seller with emails, or to make any sort of big public deal out of this (including this thread, which should be deleted). The last thing we need is for dealers to realize that ritual equipment is the "next big ebay thing". This happened with badges a couple of years ago, and now look at the quantity and prices of badges on ebay. Don't let it happen again.

Some ritual equipment IS out there on the open market. But fortunately, most dealers don't know what it is and so they haven't started digging around for it. Let's keep it that way.

QUIETLY take care of this.

[Edited to add: I know whose robe this is. The org is aware of it. Let's not start an emailing frenzy and get 100 members of that org tripping over themselves trying to rescue it. If you drive up the price on this item, you'll have 10 of them listed next month. I guarantee it.]

wptw

I agree. Only PM those with need to know. Why draw more attention to what offends.

I don't know if this is the same guy, but some person was selling a KD or a DDD sorority pin and his disclaimer stated that Greeks should not be mad at him for selling Greek stuff, like pins, since the original owner relinquished the items at some point. I don't know exactly how he got hold of the pins, but if the pins come up for bid during estate auctions or bank deposit box auctions, then anyone can buy them. I guess it would be good if we (being Greek) alerted our families of the importance of the pins and such and stated what should happen to them upon our death. I know we may not want to think this, but we should if we want to stop this from happening so often.

LOL ... if you think that's bad enough, check this out!
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...tem=2800447341

Ewwww! :o

ok, now that's funny
 

That's one of the funniest things I've ever seen ! It's good to see someone taking the lighthearted side of this whole ebay frenzy.

OMG.....those shorts are a gay man's dream......hehehehe:p

SigmaDiva, I agree with you that we need to make it clear to our families what is to be done with our badges upon our death. If my badge is stolen, do you think that guy, and others like him, considers that as "relinquishing" it? These sellers have got to know badges are not just another piece of jewelry.

If badges are basically on loan to each GLO's members, how can they be considered part of the property included in estate sales, etc.? It's probably some legal technicality.

Queequek, the underwear thing was too-oo-oo funny!

About the ritual robe...it is a Beta Theta Pi ritual robe.

Does this make me angry...kinda but not really. I'm angry that this guy is making money off of my organization, and that he is ignoble about it. I'm dissappointed that somehow he managed to get this whether by acceptable, explainable means (like finding it in a house he bought or something), or that he through other means came across this.

That said, as far as I can tell at things like convention, those robes are not secretive. We had our convention at a large hotel this past summer and one of the highlights of it is the model initiation. The guys who were being initiated there were in and out of the "secure" quarters several times and were held out in the lobby where anyone and everyone could see them. The housemothers who attended Convention were right outside in the lobby and saw them go in and out several times. By the actions of my General Fraternity Officers I know that the importance of the robes is little.

In fact the robes are not a required part of our ritual. My chapter has never had pledge robes until this month when an alumni donated a large sum of money that we used to buy them.

So people just need to calm down about what's secret and what isn't. If it doesn't directly reveal what your letters mean (like in Greek) then it probably isn't that big of a deal. Things like attire and props don't make the ritual.

Remember that when we were all founded there were no initiation ceremonies. The person to be initiated was read what the meaning of the motto was, given the grip, signature if your org has one, and read the constitution of the organization.

Everyone needs to focus on what truely are the secrets of their own org and focus on living them, while guarding them closely. The superfluous regalia and such is just that: extra.

Ew, and what's gross about the underwear thing is that someone actually bid on it! EWWWWWW!!

Betarulz, you make a lot of good points. But I have to disagree with you about the secrecy of regalia. You take a vow to preserve in secrecy everything connected with your initiation, including mottoes, symbols and objects (which is where regalia falls).

If I were a Beta, I would not appreciate you confirming that this in fact a Beta robe.

Just because some of your guys ran a sloppy model initiation at a hotel and no one objected does NOT make it OK to reveal these things.

The description of your robes is published in your ritual manual. Is it published anywhere else? I suspect not. So what does that tell you?

Also, according to my research, robes of some kind ARE required for every Beta chapter. Once again, just because that policy wasn’t enforced at your chapter does not mean the requirement doesn’t exist.

wptw

I think we have to remember that what is secret varies very much from GLO to GLO. Some GLOs' letters stand for non-secret things. DU has everything open. And as people here have indicated, some GLOs sell their robes on their websites - and others would never do that and keep them very secret.

Although I am against selling badges, I do see an important distinction between a badge and a robe. A badge at least is public - anyone can look at one, and anyone who can read Greek letters can figure out what GLO's it is. A robe, for most groups, is a private rather than a public symbol. Not everyone has them, and I only by unfortunate accident know what any org's looks like. And some if you saw them would indicate in no way what or whose they are (other than, "Well, it's probably not ordinary street attire.") Most non-Greeks don't even have any idea they exist. For that reason, I think that for *most* orgs seeing a robe on eBay would be more disturbing than seeing a badge there.

I wouldn't want a non-Kappa knowing anything about Kappa's ritual or initiation.

When I was in college, our chapter was the big sister chapter to a new chapter. The sororities only had lounges in the dorms for meetings, initiation, etc. While we were there, another group was initiating--they stood out in the dorm hall in their attire while they waited their turn. Either that was no big deal to them, or they did the best with the circumstances at hand. We didn't see or hear any ritual, only what the new initiates wore. The sororities on that campus now have houses!

I just reported his b!tch @ss for keyword spamming. Not only do i think what he's selling is kind of wrong, but he's using one of my pet peeves! Keyword spamming! Blatantly illegal on ebay.
Anyone who's familiar enough with ebay, please report him. The more people who report it the quicker it'll get pulled. I reported all 4 of his auctions.

I don't think that BetaRulz! was implying that the initiation performed at one of our Conventions was sloppy. Initiation ceremonies are not meant to have 600 people in attendance, so obviously doors open more than they should, people from the 'peanut gallery' enter and exit more than they should....etc.

WPTW, you should know that. I am sure that your fraternity has similar issues at Grand Chapter. I could be wrong though.

Everyone, check your pledge manuals, history books and membership directories. Many fraternities/soroities do not hold all of their robes secret, they are pictured in many of your books.

Lastly, I don't think its appropriate for any ritual robe, book, insignia...etc. makes it onto eBay, as a matter of fact, I think its horseshit. It is difficult to monitor though. Imagine, some longtime Greek takes regalia into his posession when his chapter dies, and then he passes away. Someone picks up his estate and sells it all. Who knows, that could happen quite frequently. It sucks, but it could happen.

How do you lose part of your ritual?

When a chapter closes, typically HQ's will only collect what they own. That being the charter and the actual ritual books. Otherwise the robes, etc are property of the chapter that bought them. I'll agree with BetaRulz.. we had a very similar situation at a very large hotel in Toronto this Summer. The people in our robes wore them throughout the proceedings. All parts of the proceedings were open to the general public (wives, etc) except the formal opening and closing.