Why was your org started?

[maggieaxid]

With all the talk of the SAEPi thing, Why was your organization started?

[AOX81]

Some of the Founding Members of my sorority were former pledges of another sorority. They became very dissatisfied with the sorority that they were pledging so three of them plus an active member of that sorority started Alpha Theta Chi and we've been around for 13 years.

[BearyCuteAPhi]

In 1872 there weren't very many women in school, so the few that were had it rough. Ten women came together and decided that they needed to come together for support, friendship, and to share their common experiences. So they created Alpha Phi Fraternity. A fraternity for women.

Ronnie

[33girl]

I'm lazy, so I cut and pasted....

The State Female Normal School, now Longwood College, in Farmville, Va., was the first institution of higher learning in Virginia to admit women for collegiate study. Naturally, it attracted superior students, many of them daughters of college professors already familiar with the fraternity idea.

Among the students in the fall term of 1901 were five women who had become very good friends. Attractive, vivacious, and intelligent, they had been rushed and bid by the existing sororities. However, if they accepted these bids, it would mean that the five would not be sorority sisters. The women thought, if the school could have three sororities, why not four?

On November 15, 1901, a new sorority was organized and named Alpha Sigma Alpha. As stated in the charter, "The purpose of the association shall be to cultivate friendship among its members, and in every way to create pure and elevating sentiments, to perform such deeds and to mould such opinions as will tend to elevate and ennoble womanhood in the world." Signatures to this document include those of Alpha Sigma Alpha's five Founders: Virginia Lee Boyd (Noell), Juliette Jefferson Hundley (Gilliam), Calva Hamlet Watson (Wootton), Louise Burks Cox (Carper), and Mary Williamson Hundley.

[maggieaxid]

ok, correct me if i am wrong AZD's...but i think this is how the story goes.
In 1893, 10 women at Lombard College, in Galesburg Illinois were dissatisfied with the only organization for women on their campus, Kappa Kappa Gamma. So they decided to begin their own organization that would be fundementally based on dedicated to the personal growth of women. With the help of Sigma Nu Fraternity, Alpha Xi Delta was soon born and then later became a National Fraternity, and joined NPC. The Panhellenic Creed which is still said today was written by an AXiD.

The founders of my sorority started the First Nonsectarian sorority. They all attended the same high school and then the same college. When one of them did not get into the sorority of her choice, they all decided to start their own so that ALL WOMEN would be able to join.

[CutiePie2000]

Originally posted by PhisigWarner
The founders of my sorority started the First Nonsectarian sorority. They all attended the same high school and then the same college. When one of them did not get into the sorority of her choice, they all decided to start their own so that ALL WOMEN would be able to join.

I think AOII was a similar situation. I think one member was not bid because of her faith, so the others dropped that sorority and started AOII!

[FuzzieAlum]

on their campus, Kappa Kappa Gamma. So they decided to begin their own organization that would be

Here's your correction - it was Pi Beta Phi, not KKG. KKG was the national we considered affiliating with, which is why double blue was chosen for our colors.

[Kevin]

Cut and pasted from our HQ's site:

"The Founding"

The story of Sigma Nu began during the period following the Civil War, when a Confederate veteran from Arkansas enrolled at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington Virginia. That cadet was James Frank Hopkins, and it is to him and two of his classmates that Sigma Nu owes its existence. When Hopkins enrolled at VMI, the south was in a state of turmoil and just beginning to recover from the devastating military defeat it had suffered. The Virginia Military Institute was highly recognized for its civil engineering program and the South badly needed to repair its bridges and railroads. At the Institute cadets suffered, not only of the ravages of war and a disrupted homelife, but because of the system of physical harassment imposed on lower classmen by their fellow students in the upper classes.

Hopkins had experienced military subservience during the war, and was willing to tolerate a reasonable amount of constraint intended to induce discipline. However, Hopkins was unwilling to accept any amount of hazing then being allowed at VMI. Not one ounce of hazing was he willing to suffer and he was doggedly adamant about eliminating it.

