National Panhellenic Conference will celebrate its Centennial Year October 2001 * Oct

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The beginnings of NPC: A Brief History (Part I)

"A Fraternity that holds itself aloof from its mates, quickly grows too weak to give help and too useless to receive it."
--The Golden Key, 1883

By 1882, the Greek system had grown to comprise about 36 groups, including six fraternities for women. During this early time in Greek history, rivalry was rampant. To learn secrets or secure the records of another fraternity was considered an "achievement."

Between the increase in Greek numbers and their penchant for competition, fraternities attracted more than their share of unwanted attention. In 1882, The Golden Key lamented that for nearly a decade fraternities had been singled out for undeserved criticism and suspicion by both college administrators and leading newspapers of the day. The "great mass of people" would judge from newspaper accounts that each fraternity is "purely an evil...which if left to itself, will work for the undermining of the college and the emoralization of its students," one editorial said.

Secrecy also contributed to fraternity criticism. "Why keep a good thing secret?" was the often-posed question of the day. And in 1883,The Golden Key called for its end. "Absolute secrecy set the fraternities against each other in bitter opposition, because they did not know each other's purposes, principles or strength. Absolute secrecy created a bad impression on outsiders, who could not guess what terrible thing was so shrouded and veiled and whispered over. (It) disarmed our friends, who could not defend us since they were obliged to confess that they knew nothing about us."

Importantly, The Golden Key editorial pointed out that absolute secrecy "destroyed the idea of a common fraternity cause by keeping members of the Greek body apart, prevented cooperation for any common aim, narrowed our influence and consequent usefulness, and made it easy for us to be oppressed and separately crushed..."

Not surprisingly, it was fraternity editors who, frequently writing about these issues, were first to propose a formal meeting among the Greek groups. On February 22, 1883, as 14 representatives of Greek groups met at the Fraternity Editors convention in Philadelphia, the editors of the The Beta Theta Pi at the suggestion of the Chi Phi Quarterly broached the idea of a meeting.

A Golden Key editorial after this meeting gave the Panhellenic Council idea "our most cordial support." "There are many points of discipline which one fraternity cannot carry out unless the others are governed by similar laws," the article explained, adding that "...it is particularly desirable that the assembled fraternities should determine their individual rights and privileges in order that they may not ignorantly trespass upon those of each other."
However, the Panhellenic Council meeting was never held in 1884; the required ten fraternities did not commit to coming to New York.

The idea of a Panhellenic Council, however, sparked such wide discussion in fraternity journals that cooperative efforts began to take place throughout the Greek system. Both collegians and alumni worked toward alleviating competition for members and campus honors. Efforts were made to eliminate "lifting," wherein a fraternity would make overtures to members already fully connected with a group. (The name comes from the practice of taking the pin of one fraternity and replacing it with one's own. Occasionally whole chapter charters were "lifted" and replaced.)

By 1890, women's fraternity magazines began suggesting actual dates for a Panhellenic convention. Kappa Kappa Gamma was the first to take action. At its August 1890 Convention in Bloomington, Illinois, Kappa Kappa Gamma voted to "extend an invitation to the different women's fraternities of the United States" to come to a Panhellenic Convention that winter, to be hosted by Phi, Kappa Kappa Gamma's chapter in Boston, Massachusetts.

...continue to Part II...