Stop the "Baby" Talk
 

I really like this blog written by a Theta.

If we all do a good job in recruitment by choosing smart, confident, achieving women, we shouldn't call them "baby" anything.

http://www.kappaalphatheta.org/alumn...aeBlogBricklet

I wonder if the writer of this blog, a Theta, saw the Twitter posts saying "Baby kittens- run to your litter box!" from a Theta collegiate member on bid day.

:eek:

I love it!
(Do chapters really give New Members baby bottles and rattles?!? :eek:)

I agree that this is a great blog and the term "baby" should not be used to refer to or describe new members of any organization. I know that the term "baby" came about when I was a junior (gah! 13 years ago!). It was the year that Rush became recruitment, Rushees became Potential New Members and Pledges became New Members. Campus panhellenic had decreed that we were to use all the new terms and added that we were not allowed to call the new members, or even the PNMs "Girls" or even "new girls" or "Ladies" because it was derogatory (I'm not sure how Ladies was derogatory, but it was on the list of words that we could no longer use). However, the word Baby was not on the list.

So the sororities who had names for their new members - Phis for Phi Mu, Rosebuds for AOPi, continued on with their tradition. Since the rest of the orgs on campus didn't have names for their new members and could essentially only call them mouthful "new members", and a year before called them pledges, adopted new names for the them. Zeta had "Zeta Babies", AXiD had "Little Xis", Sigma Kappa had "Kappa Kuties", etc. I don't know when all of them changed over to "Babies", but eventually they did. But I think a lot of this Baby calling came out of the fact that they could no longer be called "Pledges" and "New Members" is a mouthful and boring if you compare it to the groups that have names for their new members.

IMO, Pledges is far less derogatory than Babies.

YES! I hate the baby thing. There is nothing wrong with "pledge." I loved being a pledge.

I totally agree with you! There is/was nothing wrong with the word pledge. If I ran the world, we'd still use the words pledge and Rush.

Agreed. I've said this previously: every org should come up with a respectful name for its new members and use that uniformly. Officially, I only know of the two you mention above and Alphas for ADPi, and while I'm sure there are others, some don't have anything, and nobody is going to say "new member".

Incidentally, the writers of this and the other article on this topic come from Theta and APhi, two groups that don't have a name for the NM's, AFAIK, so I'll take the giant liberty of suggesting some: "stars" for Theta, and "ivies" for APhi. They get harder from there: AGD..."ferns"?

Doesn't Tri Delta call their new members pearls?

Count me in as another who cringes at the "baby talk". In a related mode, I also cannot abide by the cat connection with Theta. We are kites, we are ΚΑΘ, not KAT. That would be Kappa Alpha Tau. I'm not a kitty cat, I'm a Theta.

They do. I've never heard us call our NMs Rosebuds, but I like it. ;)

I have heard/seen that; I didn't know if it was official. Basically, like half the NPC groups have the pearl as a jewel, and so most of them can use that, if they don't mind inter-group confusion. ASA can use rubies, too, because that sounds cool (and I hope everyone knows I am just having fun here; I wouldn't really deign to tell other groups what to do, nor do I know if they have some secret meaning behind their jewel/symbol/whatever that makes it a totally inappropriate name for NM's).

I completely agree with all of this. The switch in terminology happened when I was in college too and it was immediately a switch to "babies". It was so confusing to us at the time, because we had been pledges and didn't think it was offensive at all! I think "pledge" is such a convenient word, you can pledge something, be a pledge or join a pledge class.

Where do I sign the petition to bring back the word "pledge"?

I'm fine with "New Members."

Our new members are Pearl Members. Rubies are reserved for initiated collegiate members. :)