Author needs help with legacy info
 

Hi everyone,

I stumbled upon this site tonight and am hoping that you can help me. I am a young adult author and my new book is focusing on a geeky girl trying to infiltrate the most popular sorority on campus. She is going to fake being a legacy in order to get in. It seems that legacies are not as important as they used to be but it's fiction people and I had to get her in somehow! :) I'm just wondering in the event that a legacy was invited to join a sorority what kind of proof would they have to give that they were related to the alumni? I hope you don't mind if I hang around if I have some questions. I'd be happy to put anyones name in my acknowledgment pages! Thanks again!

Stephanie Hale

I foresee this turning into a trainwreck, but I'll bite. If a legacy is going through recruitment, then it's mom/grandma/sister's job to send a form alerting the chapter at her school that she is a legacy. If the girl doesn't have a form sent in for her and says that she is a legacy, it would be the chapter's job to verify that with their headquarters. The only time when this wouldn't be necessary is if the girl's older sister is active in the same chapter.

Generally the PNM lists that they are a legacy on the recruitment application (or I suppose tells the sorority) and then the sorority checks with their (inter)national HQ to determine the validity of a legacy (which is generally a member's sister, daughter, granddaughter, great-granddaughter and sometimes niece). They'd check that the member exists and is in good standing as defined by their HQ.

Also the female versions of alum are alumna (singular) and alumnae (plural).

There are forms that the member sends in that are (or certainly can be) checked in the member database.

For fiction, I'm sure you can come up with something, but in real life there's a good chance she'd get caught.

(Heck, some people encourage you to prove you are a member to post on GreekChat. We're pretty vigilant about making sure that the people we treat as legacies actually are.)

And probably won't get in.....who would want a liar? Especially a poor liar.

If caught, yes. And though it's not impossible for an unverified legacy to get through recruitment... try getting caught while you're a NM... you'll be dropped and fast.

In real life, I think she'd get caught and get dropped from recruitment and or the group.

For fiction, you might try some silliness about another PNM who was an actual legacy with the same name (which wouldn't work in real life because other information would make it clear) or maybe her claiming a relationship to a great "grandmother" who was deceased and wouldn't be expected to verify the relationship herself who she knew to be a member of the group but who she wasn't really related to. (in real life, this could be checked out too, but it seems less likely to be as obvious to bust as saying her mom or sister was a member.)

I figured such.

I have to admit that I have wondered about my daughters, who are Chi Omega and Pi Beta Phi legacies from their deceased grandmothers. I can easily provide the names and chapter information, but do I have to send a birth certificate and marriage licenses? Is it like joining the DAR???:)

But you could if the chapter needed it, so no worries. My guess is that if a chapter had any doubt, they'd find someone else from the grandmother's hometown, even if he or she wasn't a group member, who could verify the relationship.

The Chi Omega, if she were alive today, would be 97! That is pretty amazing - it's what you get when you marry an older man who was a "whoopsie!" when his mother was 43! She was at Rhodes College back when it was Southwest(ern? I can't remember).
Actually, the Chi Omega daughter of my mother-in-law's (younger) Chi Omega buddy from the 70s onward is still in touch with us . . .so now that I think about it, that one is covered!

I know you said it was fiction, so it doesn't HAVE to be true to life. But in reality, chapters cut legacies all the time. Simply being a legacy isn't going to be feasible enough. I like the idea of someone else with the same name, but if you really want to go the legacy route, make it something more compelling - like a descendant of a founder or something.

yeah...a founder's descendant. I don't really know who checks our legacies out (I'm assuming our membership director or advisor -- I know someone does...) but I just feel that if someone came through saying they were one of our founder's great(times a bajillion) grandaughter...who would question that? i mean, obviously our nationals would be on our ass every five seconds making sure we gave this girl sweet treatment...so it probably would be questioned...but still, it'd make a much better story :p

So maybe a founder's great-granddaughter has the same name as your main character but doesn't want to rush because she's too emo for Greek Life, but encourages your main character to rush knowing the misrepresentation will help her? It practically writes itself.

I was thinking the same thing--make her the descendant of a legacy and people may be SO excited, they don't even think about whether its true.

My maiden name is Locke....I always wondered if I am related to Theta founder Betty Locke Hamilton, making me a Theta legacy. (I am pretty sure I am not!) But would anyone question?? (I hope so!)

I think that is a good story line idea, but just like the rest of the posts in this thread, in real life this girl would eventually get caught!

I was going to respond to this comment in general, but since it deals with my GLO....

I think it would be cool if a girl would be related to a founder of a GLO in real life, but again, I would think and hope that this would be checked out. I don't think anybody with the last name of a founder of any of the NPC sororities could just walk in to recruitment and say, "Hey I am related to so and so, the founder of ABC". At least I hope not!

And I'm sure in the book she would/will eventually get caught, thus creating a plot.

You could just make it up. It is fiction!

