Family Traditions??-Suggestions Welcome

[Laur5482]

Hey Delta Z's!
I was wondering if anyone of you had any Ideas for any family traditions...I am the Littlest Epsilon, and I want to have a new family tradition for when I take a little. Also, a nickname for the Epsilons! That would be great!

DZ Love and Mine,
Lauren

[dzrose93]

One thing you can do is have two identical letter jerseys made: one for your little sister and one for yourself. Have your nicknames placed on the back.

Hi!
Well, waaay back when I was the first big of my tree (I was a charter member of my chapter) I took my first set of letters and had my name embroidered on the sleeve (it was a durable champion sweatshirt) and then my little's name. She was SUPPOSED to keep doing it and passing it along, but I found out about a year ago that she just kept it and it's in her closet. Needless to say I was disappointed, but it didn't matter anyway as my chapter killed all of our family trees but about 3 of them when there was a mass exodus to go local.

The chapter has been rebuilding over the past year, and are doing great, but for some reason won't "adopt" the old trees. Something about wanting to start from scratch. Whatever Gee, can you telll I a tad bitter about that whole thing? LOL!

I think something to pass on is a great idea, as long as it's made clear that it is to be passed on, not kept

Tracy

[AchtungBaby80]

I love imadeltaz's sweatshirt idea! I wish I had started that with my little, but unfortunately we aren't close (I'm a co-big with another girl). It's sort of like passing down shirts and stuff...I've heard of other chapters doing that.

Maybe, if people are wanting to keep the shirts instead of handing them down, each subsequent big might give her little a shirt of her very own with all the names down the sleeve...just a thought. It would probably be expensive, but that way she could keep it forever and maybe add names to it herself as the tree grew.

By the way, why did they kill all your trees?? That sounds slightly unsisterly.

Hi Achtung
Well, techincally they weren't killed, the just kind of died. We had a bad situation where a ringleader decided that Delta Zeta wasn't "living up" to what they wanted "their" sorority to be, and IMHO dragged the other girls down with her. Basically they thought the alcohol policy was too strict, the grades point average they were too keep was unrealistic, the felt that their sisterhood events would be more productive if they could "haze" (they thought making the pledges do things they didn't want to would bring them closer together! ), etc., etc. That is what I got out of the letter that they sent to us as their reasons for leaving DZ. It totally sucked. But, that's the past. Like I said before, I think maybe 3 trees survived the massacre The rest of us that have since graduated would love to have "adopted littles" to share our love (and DZ stuff with!), but as the new chapter evolved and started from scratch basically, they decided that they wanted a clean slate everywhere. Sure. Fine. Whatever. I think it's kind of saying that all the hard work we did as a colony meant nothing to them, but it's not up to me. I have long graduated and all I can do is hope that they are having fun

[FuzzieAlum]

That's a terrible situation, but family trees are going to die off anyway. My chapter was young, so my family was two sets of twins; only one had a little, that girl had a little (me), and I had two littles, but neither of them did. So our family died. And the older chapters on campus, like my then-boyfriend's chapter, didn't even bother with families. They had a giant family tree hanging in the hallway, and they could all trace their "ancestry" back to one brother.

No matter how many trees you start off with, at some point someone won't get a little and that's another tree gone!

(BTW, sounds like those girls who left were nuts. They wanted LOWER standards and MORE hazing???)

Good point. Someone once told me that our trees were not like ivy. They don't do grow and grow and grow. On trees, branches get trimmed, and fall off and die all the time. Sometimes they even get cut down completey.

About the situation, I came from a small school. After I graduated most of the greek life went local with the exception of about 5. Off campus greeks hazed more because no one was watching them. The people that pledged them I guess didn't "get" that you didn't have to be hazed for people to like you. I think the girls saw going local as a chance to get HQ and their CCD of their backs. There is no alumnae support in the small college town, so they were never really used to having advisors or good examples. Oh well.

[AchtungBaby80]

That's a crummy situation...but I still think you should have been allowed to keep your families and adopt new littles--you all stayed, right? So you deserve it. What harm would that have done? I can't believe the reasons those members left...but I guess in the end, it's better because they can conduct themselves as they want and not make DZs look bad. Oh, well.

[dzsaigirl]

We are very into family trees in my chapter and my family is called the Corliones. (Like the Godfather mob family). We have family dinners after meetings, go do things as a "family". It is very fun. We are the biggest family. It is always fun to see which family in the chapter dominates exec. Usually the one that is biggest naturally dominates. Sometimes, we will make a little Corlione paddle for a little, we always take our own pics at formal. One thing I would suggest is to keep a list of family members so that you can always trace the tree back really far!

[DeltaBetaBaby]

Some families in my chapter have adopted "themes." For example, one family give a lot of Sesame Street stuff, and my family gives a lot of Powerpuff Girl stuff. Also, do you have pledge dads? I don't know if you are allowed to have official pledge dads, but it is pretty cool to find a good guy friend to give your little his letters. We also have a pledge family shot that we do when we are all out together (3 wise men: jim, jack and jose). Each family has an ornament on the house Christmas tree, and we add new names to it each year (even though my family is half Jewish). Also, get a family "theme song" that you all have to run and find each other when you hear it playing in the bar.

[lilDZCarol]

my big kinda fell off her family tree since her big sister disaffiliated and now she is trying to build a tree with taking me as her first little. We are going to get matching letters as our family letters which the family trees have in my chapter. We only have two main trees, the Princess family tree and the Crackhead family tree. I fell off the crackhead one so needless to say, that is a positive thing. We also have big brothers at my school, all the sororities do and the fraternities have big sisters also. Its funny cause it makes the family trees a little more interesting that way. Not everyone has big brothers in my chapter but it is something that most of my sisters want to have. It gets us out to the fraternities more often and its always great when you are talking to your big brother's brothers and the reactions they have when you tell them who your big is. It also is interesting who you make related to who then. Both my big sister and myself have big brothers in AXP and they do not like the fact that they are related to one another. Oh well, that was all my doing! The whole big brother thing is kinda interesting tho cause the traditional reason for the brothers to have little sisters was for sexual favors which has definately died down at my school but there are still a couple brothers in a couple of the chapters on my campus that believe that is the reason to still have a little sister.

Carol
Epsilon Zeta Chapter
Drexel University

[DawnDZ]

I am in one of the surviving Trees from Tracy's chapter. While it is crummy that we lost alot of traditions and our trees, we are trying to regain alot of those traditions lost. One that my tree has kept is a the family tree photo album. I am in the princess tree. We have two photo albums that began with our charter members and we add to and pass down throughout the tree. Another idea is to buy specific fabric (get alot of it) and make family tree letters and pass the fabric down with the shirt.

[lilDZCarol]

As I said before we are trying to start a new tree with myself, my big, and my new co-lil. We picked out new family tree letters and they are awesome!! Since we lost our breaks going down 95 on the way to the greek store in Deleware and finally got there in a different car hours later we got family tree letters that have cars on them, just so we never forget that day and what we went thru to start our tree.