new to greek life. don't fully understand the concept of families.

[pacman529]

semester, which is when I joined. Before last semester, i was very anti Greek and stayed away from Greek life as much as possible. As such, I really don't understand or know about much of the traditions that go along with Greek life. I just got my little this semester.

Yesterday I bumped into one of my fellow founding fathers and he told me that we had been put in a family together. (Apparently our families had been formed at the last chapter meeting which I missd thanks to a math competition). He also said that we need to come up with a family name.

Right now all I understand about families is lineage, but other than that this concept is completely new to me. What else is there to it? What is your familiy's name?

Thanks!

[Kevin]

If this is something your organization does, you need to talk to other chapters in your fraternity, not strangers on the internet.

If this is going to just be a local thing, make it up as you go along and be responsible for inventing your own internal culture.

[Mevara]

My chapter had 'families', I don't know how common it is. We used it to form a smaller group of close knit members. We all had family letters that matched which each member got on initiation day.

I don't know how it started but it in the same family from your big and any other littles they had. If your big's big (grand-big) had more than one little than they were also included in your family. It was very similar to how real family lineage is.

The names were made years ago and included things like the big family, cute family, hawaiian girls. So names of the families can be as creative or simple as you wanted.

[pacman529]

Originally Posted by Kevin

If this is something your organization does, you need to talk to other chapters in your fraternity, not strangers on the internet.

If this is going to just be a local thing, make it up as you go along and be responsible for inventing your own internal culture.

I totally get what you're saying; I just wanted to get an overview of how this stuff works if it's something other fraternities and sororities do. obviously i'm going to talk to my brothers and family about it.

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by pacman529

I totally get what you're saying; I just wanted to get an overview of how this stuff works if it's something other fraternities and sororities do.

Some do, though different orgs may well do it differently.

From my experience, this seems to be a relatively recent thing. Back in the dark ages when I pledged, we had big brothers, but we didn't think in terms of things like families or family trees, grand-littles or grand-bigs or the like. I'd never heard of that until GreekChat.

[AOII Angel]

My chapter did families, but we never named them. I can count my family back 11 generations. It's pretty neat to now follow all of those women on FB and see how they turned out to be professional women with ties to AOII. I love it. I perpetuates the lifetime aspect of the organization. I don't understand the family name since over time that may or may not mean anything to the people in the family (imagine a name picked by people in the 70s being relevent to members now.) It's all up to what your chapter want to do, though.

[knight_shadow]

We have family trees. It's nothing more than the chain of big-little brothers (my big brother's big brother is in my family tree because I was chosen by his little. No fancy initiation or anything).

We jokingly have friendly rivalries between trees, but at the end of the day, we're all brothers.

If it's not a national thing, I agree with Kevin -- make stuff up as you go along.

[Senusret I]

My family in APO is the "Ashby Tree."

We trace our common fraternal ancestor to a brother with that last name. Although several of our trees have that name, some are named after actual trees, and some are named after hometowns they had in common.

You may want to name yours something that is related to or derived from a symbol of the fraternity. Check out this page http://www.phimudelta.org/?page=FoundersCreed and pick a word or several words. Maybe you don't want to be "The Justice Family" but maybe "The Justinians" sounds cool.

There are multiple branches on our tree, which helps make large trees smaller. Each branch has some sort of theme or subname.

It's all pretty fun as long as it doesn't become more important than the chapter itself.

[groovypq]

This is an interesting thread, because my chapter has recently been told by a visiting consultant that we need to phase out families because they cause drama and division in the chapter. Personally, I've never seen it that way - several of you mention connections to your alumni back through your family and that's what I've always seen.

[MrKSig]

We also use the "families" in our chapter. As others have said, it is just a family tree. I have my Big, and Grand Big, we also have "cousins" and "siblings" (if Grand Big had 2 littles, the other little is a 'cousin' and if my big had more than one little they were my 'sibling'). Since we are fairly new, I just started a tradition of giving my family line an animal mascot. Since everyone in my direct line has been an EC member and eventually GM/President, we are the "Royal Lineage" and have the mascot of a lion and symbol of the crown.

I'm trying to get the other families to do something similar. I think it would be fun and create an interesting inter-chapter competition to see which family stays on top (through participation, GPA, and philanthropy).

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by pacman529

I totally get what you're saying; I just wanted to get an overview of how this stuff works if it's something other fraternities and sororities do. obviously i'm going to talk to my brothers and family about it.

My only advice to you, coming from someone who had a hand in founding and guiding his chapter well after-the-fact, if you do start traditions like a big-little program, first, do it in a responsible way so that risk issues (hazing) are minimized. Don't just consider what you are doing right now, but what some idiot might infer is a good idea based upon what you're doing now (at least if you want your chapter to last more than a few years after you graduate).

Once you have established what the program is, i.e., set up specific expectations for big bros, think of them as being crucial to your membership retention as they can really be your first line of defense against attrition.

As I said before, you're a founder, you get to make the rules. You shouldn't be so concerned with what a bunch of strangers on the internet are doing. Do your own thing. If you don't do your own thing, you might as well have joined a fraternity which already existed.

[MST62]

Originally Posted by AOII Angel

I don't understand the family name since over time that may or may not mean anything to the people in the family (imagine a name picked by people in the 70s being relevent to members now.) It's all up to what your chapter want to do, though.

I totally agree with the 70s name choices - my chapter used to have terribly dated family names, but they were recently changed to names tied to our organization, to prevent this from happening in the future. All of our family names are now one of my organizations symbols, part of our crest, etc. I like it a lot better than being named 'The Goonies Family' or something, just because someone liked that movie.

[AOII Angel]

Originally Posted by MST62

I totally agree with the 70s name choices - my chapter used to have terribly dated family names, but they were recently changed to names tied to our organization, to prevent this from happening in the future. All of our family names are now one of my organizations symbols, part of our crest, etc. I like it a lot better than being named 'The Goonies Family' or something, just because someone liked that movie.

Hell yeah for the Goonies!

[CougADPi]

Originally Posted by MST62

I totally agree with the 70s name choices - my chapter used to have terribly dated family names, but they were recently changed to names tied to our organization, to prevent this from happening in the future. All of our family names are now one of my organizations symbols, part of our crest, etc. I like it a lot better than being named 'The Goonies Family' or something, just because someone liked that movie.

My family was the "Brown Haired Hussies". None of us knew where the name came from, but apparently the more recent members have changed it. I always thought it was funny.

[MST62]

Originally Posted by CougADPi

My family was the "Brown Haired Hussies". None of us knew where the name came from, but apparently the more recent members have changed it. I always thought it was funny.

HA! Our previous ones were pretty simple and boring, some people just got mad that they weren't related to our organization in any way, so the ladies a few classes ago changed them. If they had been as creative as that, I totally would have fought to keep the name!