Quote:
Originally Posted by KAPital PHINUst
Just for the record:
Sigma Xi chapter was not the first chapter to secede from APO due to being forced to go co-ed.
Theta Xi chapter (Parks College of St. Louis University) was an all male chapter that had to merge with another chapter when Parks College closed down. The chapter they merged with was co-ed and would not allow the all-male group to stay all male, so the all-male group seceded from Alpha Phi Omega and formed a social fraternity which later got picked up as a chapter of Theta Xi Fraternity.
Interesting story.
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And pretty much correct. The additional information that I have heard on the issue is as follows.
At a non-APO level... Parks College was founded as an Aeronautical School in 1927 in Columbia Illinois. In 1946 he gave the school to St. Louis University. In fall 1997, St. Louis University decided to close down the campus in Illinois and move all Aeronautical and related programs onto the mail campus.
A timeline for Delta Delta chapter and Theta Xi chapter is at
http://www.slu.edu/organizations/apo/timeline.html . To boil down, Delta Delta was chartered in 1944, Theta Xi was chartered in 1950. Delta Delta went inactive in 1971, and reactivated in 1990 (I believe it was reactivated co-ed). In 1997 when SLU-Parks was closed, all of the students at SLU-Parks became students at SLU Main campus.
As such, the question as to how to handle to the two charters came up. I know the Regional Director ended up at campus at one point in the discussion. Delta Delta was a fairly large chapter and I believe that internally had 3(?) families designed to help with giving a smaller group for some fellowship activities. One proposal was to allow the group from Theta Xi to become an additional family, with only male new brothers added to that family. I'm not sure whether that proposal was considered seriously.
I knew that the brothers of Theta Xi chapter had looked into forming a chapter of Theta Xi fraternity and I thought they had succeeded, but apparently that chapter of Theta Xi is not active any more if it was. Theta Xi National doesn't show a chapter at that school and Theta Xi isn't in the list of F/S at SLU.