Sig Ep Article

[MysticCat]

I was interested in this statement: "At Missouri, four of the 28 traditional Greek fraternities have eliminated pledging. The change isn't new on campus — Lambda Chi Alpha took that step nationally more than three decades ago." I'm really not trying to pick a fight here or anything, but is this really an accurate statement?

I know that Lambda Chi was one of the first if not the first fraternity to abandon use of the word "pledge" in favor of a different term. (In Lambda Chi's case, the different term is "associate member.") And, of course, many fraternities have tried to refocus or change the way that the period between bidding/pledging and initiation is done.

But to say that fraternities have "eliminated pledging" says to me that those fraternities (1) have eliminated any distinction between those who have been initiated and those who haven't, and (2) have eliminated any kind of education/acclimation program prior to full initiation.

Many fraternities have changed how they do pledging and have changed the terms and practices associated with it, but I don't know of any fraternity that I would say has "eliminated pledging" except for Sigma Phi Epsilon, and then only in its Balanced Man chapters. Are there others?