Reference Letter For Fraternity Membership: Fill & Download for Free

This one has a lot of backstory. Let's cover a few facts:1. Phi Gamma Delta fraternity is founded in 18482. Captain James Cook happens upon Fiji in 1774, and again later in 1789.That is not to say that James Cook "discovered" Fiji, but rather sets the timeline of when he was there. Now, when Captain Cook said "Gosh, what is this place called?", he misheard the locals. He asked the Tongans what islands surrounded their's, and they responded "Viti", probably referring to "Viti Levu", the biggest neighboring island. James Cook anglicized "Viti" to "Fiji".The context of why Phi Gamma Delta members refer to themselves and their organization as "FIJI" is actually super admirable. They consider the letters which represent the name of their organization, ("phi", "gamma", and "delta" in the Greek alphabet) to be sacred letters, and that these letters should never be used except on official fraternity documents and items. T-shirts? Shoes? Underwear? Those are all forbidden to carry the letters phi, gamma, and delta.The letters can only be displayed on:the membership badgememorials (graves) of deceased brothersthe fraternity's official flagthe fraternity's official sealon a property markeron a college/class ringon the official certificate of membershipIn every other situation, the letters phi, gamma, and delta cannot be displayed. Thus, the brothers of the fraternity began to use a shorthand to refer to their fraternity: "Phi Gamma", the first two letters of the fraternity's name. Now, ask any old-school physics professor how to pronounce the Greek letter "phi" and they will tell you that it rhymes with the letter "V", not the letter "I". Most people typically pronounce it as the latter, but some organizations (such as the sorority Alpha Phi (pronounced Alpha Fee)) use the former. As is the case with Phi Gamma Delta, they pronounce the shorthand as "Fee Gee" referring to the Phi and the Gamma, shortened to abbreviations.Hilariously enough, "Fee Gee" has already been turned into a word by our dear friend James Cook: "Fiji". A nonsense word that has nothing to do with the actual Pacific Islanders, in whose language the name is, again, "Viti". In their own language, people of Fiji refer to themselves as "Kaiviti" - again we see Viti, not Fiji.So, to recap:members of Phi Gamma Delta are super-respectful and don't frivolously use their letters everywhereinstead, they use a shorthand pronounced "Fee Gee"previously, a British explorer visited the area around the island of Viti Levu and thought that the area was called "Fiji" because he misheard the localsbecause "Fiji" became an official part of the English language to refer to that island, its people, and its culture/language, "Fiji" became an easy way to spell the phrase "Phi G", and thus the fraternity Phi Gamma Delta began to transliterate "Phi G" as "Fiji" because "Fiji" and "Phi G" sound the same.And lastly, college students fucking love puns. You asked why they continue to host Pacific Islander parties? It's because it's the perfect marketing tool to make their social event popular with other students. Everyone know's that those Phi Gamma Delta guys call their organization FIJI, so it's not surprising that they host parties where the setting is Fiji!The existence of the parties is not inherently offensive. If it was, be sure to also ban all Hawaiian luaus not hosted on any of the islands of Hawaii. If members engage in racist or otherwise offensive acts (such as painting themselves with dark paint in order to look more like a Pacific Islander) then YES, that would be extremely offensive. But the existence of such body paint is not necessarily racist. For example, when I was in school we did a production of West Side Story, which is basically a retelling of Romeo & Juliet during a race war. One of our lead Shark Girls (who are supposed to be Puerto Rican) was extremely white, but a very talented actress and singer. Solution? Dark body paint, and it wasn't racist to do this.Likewise, to host Hawaiian- and Islander- themed parties when your name happens to be pronounced exactly like one such Pacific Island is just a tongue-in-cheek way to promote a party your organization was likely to hold anyway. There's nothing racist or offensive about pouring sand on the floor to create a makeshift beach, or to place cutouts of palm trees on the walls to establish that "tropical" feeling.If FIJI's Islander parties are racist, then so is wearing a coconut bra for Halloween.

