OK, as far as colors--I have noticed that NPHC greeks traditionally remain with their org's colors (duh..if you read any of the above messages). While it is mostly the NPC greeks that do not stick with their org's colors. A couple reason's: My sorority, we have letters in Cafe Au Lait and Old Blue ( our official colors), letters is out chapters colors, letters for our "families"(line of bigs and littles) to differentiate from the other families. Then colors that we pick to designate our likes and dislikes from our school mascot (alot of the girls have these) to some of the most random patterns you would ever guess, like to stay trendy I have seen girls get animal print letters recently. However I have noticed this to be a purely girl thing. Most guys I see in there letters remain to a plain background and plain letters , now I don't know their colors so they may differentiate the colors from there org's official one's but I'm not sure. Anyway's it is a very basic t-shirt most of the time. As far as girls (even independants) wearing fraternity letters. anyone can wear a shirt that has letters on it, as long as they are the non-embroderied greek letters, for example you can waer the shirt that says XYZ Fall Rush 2000, and the fraternitys even distribute their rush shirts to us , so we can "sell" them around campus. In order to wear the official letters, to the best of my knowledge, you must be "pinned" (lavilailered)(spelling?) from a member of the org. And I may be wrong but from what I understand (someone please correct me if I'm wrong)that this is a very big deal in fraternity's, not taken lightly because you are giving your letters to some girl, and our saying you value her over your brothers(or on par with your brothers or something?), that it is equivalent with being engaged to be engaged, and that the brother in question gets alot of ribbing from the other brothers.