Some time ago, 2 of my brothers told me they were in downtown Chicago and before they got onto a bus they spotted 2 random guys across the street wearing our national convention T-shirts with the *letters* Lambda Phi Epsilon on them. They were most likely not lambdas because they were African American and my bros didn't recognize them (I know of only probably five black brothers here in the midwest and none of them are in the Chicago or Evanston chapter).
My bros kinda just stood there shocked. They left a short time later when the bus came, and then told me about it. At first I wasn't very happy ("you didn't DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT?!"), but the more I thought about it, I realized that I wouldn't have known what to do either. They were most likely too stunned to think straight, and none of us were ever taught what to do in this situation.
Some weeks later, another group of my fellow lambdas spotted a mexican janitor lady in the cafeteria wearing our letters. Again they were at a total loss of what to do, and she was gone before they could even figure it out.
I pretty sure I know where they got them from, because our house was broken into in the winter, and in addition to every laptop and video game console we owned, a pile of our clothes including gear lying on the sofa was gone as well (I'm not accusing these guys for having stolen our stuff, but they most likely bought them or acquired them somehow from our burglars)
The real question is what do we do in these situations
? Before any of you accuse us of being too apathetic or passive, we were pretty ticked off, and typically wouldn't hesitate to deal with the person if he or she were a student. But random people are kinda different... especially since they most likely have no idea what those letters mean. What should we even demand from them? Tell them to take off the shirt? Tell them to return it to us? Or just educate them about the Greek system and that it is extremely disrespectful to wear our letters? I don't see how they would care at all, and if they paid good money for it there is no way they would return it just because some college kids told them to. And these are random people that we would not see again (regarding the janitor, none of us ever saw her before, and for some reason we never saw her later either. Though we may have tried talking to her if we did see her again) So then what? Should we beat them up, threaten them with legal action or something? (and I should point out that the two particular bros who were at downtown were pretty scrawny and physically unintimidating, so even that wouldn't work all the time
)
Or should we just let it go, and try not to let it bother us?
btw, sorry if this issue had been discussed before, as I couldn't find it. And I know it has some similarities to the thread about former members wearing letters, but this situation is kinda different. (besides deactivation is extremely rare for us, and the ones that do are smart enough not to cause further drama by continuing to wear letters)
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I messed up the thread title.. it should be "What to do if you spot a random guy who is definitely not a member of your org wearing your letters"
Also, I didn't really give enough evidence about the first two guys not being lambdas. Bros told me they were dirty and looked like bums, and were certainly not young enough to be college students or recent graduates.
Of course, if they were wearing backpacks and looked like students, then we'd still try to greet them even if they were African American and we didn't recognize them
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What to do if you spot a random guy wearing your letters?
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