[AOII Angel]

Sorry to dredge up an old thread, but I'd never seen it before OTW brought it up in the "History" thread in the Phi Mu forum. Reading this thread made me feel like clearing up some history about AOII and Kappa Kappa Gamma.

According to the AOII history book, Kappa Kappa Gamma was the first group at Barnard, asked to colonize when the school opened in 1890 for women students. Kappa originally extended invitations to all students to join until around 1895 or 6 when they became too large with the ever increasing student body and decided to begin selectively accepting new members to their group.
Yes, Jessie, Bess and Helen were all invited to join, but Stella was not. We can speculate that this was because Stella was Jewish, but we can't know if this was actually the reason. Jessie, Bess and Helen decided not to accept their invitations because of Stella, but this was NOT the reason AOII was founded. AOII doesn't include this episode in the story of our founding, because it would overshadow why the founders chose to form AOII.

AOII was founded when Stella and crew were juniors, so this wouldn't have been a reaction to the Kappa incident. The founders of AOII wanted to memorialize their great friendship by starting AOII. They were not trying to show up Kappa, and I think they had no hard feelings towards them. Stella was one of our greatest founders having written our entire ritual and having served as the first chapter then first national president. She also pioneered our first expansion to Tulane.

The question of discrimination against Jewish women was again raised in 1909 when AEPhi was founded at Barnard. They don't include any allegations of discrimination in their official founding history either, and I hope that the early women of AOII had not refused to accept Jewish women.

In the end, Barnard eliminated all sororities shortly after the founding of AEPhi after nonaffiliated students complained about the GLOs. Apparently, their complaints were unfounded, but the administration felt like the groups were divisive for the Barnard community and outlawed them.


Sidenote: I always find it interesting that AOII and AEPhi don't celebrate our shared history.