Does your chapter....
 

Did your chapter give wooden badges to candidates during initiation week?

http://i179.photobucket.com/albums/w...869/paddle.jpg

(on the left). It's not a ritual secret, so I don't mind posting it. It was with you pretty much your whole initiation week. Just wondering if other chapters did this to.

We have our candidates make their Fathers (Big Brother in my chapter) paddles, and in return the father gives him a jersey.

I'm generally unhappy with the way this is enforced, especially pertaining to candidates getting their jerseys in a timely manner, so this semester I'm going to be pushing for some changes to the system, preferably working out a way to give every candidate their jersey immediately following initiation. In the past, some guys have waited nearly a year because their father didn't have the money.

The paddles are usually given to fathers at our Christmas party, and don't really have much significance after that. They are just meant to be something nice the fathers can hang on their wall.

Why not assess an up-front "little" fee to cover those expenses in your chapter Trevor? That way the chapter could buy jerseys with that money. Further, they'd probably be able to take advantage of volume discounts.

If you're using Omega Fi, this'd be a really easy thing to do.

Thats what I have in mind, I just need to gather the support for it and push it through. Its all part of a larger plan I have to make initiation more of a special event for candidates.

Sounds good. If you need any strategy advice, feel free to PM.

The way our chapter does the big/lil gift for initiation is this:

The meeting before pinning, the chapter gets together and decides who the big brothers will be (usually cut and dry... if you bid 'em, they're your little). The big bros then have 2 weeks to submit $25 to pay for their little's first set of letters and a sport jersey.

The stuff is ordered, shipped, and delivered a few weeks before initiation after we vote to initiate the candidates, and we "present the letters" at our dinner after initiation.

It used to be a "you can do it if you want to" thing, but now it's a chapter tradition, and has been for some time.