Families
 

Hi Ladies,

I was just wondering what family do each chapters have or if there are any families.

We have the Stars:D , Rose, Plaid, and Sunflower. There were more but they are no longer here.

We have the Princesses (that's me!!), the martinis, the southern belles, the care bears, the goddesses, and probably more that I am forgetting!

so you name your families? we have numbers...like 4, 5, 21, 7, etc

Do you feel that families promote cliques? Sometimes i feel like we would be much better off if the chapter did away with families....

My chapter had families based on the shape of their disc (necklace). The big one was the heart family....which really is almost the entire chapter now....so few are not hearts that like 10 out of 60 weren't in the pics. They've tried to get away from that because it alienated the 10 in the not-so-successful family tree(s). Is was really low key and the funniest thing was people buying odd shaped discs after that, like squares and such. You'd be surprised in the pride of a heart shaped necklace though!

Also....and this one was a HUGE issue......and NOT a good one. I personally lost an extremely close friend in this incident (I fault us both for our stupidity).....it's still wierd after like 6 years. There was a clique that created a "family" just trying to have fun, but they came up with their own name, letters like TFJ, handshake, had their own "family jewel" which was a sweetheart type thing with a guy, etc..... you get the idea, but it was somewhat sex-based....hence the family jewel. I'll let you use your imagination with the handshake. Many people were offended by certain innuendo's or like putting TFJ and their letters on the same candle during Pre-I when the letters stood for sexual connotative type stuff. It literally pulled the Chapter in 2....I mean there was a stark line in the chapter of who sided with whom. I cannot begin to express how the chapter nearly imploded. Advisors took it straight out of exec's hands and dealt with it because it was soooo bad, sisters went alum, not so nice words were shared, friends were no longer friends let alone wanted to be sisters. A lot was blown out of proportion and it was a VERY hurtful time within the chapter for both sides....those just doing it in fun and others truly offended. That was a really tough semester. Now, they make it a point to stay away from any family names, animals, etc. Basically you have your big, lil, grands, and adopteds, if applicable.

I do sometimes feel that families do promote cliques but at my chapter its not that much of a problem. Everyone gets alone with everyone. The only things that the families do on their own is when they have a family dinner or event. But I do like the idea of having families. Mine is really small, theirs 3, and another one is also 3, one has about 10 and the other one has about 15-20. But i really don't mind.

We dont have set traditions for our families yet. My family has a pattern we use for big/lil shirts and such. I recently just got myself and my little Grey hoodies with our family pattern on it. Since Valerie and I were twins, we use the same pattern, my my family line uses a blue background and her family line uses a red background. Out of the 9 of us in the chapter, theres 5 of us in my family (me and my little, Valerie and her little and grandlittle, and 2 families of 2 - just a big and their little. Definitely not the way we expected it to turn out, but hopefully those families will grow soon.