Eight Founding schools or seven? (Change on Wikipedia)
 

Someone who has the handle of gssmarketing on Wikipedia has made a number of changes to the Wikipedia pages for Gamma Sigma Sigma. You can see the total changes at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...ldid=183385288 .

While some of them are relatively minor (putting periods between the letters of Project IMPACT) and appear to mostly or entirely in good faith, the first one is the one that seems most significant to me. The person deleted University of Miami from the list of schools which were represented at Beekman Towers and changed the number of founding schools from 8 to 7. Does anyone know why Miami would have been deleted?

For further information, these total changes represent the only things that the gssmarketing user has changed on Wikipedia.

Randolph Finder

It's still 8.

Six founding organizations.
 

The national website ( http://www.gammasigmasigma.org/gss_mission-history.htm) now talks about Six founding organizations and Seven founding schools. Guess the answer to number of founding schools is now seven.

Randy

I counted eight schools.

No, it's still 8.
That's my answer and I'm sticking to it. ;)

University of Miami doesn't count anymore, I guess. There are seven schools in the first sentence after the colon, UofH, BC, LACC, NYU,BU, Drexel & Queens.

I think I'll let a GSS decide if it counts.

Oddly enough, Alpha Phi Omega also has a history wierdness that could be used to change a number (14 founders) that is as ingrained as 8 schools is for Gamma Sigma Sigma. If you look at the Alpha Chapter charter (http://ww2.lafayette.edu/~library/sp...a/Charter.html), you'll see more names in the list of Brothers than those 14 listed as founders. I haven't quite figured out all of the names, but the third one on the first line of brothers is JC McCune, who according to the APO history book in the "Some of those who became new members approximately from the start of Alpha Phi Omega were"

According the the GSS Marketing director (a member of their National Board), it doesn't anymore. I started talking to her after she changed the entry on Wikipedia.

Honestly if you asked someone on the National Board, then why are you asking again on GC? :confused: Particularly if you already went to the National site and saw it for yourself?

It's right there in black and white. You answered your own question. In my mind, it's still 8 schools. If you read you'll see that the U of Miami group joined several years later; but it still makes them a Founding School to me because they were already included in that original group. So to me, it's STILL 8. ;)

However to clear this all up (and probably providing more information than necessary), we as a National body found that we needed to revise our history to clear up the years-old Ohio vs. Miami debate (you asked about that too in the past), and that puts it all to rest, as well as provide a deeper background into how our sorority was founded BEFORE the 1952 Convention. Our pledge manuals have been revised to reflect the change.

Proof that Wikipedia is NOT your friend.

I tracked down the email for the GSS Marketing director well after I had asked to Greekchat.

I'm glad that the history has been properly investigated.

I have found some of the Alpha Phi Omega National Magazines from the 1950s with some information on the fact that Alpha Phi Omega was helping in getting Women's Community Service Organizations in contact with the group at Boston U that eventually became Epsilon chapter. It goes go into more depth that that...

I'd love to see more GSS sisters improving the Gamma Sigma Sigma article on Wikipedia.

Well the reason why the University of Miami is not considered is because they didnt attend the last day of the convention which is clearly what we celebrate as our national founder's day. Being that they didnt attend, they werent in the number of women who finalized things. Yes, they were there in the original group, but if we celebrat oct 12 as our founder's day, then they should have been present. But I know that most of us learned that there were eight school, cuz I did, and most of us will continue to teach the eight school thing as well. Let's just make sure we totally understand the 7 and 8 school difference.

this is an old thread but I would like to add that I would think that since our organization has gone to the point of researching this to change our member-in-training materials and expanding our history that we should teach the correct information to our members with an FYI that "when I pledged, it was XYZ but the sorority did more research and it was actually XYZ" so you should remember the NEW stuff. clearly it has been backed by printed documents and so even if you were (and I) were taught different, we know better and i believe we should teach the accurate information ... just my humble opinion

I think that Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_Sigma_Sigma) has been updated to match the current member-in-training information. Hmm, I wonder what the group at U of Miami that went to Beekman Towers was named. (Even though they are *not* a founding organization of Gamma Sigma Sigma)

From the GSS National Archivist:

Eta was reserved at the 1st national convention in Chicago, but University of Miami in Coral Gables came into Gamma Sig as Upsilon in 1958, 6 years after the representative from U of M showed up at Beekman Towers.