Your premise is not quite accurate. There are quite a few Greek organizations which use two letters. Theta Xi, Theta Chi, Delta Upsilon, Delta Gamma, Sigma Chi, Sigma Nu, and Chi Omega come to mind, and there are more.Not all fraternities have Greek letter designations. When I was in college, on our campus there was a fraternity named Acacia, and one named Farmhouse.There are, of course, many fraternities and sororities with three Greek letter names. No one can say why, because the meaning and symbolism of the name is generally secret, disclosed during the initiation, and kept private among the members.But it is a pretty good guess that most of them are a Greek phrase which has meaning to the members, or an acronym which designates some virtue central to the group, or a slogan or phrase of wisdom or guidance, or a reference to some place or person of importance to the group. Those acronymic references might be to Greek words, then translated to English for the initiates, or they might be English later references.So, for a theoretical example, if there was a Sigma Beta Delta, the name could connote Strength, Bravery, Dedication — all qualities which would aid a member in achieving success and a worthy contribution in life.Because fraternities and sororities usually swear their members to secrecy, it is very unlikely that anyone could compile an accurate listing of the meanings or symbolism of the names, of all these organizations. And it is really none of our business.A well-known fraternal group at Yale is called Skull and Bones. Traditionally, only people from prominent or powerful families are offered membership; or else young men recognized as having great potential and being on the way to becoming prominent or powerful. Several US Presidents have been a member of Skull and Bones.

Toga parties are a mainstay of the Greek system of fraternities in the US.Of course this ‘Greek system’ has nothing to do with Greek or Roman culture and is far more likely more English in origin. Such fraternities do have Greek letters for their names. The commonly accepted idea that members of such fraternities and sororities at American universities are somehow trying to promote Greek culture is completely false. The tradition of the fake-Groco-Roman themed ‘toga party’ in which men and women destroy bed sheets to make purportedly Greco-Roman clothing while they swill beer and celebrate bro-ness has a far more interesting origin.The toga party actually has roots in the Enlightenment Era fascination of the American founding fathers with Greek democracy and culture as an ideological and philosophical bulwark against monarchy. Lacking any natural aristocracy, American statesmen were keenly aware of their bumpkin status in relation to their English relatives. The most well educated men of the time were those who ‘returned’ to England, a country where they had never been, to get a proper education. The vast majority of American statesmen and public intellectuals we, for the most part, self-educated in the colonies. As colonial identity gave way to regional and national identity, the leading members of a nascent American ruling class maintained an idealized concept of the Greek citizen-politician. This tradition maintained, like in the English of university tradition, that educated people should be able to read and speak Greek and Latin. As the concept of an ‘educated person’ in the US developed with local university culture, highly romanticized ideas about Greek culture became a major point of reference for leading citizens of disparate locations. The Greek symposium, a gathering of men of leisure who would drink wine from a common dish and take turns spouting off and disputing ideas, formed a default background image of the gatherings of successful farmers and merchants in the inns and taverns of the land who assembled to discuss politics. Such gatherings were at the heart of the American Revolution and would later become backbone of non-church social organizations, the origins of the old timey ‘gentlemen’s club’ - the kind with rich guys buying membership and drinking Scotch served by obsequious waiters in a library somewhere in downtown New York with the hope that membership afforded them ‘status’ in society. Whatever else these societies were, from the Masons to the private clubs of major cities, the connection to education and a kind of neo-Greco-Roman nobility lies at the heart of the perpetual American aspiration to aristocracy.As the American university system grew and became more universal - people of modest means could improve their lot financially and socially by getting a university education. The interchangeable terms ‘college’ and ‘university’ in American English is a result, at least partly, from the US endeavor to replicate the ‘colleges’ or ‘houses’ at the two main English universities - Oxford and Cambridge. The watered down version of this is the ‘fraternities’ and later ‘sororities’ on US colleges campuses that offered a kind of ready made social organization and for those who were selected. Originally exclusive and discerning in their membership, these organizations have become progressively more ‘democratic’ in that they have all but lost their pretense to class consciousness and the original American ideals of education. In the contemporary Greek system on US college campuses, the vague sense of ‘educated’ nobility accrued from learning Greek and Latin has been more or less completely substituted with a parody of culture that is expressed in the farcical play acting that is the toga party. The exchange of ideas with the stimulation of mingled wine has been substituted with the exchange of bodily fluids with the stimulation of wine-coolers and kegs.This final transformation can be attributed to the 1978 comedy film“Animal House” about the wildly un-academic adventures of the fictional fraternity Delta Tau Chi. This film single-handedly revitalized and transformed the American fraternity system and with it the tradition of the ‘toga party’ which became an obligatory part of the American college experince.I attended university in the US from 1986–1990 and I experienced toga parties. I am pretty sure that frat house ‘ragers’ are still a thing and that, regardless of beverages served and whether or not intellectual stimulation is part of the event, they are not uncommonly called toga parties.