I would say the proper use is more that one uses Miss, Mrs. or Ms. depending on the preference of the woman in question. Using Ms. is usually a safe bet if one doesn't know whether the woman in question is married, and Ms. is almost universal in business situations now, but I know plenty of women -- married and unmarried -- who do not like being addressed as Ms. (As I said earlier, though, in many parts of the South, it's not really much of a difference when spoken, since Mrs. is usually pronounced miz.)

I do, though, think it is very odd to use Ms. for someone who lived before the word was even coined. I was wrong, though, when I said that it was coined in the 1960s or 70s. I checked, and apparently it dates back to the early 1950s, although it was not popularized until the 70s.

Who is downplaying the NPC's involvement in the equality movement? If anything the OP did that by the title and substance of the post.

Psst - Carrie Chapman Catt was a member of Iowa Gamma (chartered as Mu chapter of IC Sorosis/Pi Beta Phi) at Iowa State Agricultural College, now known as Iowa State University. Catt hall is a lovely old building that houses Liberal Arts and Sciences and has a beautiful engraved brick "Plaza of Heroines."

Definitely *not* the University of Iowa, as any good Iowa State grad will tell you. ;) :p

There has never been agreement on "the appropriate path to obtain equality" in any movement, but this is not a barrier to action. Improving the lives of women through education and community involvement applied to NPHC sororities as well, but they were not limited to it. And as critical as it may be, this kind of progress alone does not change unjust laws. It is not unfair to acknowledge the reality that NPHC sororities as organizations have focused more on equal rights.

I agree with you in theory, but this thread had gotten a little dismissive of the NPC.
This quote in particular was offensive, "On an organizational level, it isn't enough to just exist. It isn't even enough to just be able to boast that one of your chapters was able to get equal ironing and smoking rights on campus."

While stronger activism got women the right to vote, it did not automatically give us the respect of men as peers. Education, however, has proven to men that women are equal to them academically. NPC organizations were founded by women bent on getting an education. Many were in teacher's colleges because this was the only "appropriate" profession for women at the time. Later founders were the first to break into the male only facilities of higher education. They founded our groups to empower the women looking for equality to stand up for themselves against the all male faculty who often were not receptive to their appearance on the scene. Just because as groups we worked at the level of the individual woman does not mean that we were not activists in the equality movement. Marching and signing up for initiatives doesn't do the enitre job and you know it. There are many people in the women's rights and civil rights movements that worked for equality at home on the local level without marching in washington (for civil rights) or boycotting the White House (for women's rights.)

But NPHC sororities focused on both (macro and micro)....so they did more. Nothing is wrong with that.

Just to add more info:

MLC hailed from Pennsylvania -- Loveville, PA to be exact.

Actually I googled, and the only Loveville I found is in Maryland. Pennsylvania has Intercourse instead of Love.

Who needs love when you have intercourse? :D

Mary Love Collins was born in Loveville, PA in 1882. She attended Conway Hall Preparatory School and Dickinson College where she earned a B.A. in 1902 and an M.A. in 1908. Mrs. Collins graduated from the University of Kentucky Law College in 1915. In 1918 she taught courses at the University of Kentucky and from 1919 - 20 she was an attorney in the solicitor's office of the U.S. Bureau of Internal Revenue.

Mary Love became president of Chi Omega Fraternity in 1910 and served in this capacity until 1952 when she became administrative councilor until her death in 1972. She was buried in Tyrone, PA.

Huh. It must not be on the map. Has anyone from OPB (Out Past Breezewood) ever heard of it?

It looks like her family had connections to Tyrone, PA, but several sources cite her birthplace as Loveville. Maybe it's no longer a spot on the map.

Then maybe Ms. wouldn't have confused her. :D

But can I just say wow on being national president for 41 years!

It appears that some of these NPC women feel that their sororities were not part of the equality (gender, race, or class) movements beyond a couple of members here and there trying to be active.

This is certainly news to me and probably to some other NPC women. :( Pardon me for crashing their thread in which they were able to celebrate the extent of their equality involvement.

You got the easy joke before I could. :(:D:p

haha, gotta get the cheap thrills in when i can.

LOL.

We weren't even trying to say we did more, though. I asked the Theta a question and provided the Delta Founders involvement as an illustration of what I was talking about. But it is important to note that macro and micro involvement from a group of black women who experienced racial and gender structural and interaction-level constraints is definitely discussion-worthy. So I assumed that women who didn't have to deal with the same types of constraints would've been even MORE adamently involved. I guess I was wrong.

I wanted to celebrate what all sororities did to demand equal rights. This thread is about the first well publicized case (I guess?) but there was stuff going on before this that folks may know of--or not but we could share info. Afterall, the first NPC sororities were founded in the mid to late 1800s and the first NPHC sororities were founded in the early 1900s, right?

