With Thoughts of L.G. Balfour and Company

Posted on March 4, 2012 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

In 1997, the National Panhellenic Conference, the umbrella organization for 26 women’s fraternities/sororities, began celebrating International Badge Day to honor sisterhood. This is the fourth year that the National Pan-Hellenic Council Inc., the National Multicultural Greek Council, the National Asian Pacific Islander American Panhellenic Association and the National Association of Latino Fraternal Organizations Inc. have been invited to participate. Members of these organizations are asked to wear their badges on Monday, March 5.

When I think of my arrow badge, the L.G. Balfour Company comes to mind. In 1913, Lloyd Garfield “Bally” Balfour, a Sigma Chi from the Lambda Chapter at Indiana University, married Ruth DeHass, a Pi Beta Phi from the Indiana Gamma Chapter at Butler University. He began his fraternity jewelry business in Attleboro, Massachusetts that same year. Pi Beta Phi became his first fraternity account when his company became the  official jeweler after a vote of the 1913 Pi Beta Phi Convention.

Ruth and her husband visited many Pi Phi chapters selling badges. At Pi Beta Phi’s 1918 Charlevoix Convention, Ruth, a talented violinist, spoke about her musical talents. Sadly, she died of pneumonia in 1919, six years after their marriage. In 1921, Balfour gave to Pi Beta Phi in his wife’s memory the Balfour Cup. To this day, the Balfour Cup remains Pi Beta Phi’s top chapter honor.

Balfour re-married in 1921. His bride, Mildred McCann, had once been a student at the University of Illinois. On November 22, 1933, she became an  alumna initiate of Pi Phi’s Illinois Zeta Chapter at the University of Illinois. Balfour visited Sigma Chi’s Kappa Kappa Chapter while his wife was occupied at the Pi Phi house that day. I have often wondered if he engraved the date 11-22-33 on the back of her arrow badge.

Balfour served as Sigma Chi’s Grand Consul from 1937–39 and helped start its foundation.  He served as National Interfraternity Conference Chairman from 1940–41. Balfour was named a Significant Sig in 1941. During his lifetime he was awarded numerous fraternal honors including the National Interfraternity Conference Gold Medal in 1947. Sigma Chi’s International Balfour Award, established in 1929, is presented to an outstanding graduating senior member who has given of himself to Sigma Chi Fraternity, his campus and his community. He established Sigma Chi’s Balfour Leadership Training Workshop and considered it one of his great projects.

From the first contract with Pi Beta Phi in 1913, more fraternity accounts were acquired. At one point, the company held contracts with 90% of all Greek-letter societies.  The company soon branched out to schools and multi-year contracts with the schools helped grow business. The company supplied war-time medals during World Wars I and II. It produced press badges for the World Series, recognition award for companies and products for sports champions including Super Bowl rings.

The Balfours routinely attended conventions and often provided limited edition convention favors. They lived in a log cabin on a working farm on Pine Street in Norton, Massachusetts. He died on July 11, 1973, at the age of 87. His wife lived a decade longer.  A childless couple, they were generous, low-key philanthropists.  After their deaths, the L. G. Balfour Foundation was created to help support the causes that were important to them.

The L.G. Balfour Company combined with CJC Holdings, Inc. in 1996 to become part of a new company, Commemorative Brands, Inc. In 2010, American Achievement Corporation combined the reputations of yearbook producer Taylor Publishing and Balfour to begin marketing and selling as Balfour. Fraternity badges and jewelry are no longer part of the  company’s product lines.

 

 

 

 

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Gracing the White House

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Grace Goodhue Coolidge

 

“The Eighteenth National Panhellenic Congress representing 150,000 Sorority Women in session at Parker House, Boston, Mass.; sends greetings and best wishes to you as the first Sorority Woman to grace the White House,” is the text of the telegram that Dr. May Agness Hopkins, Zeta Tau Alpha, Secretary of the NPC, sent to Grace Goodhue Coolidge, Pi Beta Phi, in October of 1923.

