Letters

[33girl]

Originally posted by wptw
But I think there’s a larger agenda at work here.

This doesn’t seem to be an issue of local or chapter level preference. Most groups seem to have clear national policies one way or another. What really concerns me is this large scale campaign to eliminate all barriers between the initiated and the non-initiated. National HQs are terrified of anything that remotely resembles hazing or elitism. First we eliminate pledge programs and start calling people new members and rewrite our rituals to reflect this new nomenclature. Then we let them wear the letters. Then we call them brother and sister from day one. Then we stop requiring them to wear a pledge pin. Then we give them every privilege of membership accorded to fully initiated members. I wonder how long it will be before we’re reduced to the movie portrayal of greek inductions where the guys are herded in off the street, given a brief speech by candlelight and then thrown a letter jersey with a hearty “welcome to the frat!”

This quote scares the bejeezus out of me: “It is my opinion b/c that is the way I was treated”. This of course has been the mantra of true hazers for decades, but it’s equally frightening when used as a justification for inaction when the world is trying to dumb down the essence of what our organizations are.

wptw

I completely agree with this. Now I hope I don't get the crap flamed out of me, and I hope I can put this correctly. This might have been my school only, so if I'm full of crap let me know.

It seems like a much bigger deal is made of "the icing" these days - when you can and cannot wear letters, when you can and cannot wear the badge etc, how you can behave when wearing them, than there used to be. I think this is because of the reasons wptw stated - that there are so few distinctions between pledges (who, after all, you have known for maybe 5 hours when you bid them) and initiated members that there has to be SOMETHING to keep the two separate.

To put it simply: I never thought any pledges wearing letters were "skating" or "handed" their letters because I knew that they were working for them, just as I did. I don't mean getting the crap beat out of them, I mean I knew that they had pledge programs where they were learning their national history/mottoes/policies, their local history, they were doing philanthropy, they were being integrated into the campus Greek community, and they were getting to know their sisters/brothers. I'm not saying I know what was in anyone else's program, but that we all had to do things like get sigs from other Greeks. The only group I can think of that didn't had (shall we say) other constraints put on them that I personally found much more onerous than things like getting sigs from cute boys.

Oh, and someone used the nun analogy, as in when she becomes a postulant she is a nun. Well all I can say is if that was true, Maria would have been in mucho trouble for hanging out in the gazebo sucking face with Captain Von Trapp.