Race War 2008:
Panhellenic vs Pan-Hellenic - The Hyphen Drawn in the Sand

LOL you always had a way with words. (though im SURE this thread is just a battle of said war)

You all are dismissing yourselves. I asked a question and never got an answer. If NPC women were involved at a macro level, just share the dern info. I'd think you all would be proud to do so instead of making excuses.

And I stand by my quote 100%. You all made it about the NPC as a whole because you feel that it applies to the NPC as a whole. Simple as that.

An NPHC sorority who had a thread in which they boasted on having the first tea on a college campus during times of great social inequalities and turmoil would get the same "but what else have you REALLY done" questions from us. If they couldn't answer for their sorority, they could at least remind us of what OTHER NPHC sororities did during those times. But the NPC women in this thread did not even do that.

I won't even get into the history behind the women's suffrage movement. Suffice it to say that the women's suffrage movement (and the women's liberation movement) far more impacted white middle class women than it did poor white women and racial and ethnic minority women. So how is that possible if a substantial percentage of college enrolled and college educated women who were also in sororities were not actually in the struggle on a macro level besides going to school? History lesson, anyone?

Only if they insist. :D I'm actually baffled at the responses.

They act like we're some white people who are chastising the majority of blacks for not having wealthy great grandparents. Or that we're white people chastising blacks for not going to white schools during the de facto segregation era. Is what we're asking so unrealistic and unreasonable? :confused:

If this thread would have had the more accurate title "the first sorority to tell school administrators they were jagoffs" we would have had a lot less confusion.

Plus, if you want to get technical, the group of women were demanding equal rights before Chi Omega or MLC ever got involved. The only reason they became a chapter, apparently, was to piss the administration off. You could argue that MLC could have supported them just as much without their being Greek affiliated.

(I missed this part of your post completely)

This is definitely worth discussing and thank YOU for highlighting this. Breaking the male hold on education was definitely important and that's different than saying "we thought education was important."

Marching and signing doesn't do the whole job but someone has to do it. Usually it's a result of multitasking and working on national and local initiatives as I said earlier.

So was your documented agenda that of the individual woman during these social movements? I'm not talking about opinion, I'm asking for what you all did as a whole. An interesting thing about social movements is that there is often a division of labor. But NPC sororities focused on what they saw as important. Focusing on educating the individual women and challenging faculty and administration on college campuses. I guess NPC organizations weren't involved at the organizational-level beyond that emphasis on the individual woman. Is that correct based on you all's records? If that's what you all are going on the record as claiming, I respect that.

i'm being WAY presumptious here, but can we chalk this debate up to different priorities between NPC and NPHC? I'm sure particular members of NPC orgs had made contributions to the women's movement, as members of the NPHC did. It could be a difference of how well it was documented, the time difference (as DSTCHAOS mentioned, late 1800s vs early 1900s, were talking a difference of 20-30 years?) and what each group of women defined as what was important in the fight for "equal rights," from ironing after-hours (im not sure what that means exactly) to marching in the women's suffrage march in 1920 (which, as its noted that had SGRho existed then, my founders most likely would've been alongside DST).

im talking out of thin air here, but maybe this is borderline apples-oranges of an argument?

Thanks for the info! I wish I had read page 3 earlier. :p

I love Pi Beta Phi. Was Catt able to influence Pi Phi's initiatives to incorporate some League of Women Voters stuff?

Cool beans. :D AGD started a house fund and that rocks!

I dunno.

The movement existed and there were women involved. Fact. I didn't know that the NPC sororities got together and as whole decided to focus on the individual woman. Learn something new everyday. Cool.

As far as documentation. People often find the info that they want to find. I find it hard to believe that none of the sororities would have that information available to anyone.

I never knew that and I think that's truly amazing. I like that it was an organization-wide cause.

For the record, I think the title of this thread is confusing and misleading.

oldu - I really enjoy your research. I do hate that sometimes an ill-conceived title gets in the way. May I humbly suggest that instead of the more general titles you have used in the past, you make your titles very specific, thus avoiding the hurt feelings sometimes engendered by groups feeling slighted or ignored?

As to the whole NPC/NPHC thing - we need to understand that the groups were largely products of their times. Thus the different focus in terms of original purpose, for example. But both groups had hundreds of active, educated women who made a difference in their groups, colleges, communities and country. We need to celebrate those noble women, and worry less about who did what when and more about the overall progress brought about the individual and group efforts of the wonderful members of BOTH of our groups.

Yes, I do know it, which is why I never claimed that it was. In fact I stated that all of the work you are talking about was critical. I'm simply saying that NPHC women did everything you are talking about as well, not instead.

That's what we were trying to get to. It's like some complex riddle apparently.

We can multitask. :)

Why's it interesting to discuss Mrs. Collins but suddenly not interesting to discuss who did what when on a much grander scale? If folks don't know the info, just say that. A couple of NPC women in this thread have shared some other accomplishments that spanned beyond the college campus and I love reading info like that.

