What to do if you spot a random guy wearing your letters?

[nwu43]

Originally Posted by MysticCat

Most GLOs have similar rules about non-members wearing letters -- or at least about members allowing non-members to wear letters.

I guess what troubles me is the idea that we may be elevating form over substance if we make any kind of deal out of it when see someone clearly not a member but also clearly down on their luck wearing our letters.

The question I would have to ask myself (and I'm only speaking for myself, not ragging on anyone else) is this: If I make a deal out of the female janitor wearing "my" letters, am I living by the values and principles that those letters stand for? I obviously can't answer for anyone else and I'm not trying to, but I think I would have to say that if I did anything other than walk on, I would be disrespecting my letters much more than she is, because I know what they stand for.

(Ahghg im always poor on word choice, I've been having this trouble in writing papers since 7th grade)

When I made this thread I was really just aiming to ask for thoughts about non-members in general wearing letters and who don't have any idea what they mean. I didn't realize it sounded like we were thinking of "taking back clothes" from unfortunate people!! I know what you're saying, and your totally right, although I don't think the lady should be considered "down on her luck" purely because she's a janitor. I totally misused the word bum to describe the two guys downtown. When my bros described them, they were more just sayin that they looked like loafers who didn't do anything all day, like old delinquents or something.. they could have been homeless I guess, but they were described to me in such a way more to show that they were very "uncollege student like" so that there was no way that they could be lambdas. They weren't really described as sad helpless people.


So by the way in which they told me the details, the image of poor hobos never crossed my mind... although maybe they could have been homeless (and if that were true, I feel really bad). But seriously if we saw people who were clearly homeless and down on their luck wearing our letters, honestly we would feel bad for them like any human beings and we wouldn't really care that much about them wearing our clothes. Aghgh now I understand why you said we should feel lucky to afford clothes and people were talking about charity. I'm slow

I sure hope I didn't singlehandedly ruin our reputation by making people think we take clothes from the poor and helpless...

[nwu43]

At the same time, even if they weren't "helpless" in appearance, I guess we should have put more thought into the fact that they were still poorer and may have really needed the clothes. (honestly, I think my brothers just saw the janitor and the two guys as just normal people)

Again, these events were unprecedented, and the idea of being protective about our letters was more in the context of the narrow college world immediately surrounding us (we were concerned about actual college students who knew what the letters meant), and so we just didn't even know how to think about the situation clearly when we suddenly saw people outside our campus or who were not really part of college life wearing our gear.
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In any case, it turns out from what people are saying that regardless if someone wearing your letters is poor or not, there's not much one can do. oh well.