My Chapter is Clueless! Help!

[navane]

Originally Posted by 33girl

It really sounds like you're making a mountain out of a molehill, quite frankly.

Many chapters only hold initiation and other pledge class related ceremonies once a year, and if the majority of the membership is new (which happens if there's a big graduating class) they don't know it by heart and it's going to be a bit of a cluster until there are people who go through it several times. It's not automatically going to be a perfectly choreographed Broadway number.

This is what I was thinking.

OP, if you're a new member of a new chapter, the women initiating you will likely have volunteered to conduct the ritual on your behalf and those women may not have even known each other before the installation.

You'll understand later that ritual is something that needs to be practiced; but, it's not always easy to get lots of practice in. Let's not forget that the sisters conducting ritual likely aren't oscar winning actresses, they're just people. People are human...they make mistakes. You'll find out when it's your turn.

.....Kelly

[IowaMullet]

This is an important issue. Ritual is the conduit for new members to fully enter the organization. When ritual is performed without the greatest care and respect, it can diminish the new member's perspective of the sorority.

"I did all that for this?"

In other words: practice, practice, practice.

[KSUViolet06]

Originally Posted by IowaMullet

This is an important issue. Ritual is the conduit for new members to fully enter the organization. When ritual is performed without the greatest care and respect, it can diminish the new member's perspective of the sorority.

"I did all that for this?"

In other words: practice, practice, practice.

Something to think about, making mistakes and such during ritual doesn't always mean that people don't care about or respect it.

Sometimes people get rusty, and I'll agree though that running through it isimportant.

[amanda6035]

Originally Posted by navane

Let's not forget that the sisters conducting ritual likely aren't oscar winning actresses, they're just people. People are human...they make mistakes. You'll find out when it's your turn.

I'll never forget the first initiation my chapter had after I graduated. My grandlittle was reading an important part of the ceremony (first time she'd had a speaking part) and realized that she hadn't asked for the pronuciation of a couple of the words. Those words got butchered to hades, and it was all I could do to not bust out laughing in the back of the room with the chapter advisor. After all was said and done, she was like "Okay, somebody tell me how those words are REALLY supposed to be pronounced????" We had a good laugh over it. It was a great sisterhood kind of moment, in my opinion.

[AGDee]

I've been working with chapters for a long time and it's pretty common for them to do some things wrong. SO much of ritual isn't written anywhere so the only way to know for sure that you're doing it right is by having someone who knows how it is supposed to be done to teach you. With a new chapter, if you don't reach out to consultants or higher level volunteers with the sorority, there may not be anybody who knows how to do it properly. Often the alumnae working with a new chapter haven't done it/seen it themselves in years. Asking a regional officer for help with this is not a bad thing. As a regional volunteer, I would gladly attend some rehearsals to help a chapter do it right!

One of the biggest comments we see on post Convention reports is "It was great to see Initiation how it is supposed to be done!"

I would NEVER slap a chapter on the wrist for asking for help with something like this. I'd much rather get the phone call "We need help making sure we're getting ritual right!" than the "So and so is dating sally's ex-boyfriend and it's causing trouble in the chapter"