How protective are you of your letters?
 

The RW thread got me thinking about this. I've noticed some people on here are quite protective of their letters no matter what they're printed on or who is wearing them. While others are more of the opposite. An example from my campus is that no pledge at ANY time may wear the organization they are pledging's combination of letters while other school's denote that as hazing.

I know that I've become more laid-back w/my letters over time, and I don't freak out if a friend who's cold wears one of my sweatshirts off of campus now (not relaxed enough for on-campus :p ). But I know of people who if their own mother was freezing too death wouldn't let them wear a party-shirt, heh.

I don't know if I'd go so far as to deny someone who is freezing my jacket (luckily my mom's in the same sorority) but I wouldn't let someone wear my para when they're not a member. I might not let someone use my umbrella. I'd have to think about it.

Re: How protective are you of your letters?
 

Seems to me this would violate everything those letters stand for. ;)

If someone were freezing and needed a jacket or getting soaked and needed an umbrella and the only ones I had to lend had my letters or, Heaven forbid, my crest, I would let them.

I'd like to think I'm a compassionate human being first and a Delta Zeta second (not that the two are necessarily mutually exclusive :) )

I just can't imagine that my Founders would want someone to catch pneumonia rather than borrow my jacket!

I'm actually pretty protective of my letters - I mean, if someone were dying of hypothermia I'd consider letting them wear a sweatshirt...maybe...

Seriously though, I'd rather not let someone wear my letters unless it were absolutely necessary. If it were an extreme case, then fine, but I just don't feel comfortable having non-members wearing Kappa Sigma.

If someone just wanted to borrow a sweater... the first one I'd hand over wouldn't be my letters... HOWEVER... as someone (*Maybe* S&S ?) said in the RW thread... I'd rather have a non member who is representing the values of Phi Sig (or at the very least not making an ass of themselves) Than a member dancing in her blinged out Phi Sig thong on the bar, ya know ?
That being said... it really doesn't make sense to me why but people who CHOOSE to leave the organization WANT to wear their letters still.
I know all situations are different, and I undstand some people wanting to sport letters after disaffiliating. Either way it *kinda* bothers me, but I'm not going to throw red paint on their sweater, or call them out on it.

Being that I love my letters I think its disrepectful for others to wear our letters. A 'rival' sorority on campus have a party that they call a Princess party where they make shirts that have our letters or insignia on it and dress really girly to make fun of us (we're stereotyped as being really girly and prissy but we consider it as having class.). Stuff like this pisses me off. But a frat on campus has shirts that we're taken from us or willingly given to them years and years ago that were passed down and sometimes they wear them at the bar, we think thats ok because its all in good fun. I dunno to a nongreek it seems like no big deal but to a greek your letters are sacred.

Personally, I won't wear any of my letters if I am drinking. Plus, I won't buy those shorts with them on the butt or flip-flops with them on the bottoms.

If someone were freezing, I would lend them my sweater etc. but if that person started acting like a brute wearing my letters, I would take it back faster then they can blink.

Exactly how I feel - of course, about Alpha Delta Pi ;) - but the one of the major parts of being a Greek is compassion, is it not?

I do get irritated with seeing our Crest on non-member related items, though - and don't get me started on the thongs or other underguccis!

K-ThetaGrl, you (as a group) are obviously doing something right - imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Now, on a 180, I remember going trick or treating with my two best friends as kids dressed as Tri-Deltas. Their mother was a Tri-Delta, and made our sweatshirts!

Turn your sweater or jacket inside out.

i loaned a friend my phi mu sweatshirt bc it was the only clean one i had and she was freezing! no biggie. if she called me up and asked to borrow it, i would say no. that would be weird.

as far as party shirts go, who cares? if you are giving them out as favors and are giving them to the dates of your members then there are people of the opposite sex running around in your letters. or what about when a sorority and fraternity team up for a party or greek week, etc. and get a shirt made together.

i think we as greeks have bigger fish to fry than a non-member borrowing a lettered umbrella in the rain.

I might consider letting someone wear my letters in a medical emergency (hypothermia/a newborn needs to be wrapped/etc.) in the way ladygreek describes. Otherwise, no. Period.