The National Panhellenic Conference began in 1902; due to an identity crisis, it was, for a time, known as the National Panhellenic Congress. The authorizing of the telegram was the first motion of the 1923 meeting.

Grace Goodhue Coolidge, a charter member of the Vermont Beta chapter of Pi Beta Phi at the University of Vermont, was the first wife of the President initiated in a women’s fraternity while in college. Her husband became an initiated member of Phi Gamma Delta while a student at Amherst College. Together they were the first couple initiated into Greek-letter societies while they attended college.

Mrs. Coolidge was not the first First Lady to be a member of a National Panhellenic Conference organization. That honor goes to Lucy Webb Hayes, wife of Rutherford B. Hayes. On December 1, 1880, she accepted the invitation of the Rho Chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma at Ohio Wesleyan College to become an honorary member of Kappa Kappa Gamma.

Mrs. Coolidge’s successor, Lou Henry Hoover, was also a Kappa Kappa Gamma; she was initiated as a student at Stanford University.

Laura Welch Bush is a Kappa Alpha Theta, having been initiated while a student at Southern Methodist University. In 2001, the Public Relations Committee of the National Panhellenic Conference, in keeping with the spirit of the 1923 telegram to Grace Coolidge, sent a telegram to welcome Mrs. Bush as First Lady. Her husband, George W. Bush, is a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon, having been initiated as an undergrad at Yale. Together they are the second couple initiated into Greek letter organizations while college students.

In her post-White House years, Barbara Pierce Bush, who had attended Smith College, became an alumna initiate of Pi Beta Phi. Her chapter of initiation is Texas Eta at Texas A&M University. Her husband, George Herbert Walker Bush, is also a member of the Yale University Chapter of Delta Kappa Epsilon.

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was an honorary member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, a National Pan-Hellenic Council sorority. Her membership in the organization grew out of an incident involving another honorary member, the famed contralto Marian Anderson who was the first African-American woman to sing with the Metropolitan Opera and perform at the White House.

 

 

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Happy 175th Birthday Knox College and a Tidbit about Francis H. and Grace Lass Sisson

Posted on February 25, 2012 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Grace Lass Sisson

February 15, 2012, was the 175th anniversary of the founding of Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. Although it is the only remaining site of a Lincoln-Douglas debate, in the fraternity world it has another special distinction. Francis Hinckley and Grace Lass Sisson served as Grand Presidents of their respective organizations, Beta Theta Pi and Pi Beta Phi.

Grace Lass ’92, a member of the Illinois Delta Chapter of Pi Beta Phi, served as its Grand President from 1895-1899. She and Francis Hinckley Sisson ’92, a member of the Xi Chapter of Beta Theta Phi, were married in her parents’ Galesburg home on June 16, 1897.  At the 1897 Pi Beta Phi  Convention held in July at Madison Wisconsin (coincidentally, the convention headquarters was  the Beta Theta Pi Lodge), the newlywed Grand President was presented with a silver ladle.

Francis Hinckley Sisson served as Grand President of Beta Theta Phi from 1912-18. Beta’s Sisson Award is named in his honor.

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Mount Holyoke College – The Oldest of the Seven Sisters

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

1922 Laurel Parade

This is a blog about fraternity history, and this post has nothing to do with fraternities, except in a round about way. My daughter’s Mount Holyoke Alumnae Magazine arrived in today’s mail and it just reminded me of the beauty of the Mount Holyoke campus and the rich tradition and history of the college.

Part of the graduation weekend festivities at Mount Holyoke happens the day before the actual ceremony, when the graduating class is welcomed into the Alumnae Association, by the anniversary classes celebrating reunions. Each class – first year, sophomore, junior, and senior – has a class color, either red, blue, green, or yellow. For the Alumnae Parade, each class is dressed in white. Each class has a uniform item in the class color – hats, scarves, boas, flowers, umbrellas, etc. to set the class apart from other classes. The graduating class marches last and carries a laurel chain. The parade ends at the gravestone of Mary Lyon in the middle of campus. The graduating class encircles the grave site while singing Bread and Roses.

