Tattoos and Brands
 

What do you all think about Fraternity Tattoos and/or brands?

Personally, I do not agree with them. A tattoo or brand is just like a piece of paraphanalia. You would not want to be seen doing anything negative in nalia so therefore, you wouldn't be able to do anything degrading or wrong with a tattoo that represents your fraternity or sorority.

even though tats and brands can be covered?

im not cool with the brand thing, i dont think a tatoo is bad but i do understand where your coming from. But i dont think its nationals place to say people cannot get a tatoo or brand, i think its a persons choice. according to the national by-laws and person who gets a brand is in danger of getting there chapter pull cause the chapter shoudl of taught him better ( even though its on of those rule that isnt enforced to much and it hard to tell someone what they cant do with there body but its a rule) And it really only effects the HBCU chapter being they are the ones more likely to do it.

But its your body and no one should have the right to tel u what to put on it. There are some cultures that tatoos and brands are a right of passage or a way of expressing themsleves. That stuff is as old as man so its up to the individual to me

I wouldn't brand or tattoo my own birth name on me...let alone greek letters or such. Nope! To each it's own though.

Risks
 

I can't find anywhere in the fraternity documents any statement on Tattooing at all. Branding is most clearly mentioned in the Pledge Manual http://www.apo.org/publications/docu...edgemanual.pdf
in the Membership Policies (p 54-55) & the Risk Management (p 57-58).

The membership policies ban it as part of the pledging program, the Risk Management policies are not nearly as narrow. The way that I read the RMP, in the extreme, an Alpha Phi Omega brother who after having graduated joins an Omega Psi Phi and receives a brand in honor of Omega Psi Phi has violated the Risk Management policy. However, the fraternity also definately wants to limit the posibility of neophytes (in this terminology, those who have been initiated, but who have not had a line cross over after them) being expected to get branded to be viewed as a "full brother".


The examples I've used here are from the HBCU community, but I have never heard of branding in a chapter at a HWI.

Randy

Well i never seen a chapter at a HBCU pulled for a brand, there alot fo bros who have brands, i think that it just cant be something that new brother think they HAVE to get.

Absolutely agreed. It is a tradition I would personally like to see disappear, among other reasons, there are so many campuses where the administration has signficant issues with Branding. This is certainly not true of other AyPhiQue traditions such as stepping, jackets or calls.

The one thing I am curious on is what Brands for Alpha Phi Omega look like. Omega Psi Phi uses overlapping Omegas, Zeta Phi Beta uses a Zeta and Phi Beta Sigma uses a Sigma.

The ironic thing is that I do, myself, have scars for the Fraternity. At the end of one of my chapter's initiations (1st sem senior year), I injured my hand so badly that I needed 15 stiches and have scars on the palm side of my right middle and ring fingers which can be seen when I make the Fraternity sign.

Randy

i've also seen omega brands with just one omega and not 2 overlapping...

apo brands are the greek letters for APO the alpha the phi and the omega...i've seen it before although i've never seen it at my chapter or surrounding chapters...i've mostly seen it on older bruhs...way older...

i think that the nationals should revamp the rmp on branding. it should by no means be a requirement, however, if that is what YOU choose to do with your body then so be it...

And for Omega, I've also seen brands of "walking" (asymetrical) Omega's.

For Alpha Phi Omega are the letters stacked one on top of the other?

RMP should be clightly clearer on which are unacceptable as part of the new brother programs and which are just plain wrong...

Randy
Randy

no they are side by side

APO

i forgot how to make greek letters on here but there are side by side

Beats me on how to make greek letters here, but I understand what you mean. Thanx

I met a Brother from Nu Iota who showed me is brand (on his upper arm). It consisted of alpha, phi, and omega, one above the other, but not directly above (ie, each letter was a moved a little below each one).

ALOT of NU Iota bros have brands, Naraht why did u get those scars, what happened?

Have to be an older alum, Nu Iota at Bethune Cookman was declared inactive in 1989.

Randy

Randy's scars.
 

OK, the story. This is the Fall 1989 initiation ceremony at Kappa Chapter at Carnegie-Mellon. We had 18 pledges that semester and an advisor who was being initiated with them. We were in a lecture hall with chalkboards that slide up and down to reveal the ones behind them. We had completed the ritual, sung the toast song and welcomed the new brothers and were taking things down. I was taking down the flag and stood up on a chair to reach the tape on the top right corner when I slipped on the chair. The thing that I was using to support my right hand was sharp enough to take off skin and flesh on the palm side of my fingers as I slid.

Fortunately, there were three brothers there trained as EMTs (One of whom was in the class that just initiated) and one of them was going to be on duty that night (Carnegie-Mellon has hospitals close by so its health room is not open 24-7. They train students to be EMTs in exchange for being on duty one night a week). So while he called into the campus police on the radio for transport, the other two EMTs bound my hand up.

Well, you need to stop bleeding and you don't have bandages, so what do you have available that is long and relatively thin and made out of cloth? That's right, most of the blindfolds which had just come off the faces of the new brothers were used to stop the bleeding on my hand. After I got to the hospital, they used 8 stitches on the middle finger and 7 on the ring finger.

Since they could see the tendons in my fingers when they cleaned them up, it meant that if it had gone any deeper, I would have lost some flexibility and control in those fingers, I was fairly lucky.

BTW, I purchased cloth over the winter break and worked with the pledgemaster to make new blindfolds for the spring pledge ceremony.

Randy

I mean WTF! Are you serious? She needs to be shot for that one. How dare you put those words on your back for all to see?

OHMYGOD...Please tell me that you're joking?!?!? How dare someone do that? How in the hell can you actually get that tattooed on your back...I actually don't even know what to say to that. I'm speechless. That person should be ashamed of herself!

These two sentences made me laugh out loud, for different reasons, lol.