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There is so much confusion on this. Here is an example.
My chapter had a tradition of not allowing new members to wear letters. It wasn't strictly enforced. If a NM went out and bought items with the sorority letters on it, we didn't confiscate it from her or anything. Well, maybe some people in the chapter would have wanted us to or said something to the NM but officially we didn't take any action on that. Basically, our tradition was that during the NM period, no sorority shirts with the letters would be made. We just used the spelled out "Pi Beta Phi" (again, doesn't make a whole ton of sense to me logically either, but whatever). So getting your first letter tshirt and your lavaliere from your big sister was a big deal in my chapter.
Somehow this came up when a consultant came through and she got tense and told us this was NOT Pi Phi policy. She said we could still do the informal traditions of only spelling out the letters, as long as the NM and initiated member tshirts were all the same (they were). So really the only change that came from her visit was the chapter got even less concerned about NMs buying lettered stuff on their own, which given Pi Phi policy was a good thing.
Then, my senior year, we got a new AAC Chair (head advisor). The Chair was new to advising. Let me say that she was GREAT and I loved having her around and we were lucky to get her. But, her chapter as an undergrad had had a VERY strict policy that NMs should not wear letters. OK, so one of the duties of the AAC Chair in Pi Phi is that they conduct NM interviews prior to initiation (I don't think that's giving away too much). During the interviews, a few of the NMs were wearing stitched letter tshirts. The advisor was discreet, but she came to the officers afterwards (I was president at this point) and confronted us about the NMs wearing letters, this was a violation of policy, etc. We had to explain to her that this was NOT a violation and in fact telling them they couldn't wear letters was a violation. Her first reaction was disbelief. Her second reaction, once we convinced her that we were right (it took a while) was "That's stupid." Which is an opinion she's entitled to. But it just demonstrates how much confusion and disagreement there can be even within one chapter about A) what policy is B) what the ideal policy should be.
Re: the comments about most NPC chapters allowing NMs to wear letters and not crests, I've never heard this before. Can anyone provide some evidence for this on a NPC-wide basis? In my view, I can't really see what the difference would be, from a "treating NMs differently is hazing" perspective, between letters and crests. Also, I don't really see NMs jumping at the opportunity to wear tshirts with their crests. Because most people on a college campus would not immediately recognize what the heck their crest even is. But... I'm willing to be convinced of this fact. I've never heard such a thing for Pi Phi.
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