Fraternity History & More

March 17 is the birthday of two Greek-letter organizations founded 11 years apart. The fraternity was founded in 1906 as a non-fraternity; the sorority was founded in 1917 by young women studying law.

On March 17, 1917, five coeds at Washington Square College Law a Division of New York University. founded Delta Phi Epsilon. The DIMES, as they are referred to, are Dorothy Cohen Schwartzman, Ida Bienstock Landau, Minna Goldsmith Mahler, Eva Effron Robin, and Sylvia Steierman Cohn. Delta Phi Epsilon was formally incorporated under New York State law on March 17, 1922.

That these five women were law students back in the day before women could vote in a federal election is impressive. Today, one must have a bachelor’s degree to apply to law school. In 1917, this was not the case. While the American Bar Association was formed in 1878, the first two women to join the organization did so a year after Delta Phi Epsilon was founded. In 1906, the Association of American Law Schools adopted a requirement that law be a three-year course of study.

Delta Phi Epsilon’s founders were between the ages of 17 and 19 when they formed the organization. I suspect they were working on an undergraduate degree in law, rather than what Delta Phi Epsilon members of today aspiring to be lawyers would do, spend additional years of study after obtaining a bachelor’s degree.

From 1922-23, Mahler served as the first International President. She was the one who spearheaded the creation of a constitution and by-laws, along with help from a relative who was an officer of Pi Lambda Phi Fraternity.

Mahler was an active member of the World Health Organization and the National Council of Jewish Women. She served as an observer to the United Nations and was often called upon to speak to various groups about world peace.

In 1920, Landau graduated and was admitted to the New York Bar. In 1921, she married a an Austrian, who, in 1917, founded the Jewish Telegraph Agency in The Hague. Landau lost her citizenship and her right to practice law when she married a foreigner. This case attracted national attention and it led to the adoption of the Cable Act (or the Married Woman’s Act) on September 22, 1922, allowing women who marry foreigners to keep their United States citizenship. Landau served as the assistant general manager of the Agency for many years. From 1942-51, she served as manager of the Overseas News Agency. She also served as a war correspondent. In 1943, she covered the Bermuda Refugee Conference. In 1945, she toured the liberated countries of Europe and reported on the plight of Jewish refugees. In 1950, she organized the Transworld Features Syndicate.

Cohn, who, in 1972, was the first of the founders to die, taught law and worked with her husband in real estate. She was also active in her community.

Schwartzman practiced law for seven years. She was the first woman in Fairfield County to pass the Connecticut Bar. She also worked in the social welfare field.

Robin, who lived to her late 90s, lived in Connecticut, where she is listed as an attorney in the Stamford City Directories.

Phi Kappa Tau was founded on March 17, 1906 at Miami University by Taylor A. Borradaile, Clinton D. Boyd, Dwight I. Douglass, and William H Shideler. The organization began as the Non-Fraternity Association in an effort to give non-fraternity men a voice in campus political affairs. In March 1909, the name was changed to Phrenocon, combining the names which had been proposed, “Friends, Non-Fraternity, and Comrades.”

A second Phrenocon chapter was founded in 1911, when the Ohio University Union, a group of independent men, decided to become a Phrenocon chapter. Chapters followed at Ohio State University, Centre College, Mount Union College and the University of Illinois.

Some of the Phrenocon members at Miami dropped out of the organization and joined the other fraternities on campus. A few became charter members of the Delta Tau Delta and Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapters at Miami.

The Miami Phrenocon chapter dropped out of the National Phrenocon Association on March 9, 1916, and adopted the name Phi Kappa Tau. On December 21, 1916, the five other Phrenocon chapters agreed to take on the Phi Kappa Tau name and establish the chapter at Miami as the Alpha Chapter.

The fraternity’s philanthropy is the SeriousFun Children’s Network, an organization founded in 1988 by Paul Newman, an initiate of Phi Tau’s Ohio University chapter. In 1995, the Association of Hole in the Wall Camps, as the philanthropy was then known, was adopted as Phi Taus national philanthropy after a vote at the 52nd national convention. Each year, chapter donate approximately $100,000 to the SeriousFun Children’s Network.

My apologies to those of you who subscribe to this blog (and if  you don’t there’s a button on the top right to subscribe so you don’t miss a post). On Sunday afternoon, as I was working on this, I hit “publish” instead “save draft.” The second I realized it, which happened to be a second after I hit the button, I tried to stop it. I was partially successful; it did not publish to the page. It did, however, send out the link to my subscribers. The link didn’t work. Sorry for the confusion. Please know that you dear subscribers get extra bonus points in my book.

© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2013.