Allowing our advisor to wear letters

[RCM2020]

I am on the executive board of a fraternity, and our faculty advisor is a woman. She has given her heart and soul into making us be the best fraternity on campus. She works non-stop for us, she cares for all of us individually, she attends our events and supports us, she guides us, etc. She is just amazing. She actually won an award from our HQ as National Volunteer of the Year.

The executive board would like to propose to the rest of the undergraduate chapter that we allow her to wear fraternity apparel that includes letters. We do not know what to call it (i.e. she is not a girlfriend or a potential Sweetheart so it is not really called lavaliering her), but that is regardless. We have investigated our national policies and NIC policies, and there is nothing saying we cannot allow her to wear letters. We already lavaliere girlfriends and honor Sweethearts who can all wear letters, so we do not see any national conundrum occurring. However, we are worried about getting the rest of the chapter's support. Our seniors and other brothers feel that she should be separated from the undergraduate chapter; there needs to be some boundaries. While we understand this as an executive board, this would not mean she can come to chapter meetings, vote, run for an executive position, etc. This is just an honorary honor and not given to just anyone. The biggest issue is wearing letters essentially. The seniors realize how wonderful she is, but they are always pissy about giving anyone letters. Declaring a Sweetheart was a rough enough challenge. We also struggle because we have one executive member who is totally against this, but to be honest, I feel he is being influenced from senior's opinions. I love him and he is my brother, but he often does not make his own opinion.

How can we really express to the rest of the undergraduate members how much we want this to happen, as well as convince the one member on our e-board to support us? It is definitely not unheard of; a chapter nearby of our same affiliation allows their advisor to wear letters, and this has been a practice for years. Or if you have any oppositions for this practice, we would like to hear those as well. Our advisor is amazing as I have explained, and frankly if she were an undergraduate student, she would have been our Sweetheart as some point. When she was in college, her best friends were SigEps (at our same university), and show she is our advisors years later with a Master’s Degree. She truly is a SigEp Girl, but convincing the chapter is always a challenge to try something new.

EDIT: I also want to add that we all voted to allow her to wear our recruitment t-shirt, which had our letters on it, so it kind of has already happened. The officer against the issue also complained that he never sees her wearing it so she would not appreciate the privileged. However, she is a professional employee, and wearing a recruitment t-shirt is not always stylish, and honestly our rush t-shirt this year was ugly.