[SWTXBelle]

Originally Posted by pbear19

That's exactly the point I was trying to make in my post, why we never used the 'new member' terminology when the word 'pledge' was dropped. In a way they were still potential new members, even though they had been given a bid. Potential members, prospective members, aspiring members, etc. But not members, and therefore not 'new' members.

ETA - in our case, after we stopped calling them pledges, we called them Taus.

You might want to specify ( again - I know you did in your original post) that you are not referring to Gamma Phi Beta, which does indeed refer to what were "pledges" as "new members"(www.gammaphibeta.org) , but to Tau Lamda.