To the OP... have you ever written anything before? I ask simply because, based on my own experiences, it's much easier to write about something you know (or, like JKR, something you can make up entirely). Since sorority life already exists, you can't make up what it's like to be in the Greek world. So, for your story to have credibility with Greeks, it should correlate with what Greek life is actually like. If your target audience isn't Greek, then the readers would not likely know whether your legacy info is correct - they'll just take it on face value that you know what you're talking about.

Haha- even if you weren't a descendant of Bettie Locke, I would be so excited that you had the same name (during recruitment) that I would be practically star struck anyway. :p

OT - Have you seen the "Betty Locke is my homegirl" shirt???LOL

slight hi-jack: in the Random Spurts thread on DST ave, we were JUST talking about "[insert founder's name] is my homeboy/girl" shirts.

(we were referring to this shirt, made for Nupes.)

OMG, do you mean rising action, a climax, everything? ;)

OP: Why do you want to write a book about something you don't know about? Surely there are things you have more experience with that would make compelling literature.

All others: The Hazing Meri Sugarman series is a great example of an author writing about something she does not know. The main character gets into the most popular house on campus because she is a legacy and is brutally hazed. You can't know how many high schoolers have asked me about whether particular scenes from these novels really happened to me or other Greeks. At least with Epsilon Zeta, Jock Young really is Greek and knows what he's writing about... even if some of it seems crazy, you know there has to be some truth in it.

You girls crack me up. I love when you go off on your tangents and just run with it.

You practically wrote the book for her in 2 pages of posts :D

How is a "geeky" girl (I'm taking that to mean "socially awkward") going to receive an invitation to sorority membership? The sororities interview prospective members to see if they will fit in with the general culture of that group.

Her name is Jenny Smith, and there are 5 other Jenny Smiths rushing. One is the state homecoming queen, a varsity cheerleader, blonde, petite, and has a twin that just joined at a private school not far away. They really want that Jenny Smith but they bid the Geek instead.

Fab!

Ohhh, I see what you did there.... :D

Kappa Beta Chapter of Chi Omega is at Rhodes College (formerly Southwestern). A wonderful chapter.

Just FYI, the official Chi Omega legacy policy does not include grandmothers.

No grandmother Chi-Os
 

REALLY? That's amazing to me. Well, one problem solved!

Thanks to all of you who have given helpful suggestions. I really love the idea of her claiming to be a legacy of a founder. Of course, she is going to get busted in the end and this would make her fall a little harder.

As a writer I like to challenge myself by writing about subjects/experiences that I haven't personally experienced. While I will never know the intense bond that sorority members share, my hope is that I am a skilled enough writer that I can portray it genuinely enough for my reader. This isn't my first book, when it is complete it will be my fourth. My publisher gears my books toward 11 + up and even though I could fudge everything, I would like the experiences to be as realistic as possible.

As for the Meri Sugarman books, which I love, I think the author does a pretty good job creating a unique sorority(although obviously not realistic), especially since they are all written by a man.

Is this a recent policy change or has it always been this way? If that's TMI to give, just say so - it made me think of a thread I wanted to start and I don't want to hijack this one.

No, it's always been this way and I have stated it before on numerous threads.

thanks.

My legacy relative was deceased and a member wrote the form on my behalf and explained the situation. For some reason she wasn't listed as Chapter Grand (deceased), so had anyone checked it would have appeared she was alive. I ran into the same situation writing a rec for a PNM and I included a note explaining why the information was coming from me and not the member.

I would think name, maiden and married, chapter/university and year of initiation would suffice.

Someone else in Chi Omega told me differently on here, so this is good to know. My husband's mother died when he was four, and it would be hard to prove, but I guess it doesn't matter anymore (besides, I only have a son!).

That really happened with one of the sororities on my campus! There were two girls with the same name and they reallyreallyreally wanted one of them but bid the other instead. We got the one they wanted and, looking back, I wish they had gotten her!

This way back before myspace and facebook, though (hell, it was before the Internet, ok?!?! :) ), so I'm not sure if that could happen today.

I might have posted this before, but I know two girls from college who were from the same town (with only one HS), had gone to school together since kindergarten and had the same first, last and middle names. They grew up being "Nancy Pink" and "Nancy Blue", later one had short hair and the other long, so they were "Nancy long" and "Nancy short" and finally pledged different houses in college. I wonder how you know you got the right one? I guess by social security numbers back in the day before computer rush?!

My maiden name was also common, and there were at least 4 girls, including me, with the same first and last name when I was in college. Only one was greek, but she was in one of the sororities that I preffed. Luckily I got my first choice, but people would call and say...do I have the Kappa or the Gamma Phi?

The bad part of having a common name before the computer age...one was kind of slutty, one never paid her bills...so I always got LOTS of interesting phone calls!

We had a girl who had the same name as someone else who rushed/pledged in the same year, and every semester, the GL office would give us grades for the wrong one.

Hmmm... I think I know which sorority that was! I think I know which PNM that was!! ;)



(thanx for the siggy, Sweet KR!)