[24189] in APO-L
Re: [APO-L] Use of old Rituals.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Buddha Buck)
Thu Mar 4 17:30:37 2004
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 17:30:29 -0500
Reply-To: Buddha Buck <bmbuck@14850.com>
From: Buddha Buck <bmbuck@14850.com>
To: APO-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
In-Reply-To: <03E8CF5A1005AD4A9CB7419A1327DEE8012CA634@ngb-66c05-xch02.ngb.army.mil>
Finder, Randolph J Mr NGB-ARNG wrote:
> I am interested in opinions on the use of rituals prior to the current
> ritual for the pledging and brotherhood ceremonies. As a fraternity we do
> often do so. When chapters take pledges in the Spring semester after
> convention, most simply use the pledge ritual from previous to convention in
> their ritual books.
>
> While I think it would be *VERY* cool to read the initiation ritual that my
> chapter founders had in 1929, I don't think it would be appropriate to use
> it in place of our current brotherhood ritual to induct pledges. How far
> back do people feel comfortable going?
When I was a delegate at the National Convention, I was given a copy of
the Ritual Book in my delegate packet, and I annotated it with the
changes while I was on the Convention floor as changes were being made,
with the intent that the updates would be available to my chapter as
soon as I got back to the chapter. I had seen similarly notated old
ritual-books at my chapter before.
Not every chapter does that, but I'm sure there are plenty of similarly
"corrected" pledge books around. Our chapter kept them around in part
because getting new pledge books was somewhat of a pain -- I think I
heard from our Pledgemaster at one point that they could only be ordered
in sets of 11, or some similar weirdness.
I do think it would be a good idea to restructure the ritual book so
that things which are truely secret are identified as separate from
things which are not. When I was active I definitely saw things in the
Ritual Book which were intended to be used in situations when not
everyone present is a Brother -- things like the ritual used to open
each meeting. There is nothing to indicate that that sort of thing is
any different than the content of the Brotherhood Initiation ritual.
>
>
> Randy Finder
> randolph.finder@ngb.army.mil