2007 Laurel Parade

Other traditions seem akin to those found in a women’s fraternity. When my sons were discussing the fact that their sister was the only one in the family not a member of a fraternity, they determined that Mount Holyoke was like being in a women’s fraternity. Mary Lyon’s determination to educate women ultimately lead to women being admitted to other educational institutions, leading the way for women’s fraternities to exist.

Mary Lyon was an early pioneer in the quest for women’s education. While a student at Byfield Female Academy in Massachusetts, her mentor, Joseph Emerson, introduced Lyon and her friend, Zilpah Grant, to an environment where women were treated as intellectual equals. Both Lyon and Grant went on to teach at Adams and Ipswich Academies where they incorporated this element into their own teaching. It was during this time that the idea for a low cost female academy evolved. Lyon was unhappy that the expense of attending Ipswich was prohibitive for the daughters of many New England farmers. She began soliciting an endowment to establish a women’s seminary (a seminary in Mary Lyon’s day and age was a secular school for women, not the religious training institution of contemporary meaning). She wanted her seminary to be specifically for middle class women and to make it affordable, domestic labor was provided by the students.

Lyon traveled to New York and Detroit talking to fellow educators about her plans. In 1834, she left her job at Ipswich, started a committee, and hired an agent to help raise funds for her school. Two years and $15,000 later, Lyon’s dream became a reality. Chartered in 1836, Mount Holyoke Seminary opened on November 8, 1837 at South Hadley, Massachusetts. Training women to become strong teachers was its primary mission. From the very beginning Mount Holyoke was a controversial institution. The controversy rested on several key points. It was a school run by women for the education of middle-class women. This raised, in conservative minds, the specter of women in general having access to higher education, and all the disruptions to family life, etc., that this would entail. Controversy also centered on the daily household chores required of the students, and the weekly practice of public confession. The first sounded to the general public like manual labor, and the second smacked of popery.

Mary Lyon’s last year of full-time teaching was 1847-48 and she died the following year. By the late 1800’s, it had become necessary for Mount Holyoke Seminary to evaluate its educational status in order to keep up with the changing American society. Mount Holyoke Seminary met the challenge and reorganized its educational structure to meet the needs of young women scholars. It moved away from being a women’s seminary and became a full-fledged women’s college. The admission standards were changed in order to attract a more diverse student body. Four-year graduation requirements were established. The college began hiring professors rather than teachers. Science and literary courses were added and new buildings were constructed.

By 1900, Mount Holyoke was a progressively developing women’s higher education institution. Mount Holyoke set the example that would be followed by six other women’s colleges: Vassar (1861), Wellesley (1870), Smith (1871), Radcliffe (1879), Bryn Mawr (1885), and Barnard (1889). Two of these “Seven Sisters” colleges were started as co-ordinates to men’s colleges. Radcliffe began as the co-ordinate to Harvard and Barnard was Columbia’s co-ordinate. The Seven Sisters are all on the east coast.   Mary Lyon’s Mount Holyoke is my favorite of the Sisters.

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Collegiate Sorosis at the University of Michigan – Gone But Not Forgotten

Posted on February 18, 2012 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Collegiate Sorosis       University of Michigan

During the 1980s, we lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The Panhellenic Alumnae Advisors group was known as Persephone’s Consilium. Among the advisors was one from Collegiate Sorosis. I had never heard of that organization and my curiosity got the better of me, so I tried to find out more about it.

