[33girl]

We could wear anything but the crest. We didn't make any differentiation between stitched letters, screenprints, whatever. But your big bought you a crest sweatshirt for initiation. I think this practice went by the wayside when the Greek store stopped having crest iron-ons and the only crests available were the super expensive ones you got through ASA national. My guess is that's when all the stitched/iron-on stuff came into play.

Even if your national policy is that the women can wear anything before initiation, I think it's important to not force them to just to show you're not hazing, because that's hazing too. (confusing sentence) That is, if none of the other sororities on campus let their members wear letters for whatever reason and you're the only ones who do, the pledges might not want to feel "set apart" from the rest of the campus. It's their choice whether they WANT to wear letters - if they decide they don't want to (without hearing "we all chose to wait" or something similar) that should be honored.

And no, if the other chapters beat their pledges to a bloody pulp every night I don't think you should too.