Reassigning chapter letters to a new school?
 

I'm currently copying the list of chapters for Beta Sigma Omicron (which merged into Zeta Tau Alpha) and noticed that they assigned Zeta chapter to thee different schools in the course of their History:

Pueblo Colorado High School (chartered in 1902, defunct in 1907)
Potter College (Bowling Green, Kentucky) (chartered in 1907, defunct in 1909)
Centenary College (Cleveland, Tennessee) (chartered in 1909)



Alpha Phi Omega has done this twice, both with schools which were sort of inheritors of closed schools that had the previous chapter
Epsilon Pi Shurtleff College / Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville
Beta Gamma Central YMCA College/ Roosevelt University

Has your GLO done this?

I know way back in the day DG did this, it wasn’t so much reassigning as it was members of the new chapter choosing that letter. A long time ago the founding members of a chapter choose their letters, which is why some of our oldest chapters are not in alphabetical order, such as Eta - Akron and Beta - Washington. Theta - Indiana is actually the third iteration of the Theta chapter, the first two being closed due to women leaving campus. I believe there was at least one other instance of this in our history before moving to alphabetical order.

Thank you for the information regarding those early DG chapters Golden Anchor. I'd wrongly assumed that they had been established in alphabetical order.

My own chapter was established in 1959-Gamma Chi CSULB so by then the fraternity had begun assigning chapters in alphabetical order.

Kappa Delta's original Epsilon chapter was at Elizabeth College, a women's school in Charlotte (not Elizabeth City State University as in the sorority recruitment thread). It was a sub rosa chapter, but the sorority closed it, and the designation Epsilon was given instead to the chapter at LSU. The Elizabeth College chapter is now called Epsilon Prime.

I found this thread under Delta Gamma

http://www.greekchat.com/gcforums/sh...d.php?t=121896

It lists all our chapters in founding order and further displays this early practice! There are quite a few more iterations of chapter repetitions, including the interesting and potentially "cursed" Delta, which has not been reassigned to any chapter. Eventually we took on the policy of not reassigning chapter names, and chapters closed now retain their designations.

LXA as a Fraternity did this back in 1939 when TKN merged with us.

Each of their Chapters had a choice to merge or not which means that chapter closed. But at some schools it was decided if both existed they could not merge but associate with other fraternities. Only two closed down and not merge, one being in Kansas.

We designated our Chapters by the Greek Alphabet. Those TKN Chapters could use am Theta, Kappa, or Nu designation out of respect for them. We also merged some of their C of A into ours,m and part of their Ritual became part of our New Associate Ritual which is open to the public!!:)

Wow! 7 out of the first 8 chapters had their letters reused somewhere including the letter designation for the founding chapter! (but I guess that isn't too bizarre given that by the time it was reassigned, the sorority's target school characteristics would not have included the school at which they were founded.)

With regards to the Theta chapter at IU, it is my understanding that the chapter selected the "Theta" in tribute to the woman that worked to bring them to campus. She was a Kappa Alpha Theta and they selected their chapter letter to thank her for her role in establishing the chapter in Indiana. It would be interesting to know if, when they were permitted to, other chapters also had a logical reason for their selections.

From our Theta chapter's website: With the help of Mrs. Joseph Swain, the wife of the Indiana University president and an alumna of Kappa Alpha Theta, they were able to obtain their charter by Thanksgiving. On December 10, 1898, the three women along with Elizabeth Hedderich and Clara Snyder received the charter and were initiated in a home on Forest Place, the current location of Ballantine Hall. That evening, the members went to a Kappa Alpha Theta party, and Miss Coleman wrote, "We had felt Kappa Alpha Theta was our friend and for that reason selected Theta as our chapter letter." (Source: Coleman, Mary Effie, "Reminiscences of Our Fraternity," The History of Delta Gamma, 1874-1915.)

That’s really cool about Theta chapter! Without giving away too much info I can say that designation holds a special place in chapter ritual, so the other chapters certainly had reasons for choosing their designation. Another public example I know of is from the same thread mentioned previously, Phi (I)/Phi Alpha chapter selected their designation to honor George Banta (a Phi Delta Theta/Delta Gamma) as an influential part of their founding.

Speaking of Kappa Alpha Theta, the Phi chapter charter was transferred from Stanford to University of the Pacific; when Theta came back to Stanford, they designated the returning chapter Phi Deuteron as the Pacific chapter was still active.

Interesting question! I knew I'd seen a couple instances of this in the Chi Omega chapter list, but looking more closely, it appears to have been done 5 times back in the first half of the 20th century.

Phi- Helmuth Ladies College 1899-1900
Univ. Southern California 1940-1998

Epsilon- Barnard College 1906-1915
University of Buffalo 1940-1999

Upsilon Beta- Hollins College 1920-1929
Rollins College 1931-present

Iota Beta- Hunter College 1922-1940
U Mass Amherst 1941-present

Psi Gamma- U North Dakota 1923-1941
Mercer Univ. 1943-present

Of the 5 chapters who had their designation re-assigned, Helmuth Ladies College no longer exists (it basically closed the same year Chi O got there) and Rollins and Hunter appear to have done away with their Greek systems. Chi O could still recolonize at U. North Dakota, and would probably just have to start with new chapter letters, and if they came to Columbia U, it would be a new chapter rather than re-use the old Barnard chapter. Even though the second Epsilon chapter is now also closed, presumably this practice doesn't happen any longer, and hopefully the Buffalo chapter can be recolonized again someday.

Thank you. Did not know that Delta was "cursed."

Alpha Phi Alpha has done this several times and has no current policy against it from happening in the future.

The earliest example is the Delta Chapter at University of Toronto closing and decades later moving to Huston-Tillotson University in Texas.

Your post confused me. I understood it to say that ZTA had used the Zeta designation three times all the while thinking “ our Zeta chapter is at the U of Tennessee”. Then I reread your post and realized you were referring to BSO. That being said, ZTA reused chapter names a couple of times in our early history. I remember the reason being for the chapters in question either the school closed or disallowed sororities.

This is the only re-use of a greek-name designation by AOII that I know, and it really doesn't count:

AOII chartered their Chi Beta chapter at UVA in 1982, Rho Beta at VCU in 1985, and Sigma Alpha at WVU in 1986; then in 1988 Virginia Wesleyan University's AOII colony took the name Sigma Beta colony of AOII (I'm guessing due to it's proximity to those other three AOII chapters).

That Sigma Beta/VWU colony was never installed, but in 2005 AOII finally re-used the Sigma Beta designation for it's (installed) St. Joseph's University (PA) chapter.