Even then, I'd give up my shirt, bra, pants, etc. before the letters.

Same here.

My mom was even afraid to borrow my sweater...even though I told her she was perfectly permitted to do so! We're pretty protective of our sweaters/shirts...no boyfriends. No non-initiate males may wear our letters (We've had 2 male initiates(advisors)). We had 2 girls deactivate last year for various reasons and the next day we had a neatly stacked and plastic wrapped pile of shirts on the buffet...there's no wearing letters around here if you're not a member..someone WILL notice and WILL talk.

As stated in the other thread, I'm not protective of my letters at all. I don't care who's wearing them -- pledge, alum, former member, fraternity guy, girl in another sorority, non-Greek -- as long as they're representing the organization well and not pretending to be a member if they're not one. Like I said, wearing a tee shirt doesn't make you a member. I'm not sure what the big deal is.

And if I were to deny my freezing-to-death friend a sweatshirt just because it had my letters on it, I'd certainly be going against my sorority's ritual . . . so there you go. As KR said, a good person first, a Tri Delta second -- although in this case the two would have to go hand in hand.

Every time I see a thread like this, I keep thinking about how many sorority women won't let anyone touch their letters or crest or whatever - yet would kill to wear their boyfriend's fraternity pin.

Now, what I DO hate is how many greeks give old party t-shirts to the Goodwill or something. Then you see some old wino drinking from a brown paper bag and wearing a sorority t-shirt - yuck!!!!

In accordance with my organization's protocol.

Sorority women wear their boyfriend's fraternity pin?

I mean this in the least disrespectful way possible:

This paragraph doesn't make sense.

I can usually find at least some logic in a viewpoint that I disagree with. With your viewpoint I can find none.

Sorority women who think it's the 1950s.

Seriously, I didn't know people still did that.

Pardon me as I was being coy. :) I know that it used to be a practice particularly for NPC/IFC but didn't know it was still one.

That's fine, because your viewpoint as expressed in the other thread makes no sense to me. And that's fine -- different strokes for different folks.

I don't care if people wear a University of Wisconsin sweatshirt even though they don't go to this school and thus don't understand the experience I've had. Nobody cares if I wear my high school track pants even though I'm not on the track team anymore. Why should I treat my sorority shirts any differently?

If a fraternity member wears a party shirt with my letters on it because he enjoyed the party and enjoyed spending time with the girls in my chapter, I'm not going to argue with it. If a pledge wants to wear the letters because she is showing her commitment to the organization, good for her. And if a former member wants to wear the letters because she still respects the sorority but had to leave because of unrelated personal issues, I've got no problem with it. As I said in the other thread, if you are treating the letters with the respect they deserve, I don't care if you're a member or not. And conversely, if you AREN'T treating the letters with the respect they deserve -- I don't care if you're a member or not, you shouldn't be wearing them. To me, the latter is a much much much bigger problem than the former. I've never seen a non-member wearing letters to cause problems, but I've seen many members of all organizations who wear their letters while behaving ridiculously. Why don't we work on that before we attack the people who ARE treating our letters with respect?

If we stopped putting so much emphasis on the damn tee shirts, maybe we'd have fewer members who are just in it for the tee shirts . . . ?

Excellent point, S&S! http://www.handykult.de/plaudersmili.../xyxthumbs.gif

Even excellenter!! :D

A practice I never especially believed in - I always figured if I loved a girl that much I'd propose.

Plus, my wife is in a sorority, so she has letters of her own. She never really needed mine.

For their 30th anniversary, my Dad gave my mom his fraternity pin. It is absolutly beautiful, rubbies and pearls. I was a little sis in the same GLO and my mom gave the pin to me this summer (My Dad passed away 20 years ago). I don't wear it but I will always take care of it and treasure it. I don't have sons, but if one day I have a grandson who happens to become a member, I will pass it on.

It isn't about different strokes. It is about being able to understand the logic in something regardless of whether you agree or disagree with it.

