Greek Traditions
 

Hey guys,

A few fraternities on my campus (including mine) do a good job living the fraternity lifestyle, and having a great time doing it. Obviously we all have our individual ritual and traditions, and a few big annual philanthropies, Greek Week, formals, and Homecoming.

However, I feel like the overall atmosphere at my university isn't nearly as Greek as it could be. For example, I don't really hear of people doing any classic traditions such as lavaliering/candle passing, singing fraternity songs when inviting sororities to socials, or even just stressing a more "fratty" look.

My chapter has been talking about bringing a lot of more "traditional" fraternity culture to the campus (and no, I'm not talk about hazing). Do you guys have any ideas for how to be better examples of how a really strong Greek life should be? I'm looking for events, traditions, dress, etc. that you would find in the "good old days" of Greek life. Thanks.

I don't even know where to start with this one.

If you want to sing songs to sororities...do it. If it goes over well, other groups will follow suit. If it doesn't, then it doesn't.

How people dress and exterior things like that has nothing to do with how strong the Greek system is.

Also, candle passes are for when a sorority member gets engaged. If this isn't common on your campus (it wasn't on mine...I don't know many girls who got married so young) then there likely will continue to be a lack of candle passings. I've heard of some campuses doing them for lavaliering, but we didn't do lavaliering on my campus, either...it's an old-fashioned tradition that makes me think of things like promise rings, the phrase "My steady girl," and so on.

Start with each individual fraternity, and see if they have any national traditions.

When I was at school, Phi Delta Theta was trying to raise their campus profile, and they found out that a lot of their chapters did "Kiss & Carnation" on Bid Day. (Yes, I know it can't be done ON Bid Day now, but surely it can be worked out!)

Anyhow, they would get lists of each pledge class, and 3-4 nicely dressed brothers would show up, with a kiss and a carnation for each new pledge. They read a "Welcome to the Greek System" letter first, and had a card for each pledge, too. It was a very nice tradition, and something that wouldn't cost much yet add value to the system as a whole.

Did anyone else have Kiss & Carnation?