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Well... actually there are 27 Greek letters, though the other three (koph or qoph (Q), sampi, digamma (F) or waw/vav) would be very unlikely to be used - though they appeared in early forms of the language, they ended up being used only as numbers. And there may have been a 28th, called "yod" (J) because of some grammatical anomalies, but all this is very esoteric - though there is good reason to believe that Marshall at least knew about those first three.
However, according to my 20th edition of Baird's Manual - yes that is OUR Baird! - there are several of the common 24 which could readily serve:
Epsilon - only 2 listed, and they are defunct
Eta - only 3 - all honorary/recognition
Mu - only 3 - 2 honorary, 1 defunct
Rho - only 4 - 3 honor, 1 defunct
Upsilon - NONE
There was an episode of an old sitcom which used "the Betas" (I think it was "Father Knows Best"). Also I think there was a movie some years back that had "frats" of various names - I do not recall it, though others have told me it was funny. I had to point out that our REAL life for almost 170 years has been both far better and far worse than almost anything one will ever see on TV or movies.... just check out the Civil War, the Betrayal by Michigan, the union with Alpha Sigma Chi (Baird again) the Toronto chapter fund... the examples are endless....
Then again, any fraternity which forgets its history might as well close.
--Dr. Thursday
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