Starting A Sorority

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by blueangel

"Zeta Tau Alpha is known as a fraternity, not as a sorority. The Founders intended Zeta Tau Alpha be designated a 'fraternity' to distinguish the organization from the sisterhoods organized in connection with men's fraternities, called 'sororities.'"

http://web.archive.org/web/200304210...a.org/trad.htm

Originally Posted by 33girl

And again, WHAT SORORITIES DOES IT REFER TO??? Do they still exist? Were they little sister groups? Are they sororities that died out? What?

Yes, the reference would appear to be to what would later be called little sister groups, not to what we would call sororities today, and certainly not to any current or former NPC members orgs.

I believe that I have seen references to little sister orgs being called "sororities" in the days before that term came to refer exclusively to women's "fraternities." While we all know that Gamma Phi Beta was the first org to use the term "sorority" rather than "fraternity" or "fraternity for women," it must be remembered that sororitas (sisterhood) is pure Latin that would have been known to almost any fraternity man in the mid-1880s, Latin and Greek being core elements of a classical education. (Some etymologies I have looked at show the earliest use in English of the word "sorority" to have been circa 1530. Wish I had an OED handy.)

In the mid- to late-1800s, some fraternities had fairly organized "sororities," if you will, "of little sisters." I know that fraternities at Hampden-Sydney, located in the same Virginia county as Farmville, did. (My great-grandmother and her sisters were part of that group -- she wore my great-grandfather's Pike badge, which I now have. I also have an old Pike history with pictures of that chapter from the 1880s -- those pictures show the "little sisters" together with the brothers, my great-grands included.)

I would not be surprised that the founders of ZTA were familiar with the practice and terminology at Hampden-Sydney and chose to distinguish themselves from it. At the same time, the founders of KD, Tri-Sigma and ASA may not have felt the same need.

Perhaps ZTA removed the quote above from its national website to avoid risk of the very confusion seen in this thread.

[Drolefille]

Originally Posted by MysticCat

Perhaps ZTA removed the quote above from its national website to avoid risk of the very confusion seen in this thread.

That was my thought too. But if KD was there first, why avoid the term?

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by Drolefille

But if KD was there first, why avoid the term?

You never know. Perhaps the founders of ZTA thought the founders of KD should have avoided the term.

Perhaps some of the founders of ZTA had a personal connection with little sister groups at Hampden-Sydney or elsewhere that the KD founders didn't have. (The Zeta website says that while the new group was considering what to adopt as a name, "the group received valuable assistance from two of the members’ brothers -- Maud’s brother, Plummer Jones, and Frances Yancey Smith’s brother Giles Mebane Smith. Both were students at the college of William and Mary, members of men’s Greek-letter organizations and knowledgeable of Greek lore." Perhaps they advised against using the term "sorority" because of how that term was used at W&M.)

I don't know the ages of the founders of KD at the time of founding, but the founders of ZTA of were 14-15. Perhaps they felt a stronger desire to avoid any suggestion of being "little sisters."

All of these perhapses are just my guesses. I found an old and very think history of ZTA in a used bookstore a year or two ago, which we gave to my sister-in-law. If I get a chance to check that source, I'll do so.