Kappa Alpha Theta was the first women’s fraternity to appear on the University of Michigan campus.  In October 1879, the members of the Alpha Chapter of Kappa Alpha Theta at Indiana Asbury College (now DePauw University) asked that a member contact one of five Michigan students who had written asking about the fraternity.  On December 10, 1879, Alpha chapter member Emma Blake Young braved the snowy travel between Greencastle and Ann Arbor.  She initiated six Michigan students into Kappa Alpha Theta.  The campus publications, all run by men, lampooned the establishment of the first women’s fraternity chapter.  Gamma Phi Beta was chartered in 1882, followed by Delta Gamma in 1885.

Michigan was the first state university at which Kappa Alpha Theta founded a chapter and as the first chapter on campus, the fraternity considered this feat a feather in its cap.  The Michigan women were strong-minded and when the power of granting charters was placed in the hands of the active chapters, the Michigan chapter was against the issuing of charters to small colleges without nationally recognized scholastic standing.  This created a division in the fraternity.  Consequently, the charter was withdrawn due to a convention vote at a specially called meeting of the Grand Chapter, held at Wooster, Ohio, on February 25, 1886.

Emma Winner Rogers, the wife of the Dean of the Law School, was a Kappa Alpha Theta alumna. She felt strongly that the women needed the close friendships and mutual assistance that a women’s organization could offer. She was instrumental in making the case to the Sorosis Club in New York City. Sorosis was founded with 12 members in 1868; it is considered the start of the Women’s Club movement. Within one year, Sorosis had 83 members.

The Michigan women obtained permission from Sorosis to create a collegiate chapter. On May 14, 1886, the 15 ex-members of Kappa Alpha Theta became known as Collegiate Sorosis. The chapter at Michigan was the only collegiate group that Sorosis supported. The badge of the New York Sorosis was adapted for use by Collegiate Sorosis. Designed by Tiffany and Company, the “S” of the Sorosis pin had a “C” imposed on it.  Pearls were later added to the “C”.

 

Charter members of    Collegiate Sorosis

Among the initiated members of Collegiate Sorosis were Harriet Alice Chapman Dewey, first wife of John Dewey, and Evangeline Land Lindbergh, mother of Charles Lindbergh.

A group of alumnae remained loyal to Kappa Alpha Theta and sought the opportunity to reestablish the chapter.  On June 29, 1893, the Eta Chapter was reestablished and one of its competitors on the Michigan campus continued to be Collegiate Sorosis.

In 1973, the Collegiate Sorosis alumnae voted to disband. The chapter house was sold. In 1978, the chapter was revived. In 1980, the chapter moved into a house on Cambridge Road. Five years later, the alumnae sought to purchase a private home at 903 Lincoln Avenue in the Burns Park neighborhood to use as a chapter house. At the time, the zoning required an existing building to be 5,000 or more square feet before it could become a sorority or fraternity house. The home in question was 3,100 square feet. The North Burns Park Association was formed and a legal battle ensued between Collegiate Sorosis and the neighborhood association. While Collegiate Sorosis ultimately won the legal battle, in the end it lost because the chapter became dormant in the late 1980s.

I recall that in the 1980s the collegiate members chose to be known as Chi Sigma in order to be in line with the other Greek-letter women’s fraternities. The collegians seemed to feel that the unusual name of the organization was a detriment to attracting members.I was disheartened when I read that the chapter had closed. It was quite a feat for the local organization to survive for more than 100 years. Collegiate Sorosis you are gone but you are not forgotten.

© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory, 2012. All Rights Reserved.

A 1937 badge
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The League of Women Voters (and, of course, a Women’s Fraternity is Involved!)

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Carrie Lane was born on January 9, 1859, in Ripon, Wisconsin. She enrolled at Iowa State University in the fall of 1876. Carrie was an active member of what is today known as the Iowa Gamma Chapter of Pi Beta Phi which was chartered on May 11, 1877, only 10 years after the Fraternity was founded. She was the first initiate after the chapter’s chartering.  Carrie worked at the college washing dishes for nine cents an hour and in the library for ten cents an hour. She graduated from Iowa State in 1880 as valedictorian and the only woman in the class.

