Pledging by Non-Citizens
 

I pledged my house as a just-naturalized American citizen and was the only person in my 12-person pledge class who was not natural born (and the only one as far as anyone could remember). Has anyone else experienced this and was there a gap in cultural context and familiarity between you and your pledge brothers (or sisters) due to your lack of "baseline" knowledge of the Greek system?

My experience is now a decade out of date so I imagine things have changed considerably but I'd be curious about the experiences of others.

That is an interesting question. I hope someone can weigh in with their perspective.

Sorry, can't respond, on ignore (which I'd forgotten about, thanks Benzgirl).

We had a Japanese national in our pledge class--or very near. He was only active about a year, but we still keep in touch. Awesome guy. When I was serving as adviser, we had a Rwandan pledge. It didn't work out. I saw a Saudi going through rush once, but I don't know how that turned out. And we did have a very active member from Indonesia. In all cases, it was pretty awesome to exchange cultures.

We had a foreign national in our chapter. English born but her father worked for Marathon Oil and lived in several places around the world based on where he was assigned at that time. While living in the Middle East, she attended Western schools.

After graduation, she remained in the United States and eventually became a citizen. I can't say there was much culteral difference other than she was much more worldly that the rest of us. My neighbors at home were Egyption and I had an introduction to Middle Eastern food, so I could always count on Cassie to help me seek out foods of different nationalities off-campus.

I'm still in contact with her through Facebook and sometimes see her at fund raisers. She is a self employed consultant, never married and lives a similar life as I.

One of the chapters of Alpha Phi Omega that I worked with occasionally as an alumnus had a pledge who was *from* greece.

Did his best to pronounce letters the way that the American Fraternity system does, didn't succeed all the time. He indicated as a brother that he'd figured out "certain things" prior to initiation but didn't say anything prior, so that didn't affect his pledge class. Got the feeling he was bemused by some things involved.

I was on the advisory board of my son's Sig Ep chapter and the chairman was this wonderful English alum of the chapter.

One of our former exchange students (Hong Kong) wants to pledge when she comes to college in the US next fall. I'll do everything I can to help her get a bid--she would be a fantastic member.

We had a DACA student in the chapter. She had been in the country for a while so there was no real issue with the culture.

The chapter also had a British exchange student once. I believe the culture exchange was great. The chapter was able to learn about the English culture and she was able to learn about New Mexico/US culture.

Another Carnation Nation!

Woot!!

When I was in college (many decades ago), our chapter had two sister's who became naturalized citizens, I believe it was while the younger one was still a pledge. (The older sister was three years older. The family had immigrated from Latin America when the sisters were young.) I know that in the last decade, undergrad foreign students have become quite normal, so my collegiate chapter has had several non-US members.

My alma mater has a pretty big International population (~15-20%) so there are a lot of those students in greek life. There were at least 2-3 in a chapter any given year. My husband was born in one country, raised in another, and a citizen of yet another and we met through our respective chapters. The biggest difference for him was slang, a good portion of the common slang used in his secondary school was offensive here in the states. It took some time and “light bullying” (his words) to adapt to American culture.

I advised a chapter in FLorida that had several members originally from Central and South America. Most had been in the US since they were small children so were adapted to American culture

My pledge class had a sister that was an American citizen but had not lived in the US until she attended college. Her father was a diplomat and she was raised in China and Vietnam. Culturally, she adapted exactly as everyone else, but then, all but one person in my chapter was a first-generation greek.

Our chapter had two members who had been Cuban refugees as little children and became citizens. We also had a Canadian sister. This was of course in the late 60's/early 70's and it wasn't even thought of as a big deal. They were just three great girls who were good members and representatives of our chapter. End of story.