Blast from the past (old Bama yearbooks)
 

For Bama grads or anyone who's interested, the UA library has put the 1968 and 1969 Corolla annuals online (click below; links are at the bottom):

http://content.lib.ua.edu/cdm4/browse.php

The Greek section is hilarious—more bouffant hairdos than you can shake a stick at, and the chapter synopses are a hoot. :)

thanks for the link-they were fun to look at.

I love old yearbooks! I have several old volumes of The Cactus (Texas) besides mine and my parents'.

That is AWESOME. Thanks for posting. Do they have any others besides just those years???

Tiny, what years of the Cactus do you have?

Hey! You act like that was a long time ago...it was just day before yesterday!!:o

Let' see : I have 1938, 1939, 1941-1944 (parents'), 1951, and 1971-1974 (mine.) I do see them from time to time in antique malls, as well as yearbooks from other universities in the area.

Actually this is cool!:D

I got a U-Mas Ag UM-Amherst, year book! Wow, it is neat! Shows the LXA Chapter House back then and the Brothers!!!!!

Ah, history is Fantastic!

TinyDancer, Nice collection!

We do collect strange things at times!:D

Wow - I remember looking at my Dad's Cactus from 1950 and 51 (?). There were so many more NPC sororities then!

Wow, that's a glimpse of history. It's a shock to see how white the student body was. I'm sure the campus looks quite different now.

One thing that made me a little sad was seeing the Beauties. Many would be considered chunky today. It's depressing to think that we're putting young women into this crazy squeeze when just one generation ago, we all would have thought they had perfect figures.
________
Ivana_

Does anyone know what years Alpha Epsilon Phi was at 'Bama?

Believe it was late '40s to sometime in the '60s.

According to the Alpha Epsilon Phi Chartered Chapter List.

Alpha Rho
January 21, 1948
University of Alabama
Tuscaloosa, AL

FYI: No end date given.

The girl most likely to carry a switchblade in her purse:

http://i10.tinypic.com/4qohi12.jpg

:D

Some observations:

I really would like to know the story behind this blurb from Chi Omega:

I'm assuming by "riverboat" they're referring to their house . I can see the comparison.

In any case, that chapter seems like a hoot. :D

I found this in the Delta Gamma section:

That comment at the end seems way more candid than anything I could imagine from a modern NPC chapter.

I remember the smallest chapter on my campus being plagued by rumors of their imminent closure the entire time I was in school. They didn't actually close until a year after I left, so these rumors were affecting them at least a good five years before they actually did close. It just seems somewhat interesting that they would joke about something like that. Seems to me like it would just feed rumors.

Interestingly enough, according to irishpipes' list, they were closed about a decade after this yearbook was published.

Also, one sorority chapter was bragging about nearly half the chapter having a 2.0. I'm praying that Bama had a signifigantly different grading system than the 4.0 system I'm familiar with. (Or perhaps it was a typo?)

Alabama was on the 3.0 system through 1975..at least... Don't remember when they switched to 4.0. The DG chapter closed at the end of the spring 1978 semester. The Chi Omega house was often referred to as a riverboat because of its resemblance to one. It still looks like one, even though they added another floor. It's interesting how small the chapters were. Now they're running anywhere from 150 to 200 members.
Bouffant hairdos? Those are pretty mild. Now when they post the 1962, '63, '64, and '65 yearbooks...then you'll see some REAL bouffants.

I thought it was interesting that there are pictures of what appears to be alcohol (beer bottles) in the Greek section...can you imagine that happening in a university yearbook these days? :eek:

(Other random thought...I thought old-school Southern women didn't drink out of bottles? :confused:)

I noticed how small the chapters were, too. There also sems to have been a lot of shuffling in that era: KAT and AGD were both new, and a couple of chapters had just closed. There were also a couple of chapters that were soon to close.

It's interesting. Mind you, I know next to nothing about Bama's Greek system except what I've read on GC, but I'm assuming chapters have become so large in part because of the cost of colonizing and the chance that a new group may find survival to be hard. That doesn't seem to have been a problem back then. I wonder what changed?

:confused: Our Psi chapter was chartered in 1921.

Whoops. I meant Alpha Omicron Pi! Sorry!

Don't ask me how I got AGD. :p

Dingdingding!!

I think you've hit the nail on the head. Along with cost, it seems to be more important these days to have a showy chapter house. And tradition is very highly valued, hence the new chapters having a hard time surviving.

My aunt was an AEPhi at 'Bama, and I can't remember what years she was there!

I noticed that the Alpha Xi Delta section of the '69 yearbook included an architect's rendering of a new house. Kind of sad and ironic considering that they closed a few years later ...

AnchorAlumna, DG had a really cool house. Was it built specifically for your chapter? It looks old and historic.

http://i10.tinypic.com/68asfpf.jpg

It looks like that artist's rendering is now the Gamma Phi house. It turned out a little different --there's no third story and no porches on the front -- but AXiD and I believe SK have been in our house before us.