Is the answer to the question that I asked you "no?"

What question did you ask me?

My fault. It was another Theta. But you can answer because it's your sorority. You edited my question out of that post you quoted. :)

Oh ok I found it! Sorry I got distracted because I was seriously interested in the fact that DST made it an organization-wide cause.

And the answer to your question is "no" :( Inspired by this thread, I looked in my copy of "Bound By a Mighty Vow" and learned that Kappa Alpha Theta never took an official position on suffrage. To be honest, it was actually a divisive issue for our sorority because there were women who were extremely passionate about women's right to vote, while there were also women who thought that it was "unwomanly" to protest, speak out, etc. Theta didn't want to alienate members...so they never took an official position.

I think Thetas have been pioneers for women in so many ways, but I was a bit disappointed and surprised to find out that we didn't officially support women's right to vote. I sincerely have a great deal of respect and admiration for your organization for making it such an important cause...that took a great deal of courage.

ETA: It was honestly sort of hard for me to come to terms with the fact that Theta resisted taking a stance because it might "look bad" because...I love and respect Kappa Alpha Theta so much, but I also love voting, and it's hard for me to fully grasp that they wouldn't stand up for women's rights. I know it's a product of the times, but it's really difficult for me to imagine that women would be so concerned with image and with being proper that they would not want to VOTE.

I think that if oldu would expand his scope of sororities beyond Chi Omega, then yes, his threads would evolve with a different tone. No disrespect to Chi O. ;)

Since his research focuses on greek life, then he either should include all GLOs - NPHC, NPC, IFC, NIC, MCGLO, NAFLO, and locals (sorry if I forgot one), OR he should do as others have suggested and specifically state which group / council he is referring to in the title. I mean, some of his titles seem open-ended, so people will infer different things from them.

And just to state, I don't think my NPHC SisterGreeks have hurt feelings from what oldu posts. I don't. I just think they want to get him and others to realize that there is more out there with respect to greek life than just one or two groups. I would think that if oldu's research is truly exhaustive, then he would easily see that.

In my materials for AOII, which are not extensive by any means, I cannot say that we were not involved on an organizational-level basis. The suffrage movement was a discussion topic at our 1910 convention, but that's all it says. A bit more is written about one of our founders, Jessie Wallace Hughan. She was a determined political and social activist and even ran for U.S. Senate in 1924. Our first national philanthropy was adopted in 1906 to aid the National Committee on the Abolition of Child Labor.

I will! I think more and more, it's too easy for young women (and heck, old women) to forget how long and how hard women had to fight. March being Women's History Month, this discussion is particularly apropos. :p

The women's rights movement did cross efforts with the civil rights movment, but as DSTCHAOS mentioned in a later post, how much parity came out of it for caucasian vs. african american women is up for debate. Clearly, African American women face additional discriminations based solely on their skin color.

To the NPC/NPHC debate (LOL at Senusret he's just determined to have a full-on "race war" somewhere on this forum!), I think what you'll find in the history of NPCs are individual members who may have been active in the women's movement (ala my girl H.E. Butterfield), but working on behalf of the movement was not on the agenda of the NPC orgs themselves. Our founders, though, without a doubt, were pioneers on their campuses and did their own thing to promote women in their time and place.

NPHC orgs seem to have a much higher level involvement as a whole with the rights movements, so while I don't think it's necessarily an apples to oranges thing, I do think there are much different national directives about the role the national org should take in these larger national "causes".

Some interesting reads that provide info. on most of the above:
A Short History of the Women's Movement: http://www.legacy98.org/move-hist.html -- about halfway down, under "The Movement Expands", notable activists are named, among them are Ida B. Wells and Mary Church Terrell , the only 2 black women to sign the petition that led to the formation of the NAACP, and just overall kick-a$$ ladies. And here's an article from a 2002 edition of Black Issues in Higher Education entitled Did black folks gain from the women's movement?

All my NPC history books are packed, so I can't contribute as I would like now. :(

Hot Damn! :D

Wait a minute! None of you has an exclusive license on the use of "equal rights." It has been used long before the meaning it has to many of you today. These women were fighting for the same rights the male students enjoyed. The examples I cited were among the most absurd for being placed on probation. The facts are that women were barely tolerated by some professors who thought they were wasting space. At many institutions they were not allowed in the student union, couldn't be a cheerleader or play in the band, and were subject to many other ridiculous requirements. Thanks to brave ladies like these, your life on campus was much more fulfilling. I did not indicate that these were the ONLY sorority women fighting a good cause. I thought the story interesting because it was the first widely publicized case -- and the first in which supposedly dainty sorority women stood up for their rights, and accomplished it because of a savvy sorority leader who was a feminist long before the term became popular.