? about Big/Lil reveals
 

Hi all -
I know Big/Lil reveals have been discussed before, in regard to gifts at least.

My question is - when during "new member education period" (used to be called pledging back in my day!) do you reveal big sisters? My chapter does it waaaaaay in the beginning - one of the 1st activities. Is this normal?

Also, how do you do the reveal? I don't remember how mine was revealed - 12 years ago - but lately we've been doing the string thing.

Thanks!

Our pledgeship was 6 weeks. For the first 2 weeks you had a "sponsor" who was usually someone from the pledge class from the last semester. She sometimes ended up being your big but sometimes not. You got your big in a ceremony after that.

Our reveal was that the pledge was in one of the bedrooms of the house and the big knocked on her door - we had a family style house so this worked well.

AOII had big sis/lil sis in the third week of the cycle. This was the way it was done when I was a new member, but that may have changed. When we had small spring new member classes we'd have a special big sis/lil sis reveal. All members would gather in a circle. The lil sis would enter with a candle which would then be passed around the circle while all members sang AOII songs. When the candle reached the right big sis she'd blow out the candle. Of course, a lot of goofing off occurred with fake outs. I think the girls really liked it that way.

I don't remember how long our actual new member period was, although 8 weeks sounds approximate. We revealed during I(nspiration) Week. Usually Wednesday or Thursday, then Initiation would be Saturday. Thoughout your NM period you got Heart Sisters who were like temporary Bigs. They did stuff with you, helped you with any questions you had, and were a way for you to meet a variety of older chapter members.

In my APO chapter, bigs are typically revealed at the end of week two.

Sometimes it has been bumped up to week one if pledge rentention is an issue.

At my school, sororities do this when sisters get engaged. The president will schedule a candlelight and then the engaged sister blows out the candle and they celebrate, sometimes they're open to the public/friends of the engaged girl. I know a girl who got proposed to this way. When the candle came to her, her boyfriend came up behind her and blew the candle out.

That is absolutely adorable.

For formal recruitment, we do revealing as one of the first activities.

For informal, we waited weeks! :)

Sounds normal to me, but each NPC group probably does it somewhat differently. AOII does it in the beginning now, within two weeks of Bid Day.

We did the same thing for engagements too but we sang a specific song, "There's an AOII who's smiling." We never had any outsider there. It would be cute to have the boyfriend propose this way. How sweet!

We do a very similar thing to that. I love seeing everyone so surprised and excited!