[BigRedBeta]

On one hand, I completely understand what your saying and why you feel the way you do. On the other, you've said some things which I believe are much more important and have little to do with joining the national...

Let me tell you a story that I think best illustrates my opinion.

The summer after my freshman year, I attended the Beta Theta Pi's annual General Convention. It was fun, exciting, etc, getting to meet Beta's from all over the country, learn more about my fraternity and so on. At the time, one of the frequent presentations at Beta's Convention was a segment called "Beta 101" in which the historian of our General Fraternity would discuss the links in ritual between Beta and many of the other fraternities and sororities. This involved the open discussion of other organizations secrets and rituals, what their letters, passwords, handshakes and "closed" mottos were. At the time, being a fairly new initiate I was pretty excited to learn the secrets of other organizations. Learning Beta's secrets had been an exciting thing and during my time on campus I had become curious about what other organizations meant. So I had definitely gone to this presentation excited.

I went to the presentation, heard the secrets of a lot of organizations (to those concerned, this presentation is no longer performed because many Beta's expressed feeling uncomfortable that this discussion was taking place at all, and that it showed a lack of respect to other orgs), and when the presentation was over...I left feeling pretty indifferent. It was like a big "so what" moment for me. After reflecting on it, I realized that the reason my letters meant so much to me had nothing to do the symbolism on my badge or what the actual letters meant or that I could give someone a handshake. Those things while fun, and nice to have really didn't hold any meaning in and of themselves. What did matter, and why my letters mean (and continue to mean so much to me) are because of the friendships and the memories that Beta has provided for me. Yes, the principles of Beta matter for me in that they crystallized what I had always known about myself in a way that was far more poetic than anything I could have ever come up with on my own. But beyond that, the only meaning really comes from the relationships that sprung out of my membership. It took finding out other organizations' secrets for me to realize that, but it was an important lesson. I heard that XYZ meant this and ABC's handshake was this and my lasting response was "oh...that's nice, what am I going to do with that information".

From some of the things you said, I think deep down you do really value those relationships, and those aren't going to go away simply because the letters on your chest change. It certainly may difficult to see the details altered, and I can understand the frustration of having this change be the dominant topic of most conversations, but I think that simply changing the outward symbols of your friendships shouldn't be enough to renounce those even if you're against the momentum of events.

That's my take on it. Feel free to disagree.