During a person's first year in Alden Voices, she is assigned a "big" who serves as her mentor. Bigs help encourage their littles to attend AV social events and tours, and also serve as a role model for good behavior during rehearsals. When a person gets more than one little, it only takes a few "generations" for families (hierarchies of bigs and littles) to get very large! The undergraduate families are now all named after song birds, but in some instances, multiple bird-named families all come from one "descendent." The people listed in the drop-down menu of "AV Families" were all founding members of families, when Amanda (Eaton) Lettiere started the big-little tradition in 2010.