All fraternities were banned at Iowa State from 1891 until 1903, and the Pi Beta Phi chapter became dormant in 1894.  When the College administration changed, fraternities were once again welcome, in part to solve a housing shortage.  Iowa Gamma was reinstalled in 1906.

She utilized her Pi Beta Phi connections. In 1887, she wrote the Iowa Beta Chapter of Pi Beta Phi at Simpson College offering to speak in Indianola, where Simpson College is located. She attended Pi Beta Phi’s 1890 convention in Galesburg and spoke about “The New Revolution.”

At the 1924 Eastern Conference of Pi Beta Phi, when the portrait of Vermont Beta and First Lady Grace Goodhue Coolidge was presented to the nation, she was the keynote speaker at the banquet. She was the first fraternity woman to receive Chi Omega’s National Achievement Award, a gold medal presented to a woman of notable accomplishment.

Catt was the President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association from 1900-04 and 1915-20. She was hand-picked by her predecessor, Susan B. Anthony. Catt’s brilliant organization and oratory is credited with making the 19th Amendment a reality.

At the 50th National American Woman Suffrage Association Convention held in St. Louis, Catt, the organization’s President, proposed the creation of a “league of women voters to finish the fight and aid in the reconstruction of the nation.”

On February 14, 1920, in the Gold Room of the Chicago’s Congress Hotel, 520 South Michigan Avenue, hundreds of members of the National American Woman Suffrage Association gathered for a victory convention. They were anticipating the passage in Congress of the 19th Amendment. It had taken 72 years, but women finally had the right to vote. Carrie Chapman Catt called the session to order at 2:30 p.m.  According to the Convention minutes, “joy unconfined burst forth. For three quarters of an hour, horns tooted, state delegations stood on chairs, sang, gave their yells, formed in groups and marched around the room waving American flags. The Republican elephant and the Democratic donkey marched amicably arm in arm to the platform.” That evening, the organization was officially disbanded. A new and independent group, the League of Women Voters, was formed with political education as its focus.

 

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My Double Sisters and Me – P.E.O. and Pi Beta Phi

Posted on February 11, 2012 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

 

Pi Beta Phi was founded as I.C. Sorosis on April 28, 1867 at Monmouth College in Monmouth, Illinois. The second chapter of I.C. Sorosis was founded in December of 1868 at Iowa Wesleyan College in Mt. Pleasant Iowa, 58 miles from Monmouth across the Mississippi River. Another women’s organization, P.E.O., was founded at Iowa Wesleyan less than a month later, on January 21, 1869. Legend has it that some of the P.E.O. Founders had been asked to become I.C.s, but they declined because their friends were not included.

According to an account in the Story of P.E.O., “When the P.E.O.s had heard that the I.C.s were going to march into chapel wearing blue calico dresses all made after the same fashion, they met that afternoon and worked like mad making aprons of white calico with a black star. The aprons had a ruffle all around them and were made with a bib, fashioned on the left shoulder with the shining P.E.O. star. The I.C.s, so the P.E.O.s discovered, were to meet in one of the literary halls and the P.E.O.s went along before chapel time and crowded into a little closet-like room used by the janitor very near the chapel door. At the last stroke of the bell, just as the I.C.s started out of the door farther down the hall, the P.E.O.s stepped out in front of them and proudly appeared first in chapel.”

I.C.’s third chapter was at the Mount Pleasant Female Seminary where the second P.E.O. chapter was formed. The antagonism between the chapters became so great that Mr. Belden, the administrator, took each group’s pins, the P.E.O. stars and the I.C. arrows, and put them in a bank vault until the relationship improved. A chart an 1890  Arrow shows that four Pi Beta Phi chapters listed P.E.O. as their main rival.