How can a nonGreek or another sorority be representing your organization, but at the same time you don't assume they are a member just because they are wearing your symbols? If they aren't a member, how can nonmembers be charged with representing YOUR symbols in a respectful manner? That isn't their responsibility. If you want to monitor how members wear the letters, do so. It doesn't make sense to say anyone can wear letters just because your organization hasn't learned how to monitor how its own members wear the letters.

As I stated in the other thread, it is not about the tshirt. It is about the symbols on the tshirt. In the end, there is a good reason why viewpoints such as yours are uncommon, at least among BGLO/MGLO/LGLO members.

And that's one reason why I'm not in a BGLO/MGLO/LGLO. Granted, opinions like mine are not the norm among NPC/NIC Greeks either, but they are more common. NPC and NIC Greeks often create party shirts with both groups' letters on them. NIC fraternity members sometimes allow their girlfriends to wear their letters. Although it's not usually kosher with the sorority HQs, many girls pass sorority shirts on to their guy friends too. And all but a handful of NPC sororities allow pledges to wear letters.

You say that it's not about the tee shirt, it's about the letters on the shirt, which I totally agree with. But my letters don't lose any of their "power" by being associated with non-members.

I sleep in my boyfriend's letters every night. Clearly he has no problem with that. And I'm sure anyone who saw me would understand that I'm not exactly a Lambda Chi Alpha (especially considering that the shirt is an XL and I'm a small).

Sure.

Honestly, I just can't convince myself that I should give a rat's ass if anybody else wears my letters. In an ideal world, nobody but members would, but frankly I have bigger issues in life that concern me.

I think that my answer would be different were I still in college. When I was, it was a big deal that ONLY initiated members wear our letters (or printed shirts for the new members) or printed shirts. I remember one older sister flipping out when she saw a girl on campus wearing a bid day shirt from her bid day (like in '96 or something), and when she ran up to approach the girl, it turned out it was one of her pledge sisters who had left school but had come back.

Now that I'm not immersed in the drama of it all, I have more important things to worry about, such as packing for our move next month, looking for a new job, law school applications, etc. :)

me personally
if you are not a member you will not wear the letters
no if ands or buts about it....

emergencys are on a case by case

I'd say I'm on the same page as Sugar and Spice. I'm not about to go loaning my badge out to strangers, but I'm am secure enough in my own sisterhood to know that a shirt with my letters doesn't make them a sorority member.

Besides, when my chapter did party favors, we always put our letters on them. Most of our members ordered two favors, one for us, and one for our dates. A lot of times if I didn't want to babysit some guy at a date party, I'd bring a non-greek friend or a girlfriend from another sorority to a party. This was pretty commonplace on my campus.

Therefore, there were plenty of men and women with party-favor t-shirts or gifts on campus who weren't members. It never bothered me, I was just smart enough to know who was part of what chapter. And if someone made a total ass of themself at that party, I certainly wasn't going to give them a t-shirt.

This is just the way things were on my campus, I'm not saying this is right or wrong -- it's just the way it is. Different strokes for different folks :)

Don't judge others because they may or may not be more protective of their letters -- every GLO is different, and every campus is different. Just because you are more or less protective, doesn't make you a better member than someone else on this board.

Personally, I don't hold it as a bigger issue in my life than any of those things. It's not as if I'd curl up in a ball in my bedroom sucking my thumb for months if I saw a non-member in my letters. It wouldn't exactly ruin my life or anything.

I'm just saying personally I would rather not have non-members wearing my letters. I wouldn't give up on life if they did, though.

I imagine there are some people who might do just that. ;)

I'm not saying it wouldn't bother me if I saw a non-member wearing my letters -- I've just come to realize that the further I am from college, even though I'm still active as an alumna and volunteer with the collegiates, it's not nearly as much of an issue now as it was then. Especially since I would have no way of knowing if the person in question wasn't a member. Unless it's a boy, of course.

A lot of us have more important things to worry about and haven't been in undergraduate in years.

However, Delta's protocol regarding our symbols doesn't change. A large percentage of our members are alumnae, so it is more about the different cultures of our organizations and not about how far removed you are from college or if you have other life concerns.

I also do not see what any of this has to do with "drama."

Really? That's unfortunate.