When I left my chapter we still had the tradition of standing when alumnae walked into the room and I always thought it was a really nice show of respect, but since graduating I haven't found another chapter where they still do that.
I also miss the rush skits, sneaking into fraternity houses to steal their composites and scavenger hunts (which weren't allowed when I was a member but we did them anyway.) We also had a really fun tradition in my chapter where the seniors would take the juniors out at the end of the year for a sort of "senior initiation" night. The senior initiation "ritual" was probably the best kept secret in our chapter because no one wanted to spoil it for the younger classes, but it was always a ton of fun.
The year after I graduated, my sisters had a chapter consultant come in who basically threw out all of our chapter traditions because they were "hazing." We used to have a tradition for big sis revealing where the big sis would buy two sets of matching pajamas, one for herself, one for her little and the little would have to search the house to find her new big. Apparently that was too much like a scavenger hunt. My friend was the pledge mom that term and came up with a number of alternate ideas that were all rejected by the CC so the only thing they were allowed to do was a sort of candle passing.
The CC also banned study table hours because apparently it was hazing that we had a system where the number of hours you had to do was determined by your previous term's grades instead of making everyone do the same number of hours (really you'd think it'd make sense to have the girl with a 2.2 do more hours than the one with a 4.0 but apparently not...
)
And we had a system of priority points that determined room assignments and parking, based on involvement in the chapter, campus activities and grades. If you had enough points, you could use them for something we called "priviledged absences" where you could opt out of informal chapter meetings and minor events, which we thought was a fabulous reward for people who had put a lot of time and effort into the chapter. Apparently that wasn't allowed either.
I'm not bitter, not at all...
Linear Mode
