Your Pledges at other chapter Pledge Ceremony?
 

Just a general question for your group. Let's say that your fraternity/sorority has two chapters in the same city. The two schools have very different rush/pledging schedules. Chapter A has rush the week before school starts, Chapter B has rushing in October. Is it appropriate/allowed for pledges of Chapter A (who have been pledges for 5 or so weeks) to attend the pledging ritual at Chapter B?

Also, if your colonizing process has a ritual making those in the colony legally members of the fraternity/sorority but not full brothers/sisters, can those in *that* status attend a pledging ritual and vice versa.

(For Alpha Phi Omega, the answer to all of these is yes as far as I know, but I'm curious for social fraternities/sorority.

If I am remembering correctly, no for the first question. Only fully initiated members take part in pledging ceremonies even if they had already been through parts of the pledging process.

I have never been involved in colonizing so I have no clue about that one.

In my region (I suspect it's the same with other regions within my organization), there wouldn't be THAT huge of a gap between Chapter A starting and Chapter B starting. Both chapters would have members coming in within a week or so of each other.

If there was a 5 week difference, I don't know that Chapter A pledges would attend, as they would be busy with their own process.

ETA: The colony thing is moot in my organization, as members of colonies are "full" members.

The rules for the first scenario are pretty straightforward - the new members of Chapter A could attend the pledging ritual for those at Chapter B just as they could if there was a later pledging ritual at their own chapter. (For example, after a COB if they were below total and wanted to add a couple of girls to the existing pledge class rather than create a discrete second group.)

The colonizing question is harder. It is my understanding that - in most NPC groups - the part at which the colony members attain membership status is at initiation, and thus the new members from the second group could not attend initiation prior to their initiation. The charter is usually conferred upon the colony (making them full members) at that time - but not always (in which case they would be initiated members but not full members.) That is the part that would vary by group.

The two groups could elect to do a combined initiation? That might require special permission or reserving a larger hall - but that might be lots of fun and provide an opportunity to bond for both groups.

Our pledging ceremony is open. So for a colony, it is not uncommon for guests to be present during the pledging ceremony. So it wouldn't be a problem to have pledges from another chapter present- in fact I think it would be great show of suport.

You should probably direct ritual questions to folks who are members of your organization. Privately.

Kevin, I'm not sure if the response is directed to me as OP, but I'm asking generally, as I put in my comment, I'm pretty sure for APO and to get a *definitive* answer for APO, I know where to ask within APO...

Then I'm not sure with respect to most of our organizations that answering your question would be appropriate.

I am just wondering, why you would want to know this information about groups to which you do not belong? It's a pretty specific situation, and I am not sure what you would do with such information.

If answering the question would not appropriate for any particular GCer, I assume that GCer won't answer.

Though like ree-Xi, I'm not sure I see the point of asking.

Trying to figure out how common or uncommon it is. I'm perfectly happy with answers like WCSweet<3 or HQWest , who didn't even give their Greek Letter Organization.

There are lots of newly initiated folks out there or others who don't know better.

Do you mean a pledging ritual or initiation?

Our pledging ceremony is open to invited guests, so I suppose it would be okay, but most likely kinda boring. I can't imagine adding one more thing to the long list of things that pledges have to attend.