I.C. Sorosis officially changed its name to Pi Beta Phi, its original Greek motto, at the 1888 Convention. At the 1888 P.E.O. Convention there was discussion about changing P.E.O. to a Greek letter society, and the idea was referred to a committee. P.E.O. had by then become an organization of collegiate and community chapter.

On June 7, 1902, P.E.O.’s chapter at Iowa Wesleyan disbanded. It became the Beta Chapter of Alpha Xi Delta, a women’s fraternity founded in 1893 at Lombard College in Galesburg, Illinois. This was the break between P.E.O.’s beginning as a collegiate organization and its future as a community philanthropic and educational Sisterhood.

The intense rivalry between the two organizations continued for at least 20 years and was greatest in Iowa. By 1900, the rivalry dissipated. Anne Stuart, Nebraska Beta, served as Pi Phi’s Grand Treasurer from 1912-25. Her 1939 obituary noted that she was also a member of P.E.O.

Elizabeth Davenport Garrels, Iowa Alpha, presided over  P.E.O.’s 2011 International Chapter. She is a loyal member of both organizations and she has also served as President of the Pi Beta Phi Foundation and as Chairman of the Holt House Committee that oversees Pi Beta Phi’s founding home in Monmouth Illinois. Today, there are many “double sisters”, including Elizabeth and me, who are loyal members of P.E.O. and Pi Beta Phi.

This entry originally appeared on the Pi Beta Phi blog. I have revised it a smidge and I am reprinting it here as a reminder of the four days I spent in Dallas meeting with six Special P.E.O. friends.

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Grace Goodhue Coolidge, Nifty Knitter

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Grace Goodhue Coolidge learned to knit a a young girl and it was a skill that kept her busy for her entire life. The caption under the photo reads, “The wife of the Vice-President of the United States is an expert needlewoman and her fingers are rarely idle. At the Republican State Convention held in Boston, last September, many interested glances followed the eyes of the Governor of Massachusetts as he looked frequently from his seat on the stage toward a quiet corner in the gallery where sat his wife, a most attentive listener, while her knitting needles flew. Knitting in public is not a pose with her for it  has been her custom for years to fill all odd minutes with this work. She learned to use the needles when a little girl and has perfected herself in the art by always knitting winter stockings for her boys. Consequently her personal friends regard this photograph as very characteristic.”

Below is what appears to be a staged photo, perhaps taken in the White House.

And for an added thrill, google “First Lady Grace Coolidge shops in New York and knits in the White House in Washington DC” and check out the silent motion picture footage of the First Lady knitting (and smiling and laughing).

She enjoyed knitting and crocheting. When she and the President were summering in the Black Hills of South Dakota, she would knit while he fished. Her knitting bag was always close at hand. In her later years, she would listen to her beloved baseball games on the radio and knit.

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Abstract of Coeducation and the History of Women’s Fraternities 1867-1902

Posted on February 5, 2012 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

I’ve promised a few people that I will get the dissertation on this web-site. It’s just taking a little longer than I anticipated (aka the Becque principle), so here is the abstract to whet your appetite.

AN ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION OF FRANCES DESIMONE BECQUE, for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Educational Administration and Higher Education, presented on March 21, 2002, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

TITLE: Coeducation and the History of Women’s Fraternities 1867–1902

MAJOR PROFESSOR: William E. Eaton, Ph.D.

The purpose of this study was to trace the historical development of seven women’s fraternities, Pi Beta Phi (I. C. Sorosis), Kappa Alpha Theta, Kappa Kappa Gamma, Delta Gamma, Alpha Phi, Gamma Phi Beta, and Delta Delta Delta, during the period from 1867 until 1902. Also, the women who were enrolled in the institutions where the women’s fraternity movement grew are profiled as examples of the role membership may have had in their educational and career pursuits.

