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Sorority women typically do not drink while wearing their letters. You'll never seen a member of a historically Black Greek organization doing it either. But at some schools, fraternity men use and abuse alcohol regularly and proudly while wearing their letters. It bugs me.
When I was in school at Indiana, we didn't do it. It felt wrong to us. I distinctly remember sitting in Jeff Lewis' room one afternoon watching television and drinking a couple of beers. A brother joined us, and he was wearing a t-shirt from one of our events. Before he even picked up the beer bottle, he took his shirt off, turned it inside out and put it back on. Even in the privacy of our rooms, it was that automatic and absolute. It wasn't cool to drink with your letters on. If he had accidentally sipped the beer while wearing those letters, we would have expected an apology. No joke.
Some schools take it even further. The last time I visited Eastern Illinois University, they had just passed a Greek community-wide ban on smoking cigarettes in your letters. I don't know if they still have that rule, or if it's ever been enforced.
Some would argue that drinking and smoking are legal activities if the user is of age, so it should not be a problem to wear your letters while doing it. And, I suppose it's a valid point. It's never crossed my mind to protest my fraternity's alumni wearing regalia in the hotel bar while having drinks at convention, for example.
As I've gotten older and spent more time around groups other than my own, I've come to appreciate the way some groups protect the sanctity of their letters and their image. Perhaps it's purely symbolic and hollow, but I wish that my brothers would protect our letters the way my Kappa Alpha Psi friends protect theirs.
I still flinch when I see pictures like one one on this posting (from one of my fraternity's chapters in California). The guy in the picture didn't mean any harm, and I'm sure he's a wonderful, contributing member of my fraterity. But, I wonder if those brothers would think it was cool to get drunk and stupid wearing a picture of their mom, their sister, or Jesus on their shirt? Would that be cool?
This summer, I am planning to start the argument at my convention – should it be OK for brothers to wear letters while drinking and partying? Some chapters will surely fight for their right to wear their letters whenever and however they please.
When you respect something enough to keep it safe, it becomes more valuable to you. Even if the protection is symbolic, it makes an impression on your mind and heart. I'd like to see my brothers value their letters a lot more, and perhaps if we can get more brothers to feel the same way, I won't see any more pictures like this one published for the rest of the world to see.