Hopkins soon was joined by two classmates and close friends who were also equally unhappy with the hazing situation. They were Greenfield Quarles, from Arkansas, a Kentuckian by birth, and James McIlvaine Riley from St. Louis, Missouri. These three men began a movement to completely abolish the hazing system at VMI. Their efforts climaxed on a moonlit October night in 1868, presumably following Bible study at the superintendent's home, when the three met at a limestone outcropping on the edge of the VMI parade ground. Hopkins, Quarles and Riley clasped hands on the Bible and gave their solemn pledge to form a brotherhood of a new society they called the Legion of Honor.

The vows taken by these three Founders bound them together to oppose hazing at VMI and encouraged the application of the Principle of Honor in all their relationships. That the founders should adopt Honor as a guiding principle was a natural move since a rigid code of Honor was already an established traditon of the VMI Corps of Cadets. The Honor system at VMI required each cadet to conform to the duty imposed by his conscience that each act be governed by a high sense of Honor.

You can find this and the rest of the story at:

http://www.sigmanu.com/fraternity/ou.../#Introduction

LHT
Kevin

[MysticCat]

As did some others, I have done some cutting and pasting, along with some editing:

Sinfonia was born on October 6, 1898, at the New England Conservatory in Boston, when a group of thirteen young men under the guidance of Ossian Everett Mills met “to consider the social life of the young men students of that institution” and “to devise ways and means by which it might be improved.” At the time, male students at the Conservatory were far outnumbered by female students. Mills, bursar of the Conservatory, was profoundly interested in the physical, mental, moral, and spiritual development of the Conservatory students and recognized that a large proportion of them intended to put their musical knowledge into the church either as organists or singers. Mills felt that this class of people, as much as any, needed to be men of high ideals and, beginning in 1886, had invited a group of male students to meet with him once a week. Thirteen years later, Mills was still leading these weekly prayer meetings, and he encouraged the “Old Boys” of the Conservatory to invite the “New Boys” to a “get-acquainted” reception. The result of this invitation was the birth of The Sinfonia Club, which soon became The Sinfonia Fraternity. Sinfonia became a national fraternity on October 6, 1900, with the admission of a group of men at the Broad Street Conservatory in Philadelphia.

It is noteworthy that Sinfonia was not founded as a Greek letter fraternity, but rather chose to become more “Greek.” The Greek letters FMA appeared in Fraternity life very early on, and were officially placed on the badge within 10 years of the Fraternity’s founding. The name of the Fraternity was officially changed from The Sinfonia Fraternity of America to Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Fraternity of America in 1946, although in practice the current name had been used since the first decades of the Fraternity.

[LexiKD]

From the site: A little founding and a little KD History...

A chilly rain splattered against the windowpanes of the little dormitory room on Professional Hall, the dormitory floor where most of the seniors lived. Saturday meant no classes, and the dreary weather that hung over Farmville was a perfect excuse for the four friends to tuck themselves away in that cozy spot and talk for hours... It was that afternoon that Kappa Delta was born -October 23, 1897 - at the State Female Normal School in Farmville, Virginia.
-Ordinary Miracles: 100 Years of Kappa Delta Sorority

It was because of the beautiful friendship of Lenora Ashmore, Mary Sommerville Sparks, Julia Gardiner Tyler, and Sara Turner that Kappa Delta began. And today, the ideals of friendship, fellowship and sisterly love have remained constant and strong for 100 years, just as our four founders envisioned it in the beginning.

In 1912, Kappa Delta Sorority was the only Sorority to become a member of the National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) immediately upon petition. However, this did not come without sacrifice. NPC required all chapters to be four year institutions, and two of our chapters were not, one being our beloved founding chapter (Alpha). The sisters of these two chapters selflessly relinquished their charters for the sake of the future of Kappa Delta. Joyfully, Alpha chapter was re-colonized in 1949 when (now) Longwood College became a four-year baccalaureate institution.

As of March 2002, Kappa Delta has 201 chartered chapters. In addition, Kappa Delta has 482 chartered alumnae associations, the most of any NPC group. With active chapter sizes ranging from 40 to 200, membership has grown to approximately 10,000 collegiate members and over 175,000 alumnae.

[DeltAlum]

I think there has been another thread a lot like this one, but it is worthwhile, I think.

The following is from our website, www.delts.org.