Women’s fraternities, or sororities as they are sometimes known, became an accepted part of collegiate life in the years examined in this study. The campuses where these organizations took hold were coeducational with the exception of a handful of women’s colleges. The manner in which the women’s fraternity movement developed is outlined as well as the educational institutions at which these women’s fraternities prospered.

By 1902 the institutions that were home to at least five of these women’s fraternities were Syracuse University, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Michigan, Northwestern University, the University of California – Berkeley, Goucher College, Boston University, the University of Nebraska, and Stanford University. DePauw University, Simpson College, Indiana University, the Ohio State University and Cornell University had four of these women’s fraternities on campus by 1902. These coeducational institutions provided a fertile field for women’s fraternities to grow and prosper.

The seven women’s fraternities highlighted in this study met in Boston in 1891. In 1902, they convened in Chicago and formed the National Panhellenic Conference (NPC), the umbrella organization for women’s fraternities. The events are highlighted that lead up to the formation of NPC.

Briefly profiled are the accomplishments of some of the women who founded and joined these women’s fraternities in the years between 1867 and 1902. Some of these early women’s fraternity initiates were Carrie Chapman Catt, Florence Bascom, Julia Morgan, Dorothy Canfield Fisher and Ada Comstock. These women were trailblazers, yet little is told of their membership in women’s fraternities.

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So Long SIU Greek Row…….

Posted on February 4, 2012 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Plaque from the old Greek Row at SIUC

The above plaque is on the sidewalk in front of where the “Greek Row” sign once greeted visitors to SIUC’s fraternity housing. The sign is gone and, for all intents and purposes, so are the fraternity and sororities members for whom the housing was built. Delta Zeta still occupies a house, but they are the only chapter there and this is the chapter’s last semester in the house.

The plaque reads:

Southern Illinois University

Small Group Housing

Dedicated May 26, 1959

Man must belong and create if he strives for truth, for faith, and for the democratic ethic.

More info on the history of the quest for fraternity housing at SIUC can be found on the links on this page. I have often contended that placing fraternity housing in the middle of nowhere (Greek Row is not on the way to or from anything) on a campus that is chockful of first generation college students hampered any and all efforts to build the system.

I think of all the men and women on the faculty and in the community who worked ceaselessly to guide and mentor the young men and women who joined these organizations. Betty Lou Mitchell is the one who always come to mind. She was initiated into Delta Sigma Epsilon. She was a part of the process when the chapter decided not to become a part of Delta Zeta after Delta Sigma Epsilon merged with Delta Zeta. The group became Nu Delta Sigma for a year until special dispensation was given to the alumnae of Delta Sigma Epsilon to become initiated members of Alpha Gamma Delta (an interesting story also covered in my thesis available in the links on this page).

The Beta Eta Chapter of Alpha Gamma Delta, one of the  first groups to move in on the Row, was the only group to have occupied the same house during their time on the Row. The chapter house at 104 Small Group Housing is officially Hilda A. Stein Hall, named for the Zoology faculty member who was involved in the beginnings of Delta Sigma Epsilon. Professor Stein served as Delta Sigma Epsilon’s National Vice President and Editor of its magazine. She became a member of Alpha Gamma Delta and remained involved with the chapter until her death in 1985 at age 90.

All the chapter houses that were the built on Greek Row are named for the men and women who worked with the chapters. Several of the chapter houses have been demolished over the years. Currently several of the houses are empty. The former Alpha Gamma Delta and Sigma Kappa houses are unoccupied and the first floor windows are boarded. Others such as Miles Hall and Beimfohr Hall are serving other purposes.

I am disheartened that SIUC has chosen to disregard the value of a robust and well functioning fraternity system. Very few alums come back to visit a residence hall room. A chapter house can hold the accumulated memories of a chapter – the ebbs and flows of chapter life – and serve as an anchor to both the chapter and the institution at which it makes its home. When it is done correctly, it can serve the institution very well and can pay great dividends. “Man must belong and created if he strives for truth, for faith, and for the democratic ethic.”

 

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