Originally Posted by IotaSister
I was a member of the Iota Alpha Pi chapter at Adelphi College (now Adelphi University), in Garden City, N.Y., between 1957-1961. At the time, Adelphi was largely a commuter college and, as others have mentioned in this thread, joining a sorority gave me a sense of being connected to the campus and to a large group of friends I could always find sitting in the Panhellenic Lounge or in the cafeteria. In those days, all of the sororities and fraternities on campus restricted membership by religion, although there was nothing remotely religious, about any of IAPi's activities, it was simply a sorority which a young Jewish woman was able to join.
Our chapter was large and robust and, particularly in my Freshman and Sophomore years, it formed the core of my social circle. I spent considerably more time in the cafeteria drinking coffee, and playing bridge, with my sisters than I spent in classes. I fondly remember the red pledge beanies, practicing for our competitions with the other sororities, and the feeling of pride I had as a member of Iota Alphi Pi. During my Junior year I became more academically serious and began focusing on graduate school and a Ph.D. program, and a profession, at a time when most of my sorority sisters, like most young women of that era, were more concerned with finding husbands and settling into marriage soon after graduation from Adelphi. So, while I remained active in Iota, it became less and less central in my life those last two years at Adelphi. I did not maintain contact with my sisters after I went on to graduate school.
But I cannot imagine what my college experience would have been like without the sense of belonging and solid social support I gained from being a member of Iota Alpha Pi. I had just turned 17 when I started college, and was still very much an adolescent, not particularly sophisticated or self confident. My older sorority sisters seemed so knowing and more mature, I still remember how I looked up to them, with more than a tinge of envy for their greater sense of self-assurance. How I might have floundered without their help.
I also still remember how, in the days before the Women's Movement, we would sit in the cafeteria and discuss a woman's place in society, and whether many would be wasting their education, and their potential, by becoming only housewives and mothers, and whether woman deserved to expand their sexual freedom, as men seemed able to do so easily. This was at a time when women were not even allowed to wear pants on our campus, unless there was snow on the ground. Those discussions in the late 1950's certainly made me think, and definitely influenced how I felt about conformity and conventional norms of femininity. And it was my older and wiser IAPi sisters who encouraged me to think about such things years before the larger culture began grappling with the same feminist issues.
I am sorry to learn that Iota no longer exists. In the safe, protected sphere of my memory, those lively, lovely young women will always be hanging out together in Panhellenic Hall.
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