"1776 Phi Beta Kappa, the first Greek letter society, is formed at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, in response to strict faculty members' attempts to rule all phases of students' lives. Nine men chronologically and geographically at the heart of impending revolution in the asyetunformed United States create for themselves an opportunity to secure freedom and the chance to govern their own affairs outside the classroom. Those nine students meet in the Raleigh Tavern on December 5 where they adopt a secret oath, a badge, a handshake, and mottoes in Greek and Latin. They devise an initiation ceremony and adopt a Greek letter name. The stage is now set for other Greek letter societies to follow suit.

You should recognize some of the same qualities in the story of Phi Beta Kappa's founding as those we at Delta Tau Delta embrace. The nine men who pledged their loyalty to each other in 1776 were also committed to excellence; they found strength in brotherhood, saw the importance of courage in the face of what they considered injustice. So you see, the quest for excellence extends deep into our roots, beyond even our own founding as a Fraternity, to the very beginning of the Greek system itself.



1858 Delta Tau Delta is founded at Bethany College. Eight undergraduates, angered by a fixed vote for a prize in oratory to be given at the Neotrophian Literary Society the only real forum for students to practice and demonstrate skills in poetry, public speaking, and writing essays respond by forming a secret society. The purpose of the new society, known only by the Greek letters Delta Tau Delta, is to see that the Neotrophian is returned to popular control, and delivered from the hands of the group of students who seized it.

The Fraternity was founded to right an unjust situation; Delta Tau Delta was born of the knowledge that integrity is essential. Its eight founders' outraged that one group of students would and could choose in advance the candidate they favored, then join together to swing enough votes for that man to win, regardless of his actual performance in the contest, presented the first opportunity for Delts to realize the importance of accountability."

DeltAlum comment:

Remember that this was before TV and the NCAA. These kinds of "contests" were the only competitive outlets at most of these small colleges in that era.

[CutiePie2000]

My 3 Founders were snowbound over the Christmas holidays at their School. Going by dates, they were basically teenagers, so they were at more of a finishing school, than a "university".
They decided to start the Delta Gamma club, which became Delta Gamma fraternity. Some were dating Delta Psi's at Ole Miss, so that might be where they got the idea from, but they were not ex-pledges of another sorority who grew dissatisfied.

[TrojanGirl]

Pi Beta Phi was founded as IC Sororsis at Monmouth Collge in Monmouth IL after our twelve founders met together to try to form a national secret college society of women to be modeled after the Greek-letter fraternities of men.
An interesting story to that is Pi Phi's first chapter called themselves the Beta Chapter and refered to a chapter "back east" as the alpha chapter.

TG

[ONElove]

OK heres the history of Theta Nu Xi Multicultural Sorority Incorporated........ coming straight from the Alpha Chapter website....... ONE Love!
In the spring of 1996, Founding Monarch Melissa Jo Murchison-Blake was in search of sisterhood. She wanted to be part of a family that openly embraced all women and crossed cultural boundaries. As a bi-racial woman, she did not want to choose between historically white or black sororities. Founding Monarch Murchison-Blake felt that if she did choose one, she would be denying half of her heritage.

Still wanting to be part of a strong sisterhood, Founding Monarch Murchison-Blake recruited six other women to join hands in her quest to found Theta Nu Xi Multicultural Sorority. At first, the Founding Monarchs were discouraged from fulfilling their vision. The Director of Greek Affairs advised them to consider joining an existing organization, expressing his concern that a new Greek organization, based on the principal of multiculturalism, would not survive at UNC-CH. However, the Founding Monarchs believed there was a need for such a sisterhood. Their efforts set the stage for Theta Nu Xi's presence in the Greek, non-Greek, and surrounding communities.

After much work and dedication, the Founding Monarchs built the foundation for Theta Nu Xi. Finally, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill officially recognized Theta Nu Xi Multicultural Sorority as the Alpha Chapter on April 11, 1997. With the collaborative efforts of the Founding Monarchs and the Sisters of Spring 1998, the organization grew beyond our expectations. The Sorority incorporated on April 29, 1999, and with the participation of the Alpha Chapter and Beta and Gamma Colonies, the National Organization was founded at the first annual National Convention on August 21, 1999.