Coming out Greek

[LadyLight]

Ok, I'm talking about letting ppl know you're Greek (not gay or Greek and gay). I've only told a few ppl I've become Greek and I know my mom and friends back home are totally unsupportive of the Greek system.
Does anybody have stories about how they told parents or unsupportive friends they went Greek? What's the best way to do I do it?

[SAEalumnus]

My parents were never anti-Greek, but weren't exactly thoroughly supportive of the idea at first either. I let them read through our pledge manual (it's a public book anyway) to satisfy themselves of what the organization was about and that seemed to work. Later as I held various offices and attended various leadership schools, they began to see the additional value besides just the social aspect.

[REE1993]

When I was an undergrad, my family never paid much attention to it, except when I was overloading on activities and commitments and I wasn't feeling well (I have Cystic Fibrosis).

Ten+ years later, being active in my alum chapter (I moved back to my home state last summer), my older sister and mom think that the work I do and connections I have are great. They thought it was cool that I was in our quarterly newsletter.

Gamma Sig is an important part of my life, but it never defined me. So it was never an issue to my family. In fact, outside of my mom and blood sisters, it doesn't register on anyone's radar, and I wear para every so often.

This makes me think of when I told my dad I was joining a sorority. The coversation went something like this:
"So, are you going to live there?"
"Where, Dad?"
"At the sorority."
"Dad, a sorority isn't a place!"

[SmartBlondeGPhB]

I don't even remember how I first told my parents, I'm guessing my dad was there when I signed up since he flew to St Louis to move me in. But then, my parents have always been teh type to just let me do whatever.

And considering I have pictures of myself in letters at various conventions, my affiliation is definitely not a secret and definitely not something I need to "tell" people. That and my favorite football team are pretty obvious.

[fantASTic]

My older sister [biological] is Greek as well at a different school, so my parents weren't at all upset about it. Then again, they let us make our own choices for the most part. One thing that we do that helps parents understand the system more, though, is Man's Weekend in the fall and Women's Weekend in the winter. You invite one or two people to it [men to man's weekend, women to Women's] and we do activities or volunteer or something and then we do a ritual that they participate in, so that they can see what it's REALLY about. THe ritual is made specially to explain the sorority to them. It works really well.

[DSTCHAOS]

I only know one person who struggled to "come out" as a member of a GLO. This person's parents were opposed to Greekdom for religious reasons.

Other than that, the people I know don't require a "coming out" other than the coming out ceremonies that many organizations hold.