Fraternity History & More

It always catches me off guard when I see Illinois referred to as “the West.” In 1867, when Pi Beta Phi was founded and in 1870 when Kappa Alpha Theta and Kappa Kappa Gamma were founded, Illinois was the western frontier. Coeducation began in the west, at Oberlin College in 1837. The established eastern colleges tended to create separate coordinate institutions for women (Radcliffe/Harvard, Barnard/Columbia, Pembroke/Brown) to keep the original institution all male. The younger, usually church-affiliated institutions in the west tended to operate on a shoestrings. The tuition from a female student was exactly the same as tuition from a male student. Add the upheaval of the Civil War into the mix, and the western institutions were thankful for any student, male or female, who would pay tuition and help keep the institution afloat.

Recently, I came across this opinion piece which ran in an 1887 Arrow of Pi Beta Phi. The introduction read, “The following matter was handed us by the retiring editor for· future ARROW use. It was written by Miss Lillie Selby.” Selby was a member of the Iowa Zeta chapter at the University of Iowa. In 1887, she was a speaker at commencement. She later married Dr. Alexander Moor. She died in California in 1945.

A WESTERNER’S REPLY.
Our contemporaries have occasionally referred to Pi Beta Phi as a ‘western’ organization in a connection evidently meant to imply some possible inferiority on that account. We are a western organization in origin and extension, having at present no chapter east of Ohio. But what of that? Are we not all the better for this fact?

‘The west’ is the synonym for thrift, energy and intelligence. The Mississippi valley, the representative section of the west, is the practical base of supplies for the whole United States, and yields to no section in wealth, education and progress. Iowa, with its lowest percentage of illiteracy and excellent school system, is the banner educational state
of the Union.

It is only in the minds of untraveled inhabitants of the extreme east that the people of Illinois and Indiana are in danger of being scalped by the Indians; that cook stoves are
not yet introduced into Kansas, or that Minnesota is in the frigid zone. So much cannot, of course, be said of the development of the newer states and territories of the extreme
west; but that they are one whit behind us in culture and native resources, no one who has been there, or who reads, will for a moment believe.

Especially does it seem inappropriate that the term western should convey any idea but the most noble and honorable when applied by a student of a western college to a western college society, as was recently the case. We can only attribute such· a feeling either to jealousy, or a lack of proper sectional patriotism and eyes dazzled by the glamour of the reputed splendors of eastern hyper-culture. But we are not now concerned with the relative merits of east and west as to commerce or wealth; the question is on the motion that the western fraternity or sorosis (women’s fraternity/sorority) may be, and has every reason to be the equal of a similar organization founded and centered in eastern colleges.’

While the western colleges may lack the prestige and the inspiration drawn from old traditions, which give favor to life in the olden and more celebrated institutions of the east, yet they certainly go far toward supplying all needed advantages for the education and culture of the earnest young men and women who crowd their halls, and for sturdy manly and womanly character and intellectual force, the students of western colleges need acknowledge no superiors. The best schools and the best students make the best fraternities. This would lead us to expect to find good fraternity material and good chapters in our best colleges, and such is unquestionably the case.

With soroses (women’s fraternities/sororities), this should be even more strikingly true, for it is only in the west that co-education is the rule, and it is in co-educational schools that the strongest and noblest characters are developed among girls. Even if we were an eastern institution, but with western chapters; we are inclined to think that our greatest strength would lie in the western chapters.

But aside from the fact that our ‘western’ sorosis is so rich in resources and opportunities, there are prudential reasons why we ought not to be in haste to extend its limits. In the convention of Kappa Alpha Theta, held at Madison (sic – it should read Hanover), Indiana, in February last, nine chapters were represented, of which seven were western, and two eastern-one in Vermont and one in Pennsylvania. They also have a chapter at Cornell College, N. Y., and one at Los Angeles, Cal. It does not take a mathematician to figure out that to pay the expenses of delegates from California and Vermont even to some central point,with so small a number of chapters, would be ruinous to the pocket-books of the members without a corresponding benefit derived from the distant chapters.

This is only one example of the inconvenience of too great expansion. The difficulties in the way of intercommunication or social intercourse are also apparent. The younger and weaker of the boys’ fraternities are principally confined to one section, east, west, or south; only the oldest and wealthiest spread themselves over all the country. It really seems a much better policy for Pi Beta Phi to let her growth be gradual and outward, occupying desirable territory compactly, and pushing outward as she gains strength. Since we were born in the west, let us stay in the nest until our wings are strong enough to fly in any direction we choose without danger of disaster. 

© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2014. All rights reserved. If  you enjoyed this post, please sign up for updates. Also follow me on twitter @GLOHistory and Pinterest www.pinterest.com/glohistory/