new to greek life. don't fully understand the concept of families.

[Kevin]

If this is something your organization does, you need to talk to other chapters in your fraternity, not strangers on the internet.

If this is going to just be a local thing, make it up as you go along and be responsible for inventing your own internal culture.

[pacman529]

Originally Posted by Kevin

If this is something your organization does, you need to talk to other chapters in your fraternity, not strangers on the internet.

If this is going to just be a local thing, make it up as you go along and be responsible for inventing your own internal culture.

I totally get what you're saying; I just wanted to get an overview of how this stuff works if it's something other fraternities and sororities do. obviously i'm going to talk to my brothers and family about it.

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by pacman529

I totally get what you're saying; I just wanted to get an overview of how this stuff works if it's something other fraternities and sororities do.

Some do, though different orgs may well do it differently.

From my experience, this seems to be a relatively recent thing. Back in the dark ages when I pledged, we had big brothers, but we didn't think in terms of things like families or family trees, grand-littles or grand-bigs or the like. I'd never heard of that until GreekChat.

[AOII Angel]

My chapter did families, but we never named them. I can count my family back 11 generations. It's pretty neat to now follow all of those women on FB and see how they turned out to be professional women with ties to AOII. I love it. I perpetuates the lifetime aspect of the organization. I don't understand the family name since over time that may or may not mean anything to the people in the family (imagine a name picked by people in the 70s being relevent to members now.) It's all up to what your chapter want to do, though.

[MST62]

Originally Posted by AOII Angel

I don't understand the family name since over time that may or may not mean anything to the people in the family (imagine a name picked by people in the 70s being relevent to members now.) It's all up to what your chapter want to do, though.

I totally agree with the 70s name choices - my chapter used to have terribly dated family names, but they were recently changed to names tied to our organization, to prevent this from happening in the future. All of our family names are now one of my organizations symbols, part of our crest, etc. I like it a lot better than being named 'The Goonies Family' or something, just because someone liked that movie.

[AOII Angel]

Originally Posted by MST62

I totally agree with the 70s name choices - my chapter used to have terribly dated family names, but they were recently changed to names tied to our organization, to prevent this from happening in the future. All of our family names are now one of my organizations symbols, part of our crest, etc. I like it a lot better than being named 'The Goonies Family' or something, just because someone liked that movie.

Hell yeah for the Goonies!

[CougADPi]

Originally Posted by MST62

I totally agree with the 70s name choices - my chapter used to have terribly dated family names, but they were recently changed to names tied to our organization, to prevent this from happening in the future. All of our family names are now one of my organizations symbols, part of our crest, etc. I like it a lot better than being named 'The Goonies Family' or something, just because someone liked that movie.

My family was the "Brown Haired Hussies". None of us knew where the name came from, but apparently the more recent members have changed it. I always thought it was funny.

[MST62]

Originally Posted by CougADPi

My family was the "Brown Haired Hussies". None of us knew where the name came from, but apparently the more recent members have changed it. I always thought it was funny.

HA! Our previous ones were pretty simple and boring, some people just got mad that they weren't related to our organization in any way, so the ladies a few classes ago changed them. If they had been as creative as that, I totally would have fought to keep the name!

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by pacman529

I totally get what you're saying; I just wanted to get an overview of how this stuff works if it's something other fraternities and sororities do. obviously i'm going to talk to my brothers and family about it.

My only advice to you, coming from someone who had a hand in founding and guiding his chapter well after-the-fact, if you do start traditions like a big-little program, first, do it in a responsible way so that risk issues (hazing) are minimized. Don't just consider what you are doing right now, but what some idiot might infer is a good idea based upon what you're doing now (at least if you want your chapter to last more than a few years after you graduate).

Once you have established what the program is, i.e., set up specific expectations for big bros, think of them as being crucial to your membership retention as they can really be your first line of defense against attrition.

As I said before, you're a founder, you get to make the rules. You shouldn't be so concerned with what a bunch of strangers on the internet are doing. Do your own thing. If you don't do your own thing, you might as well have joined a fraternity which already existed.