Do You have Froshes/Sophs at your school?
 

Perhaps this should go under social, but do you do these at your school?

I had to explain to all my greek friends at Kansas and Kansas State what a frosh was since I've been back for break, which made me curious if it was just some sort of Nebraska thing.

Basically a frosh is the freshmen pledge classes of a fraternity and a sorority get together - usually on Thursday night and have a mixer. Most houses are required to do some sort of sober activity before hand. We've done everything from Ice Skating, to bowling to having the ladies over for ice cream and "Friends". After that there is usually some off-campus activities. A Soph is the same thing only the sophomore pledge class. Froshes are nearly every week (obviously alternating to different houses), while Sophs are quite a bit more random.

It's really been a great way to meet people, which is what made me so surprised that Nebraska was the only school that I could find that had this tradition.

If your campus doesn't have these, perhaps you could explain the reasons why...

We didn't have them. The reason behind it (I think) is that a lot of people rushed as sophmores so there wouldn't have been a "true" freshman pledge class.

We didn't have them either. But there was a fraternity (or sorority) crush party nearly every week and socials all of the time too. Combine that will philanthropy events and other things going on, I don't know if there would have been time. (But there were definitely ample opportunities to meet people) I think people might have gotten burnt out and grades might suffer for the new members. Not everyone can successfully adjust to the "newness" of college/greek life. I'm not saying that I think pledge swaps are a bad idea, but I think that might be some schools reasoning behind it.
But it's not just a Nebraska thing....correct me if I'm wrong but I believe both Auburn and Univ. of Alabama do pledge swaps.

Our pledges and a fraternity's pledges would have a mixer. There was usually only one per pledge class.

We never did anything like that, probably because the sorority pledge classes were so much larger than the fraternity pledge classes. It would have been really uneven.

My brother has mentioned that his fraternity at Georgia Tech gets together with other fraternity pledge classes to play an annual pledge flag football game, though. I thought that sounded like a fun idea. :)

We had pledge class mixers. Probably about 1 per week. The pledge classes at A&M are made up of freshman/sop./ and juniors. We also had mixers for the actives and pledges-these were the main mixers and we had 3 per semetser which was the limit.

In Canada, first-yr. students are called frosh.

We called them pledge class exchanges. They are not permitted by Panhellenic and IFC on most campuses anymore. The reason behind getting rid of them is that they are a hot bed of surefire underage drinking (very few new members are over the age of 21). As a result, on most of my 19 chapters the only "permissible" pledge class exchanges are dry events.

At UBC here in Vancouver, most fraternities and sororities have an annual invitation-only themed pledge party, usually in December, January or February (from what I've heard). Ours is typically Jan or Feb. As for mixers, we call them exchanges here, and it involves the entire chapter & not just the new members.

At most Canadian schools out west, we DON'T use the terms freshman, sophomore, junior & senior ... we use 1st year, 2nd year, 3rd year, 4th year, etc ... do any of your schools do this?? For high school, we refer to one's grades (eg. grade 8, 9, 10, 11, 12) instead of labelling grade 9's as freshman. Most high schools out here in the west begin at grade 8 anyways. It is only out east (Ontario) that the term 'frosh' is used at universities.

just thought I'd share :)

Jen - alumna
AGD - Delta Zeta '97
University of British Columbia

Yuppers, we use grades as well...let me clarify though. When we refer to frosh, it's really only for the first week of school - frosh week. Most ppl will say i'm first yr. - not frosh yr. Geuss that makes a little more sense, but since i've been a frosh guide for 3 years I always refer to the kiddies as frosh...
high school's the same, 9-13. Usually grade 13eens will refer to themselves as O.A.C. But not for long.

Our big joke in college used to be, I'm in 13th grade now! :)

Anyways, we wouldn't have pledge class swaps or exchanges. Fraternities just basically kidnap sorority pledge classes. Sometimes that's fun, but most times it sucks!

Betarulz, y0ou are out voted again!:D Thought you were going to come by on vaction break! DA!!!:confused:

Well it's interesting to see the responses to this post. To clarify, we at Nebraska (like at most US institutions) refer to 1st years as freshmen, so on and so forth. The term Frosh refers to the pledge class "exchange". And while it seems like most places don't have them, i'm certainly glad that we do have them. Great way to start the weekend and meet people.



I'll probably come by tommorow Tom. I don't leave until Sunday:D

If some one did that here, it would be all over the papers and everyone involved would probably be suspended or maybe even loose campus recognition. That sounds fun, though.