Here's a photo of what it looks like now:

http://www.uagammaphibeta.com/images/house.jpg

Re: the Chi O chapter—I've been reading Mockingbird, the new biography of Harper Lee, and apparently she had a reputation as the campus oddball (the author quotes a Phi Mu who remembers her as a "nerd"). It speaks well of the Nu Beta chapter, though, that they liked her anyway. :)

Thanks, sweetie! Yes, it was built for us, but it wasn't that old. I believe it was built in the late 1940s or very early 1950s. It had columns at one time (UA has a requirement that all buildings have columns), but they rotted and were removed long before I got there, and were never replaced. The building was torn down for stadium expansion.

You are correct, this is now the Gamma Phi house, with quite a bit of renovation. It was built for Alpha Xi Delta - in fact it was only about a year old when I was a freshman. Sigma Kappa was never in this house. They were in a big ugly brick house next to Delta Gamma (next to the stadium). That house was originally built for Alpha Phi. When I was in school, a fraternity moved into it (Phi Sigma Kappa? Phi Kappa Sigma? One of 'em). That building was also torn down for stadium expansion.


I think sorority "images" were a LOT more fluid back then, expecially since it was a much smaller campus and everybody knew more people. And in the 1930s, it wasn't unusual for a chapter to have 20 or 30 members...or even fewer.

There is no physical room left on the traditional sorority row...in fact, the stadium expansion eliminated 4 sorority houses, although only 1 was being used at the time as a sorority house.
Not to mention that it's highly competitive, and Panhellenic has never been supportive of struggling groups. That campus seems to need to have a "little group" as a target for the "don't pledge them" rumors.:mad: You can find my rants elsewhere.

I've read the book too. I'm so glad she's a Chi Omega. My favorite book is To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee has been such a recluse for most of her life; however, she has in recent years left her small Alabama hometown for a few functions in L.A. (and I don't mean LOWER ALABAMA!!!)and NYC. She was invited to attend the 2004 Chi Omega National Convention as the recipient of our Woman of Achievement Award. She did not attend, but sent a lovely letter signed, "Nell Harper Lee, Nu Beta"

Okay I get it now. Reminds me of UCF. The unhoused situation is mostly survivable there (also helps that almost half of the NPC chapters are now in that situation) but it's certainly not pretty for the chapters that are stuck.

I can see how lack of comparable housing could equal a quick death for the chapter involved at Bama.

Where did the sorority who's house was bulldozed for stadium expansion go?

Man, that house was right under the stadium. I asked them how they stood it during games. Apparently, one always goes to the games so it didn't matter.

The new house is unbelievably gorgeous! An alum told me that they told the school that if they took their house, they'd have to give them this and that and that and they got it!

I think...not entirely sure, but I think Gamma Phi has always been in the old Alpha Xi Delta house. After DG sold the house to the university it was used as an honors dorm. Delta Sigma Theta rented it for a while. Gamma Phi might have lived there temporarily while their house was being renovated. KK, do you know what Sigma Delta Tau will be doing with their house once the Betas move out?

I know we definitely weren't always in the old AXiD house. We were in one of the houses by the stadium from when we chartered in '88 til whenever they bulldozed those houses ('96?). I've seen pictures, it looked sort of big and square. I think it was across from either Kappa or Phi Mu.

The SDT house, once Beta is out ... I've heard several things. If they could get their numbers up enough to run it, certainly they would want to move back in. But I've also heard that Phi Mu wants to get their hands on it because their house is entirely too small to hold chapter ... they've been having to hold chapter meetings in a church gym or something like that. So we'll see!

The Lambda Chi's are actually moving into the SDT house because their house is undergoing renevations all next year

I was surprised at how many of the pictures had women holding cigarettes!

For those of you who enjoy this kind of thing (I have a minor obsession with old yearbooks), the University of Wisconsin has almost every yearbook prior to 1977 online:

http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/UW/...BksAbout.shtml

The 1940s are my favorite, although the 1960s/1970s include some creative Greek photo shoots.

Oh fun. :rolleyes:

Yeah, it seems like all the fraternities are renovating or rebuilding their houses ever since the University started offering super low interest (or is it zero interest?) loans for Greek orgs to fix up their houses.

Thanks! Wow, those Wisky houses are reDICULOUS!

Go to the Wisconsin 1934 yearbook, and read the write ups on the frats. Hilarious.

THIS IS MAKING MY WORKDAY more amusing!!!!

This Yearbook has a section called "The Fraternal", and has this picture:

http://images.library.wisc.edu/UW/UW...938/M/0251.gif


Because of the skull; TEKE or Phi Kappa Sigma - I'm lookin at you! Do you boys do this?!? ;) Just kidding of course!

Love the small pic up top right.

http://images.library.wisc.edu/UW/UW...940/M/0232.gif