High School Sororities - Interesting 1914 Policy

[Sen's Revenge]

So I was minding my business on Newspapers.com, looking for something else entirely, when I discovered a newspaper article about high school fraternities and sororities. Actually, I discovered several. Apparently in the 19-teens, high school GLOs were becoming increasingly popular among the students and were quite unpopular with administrators. So much so, the issue was making the news.

The October 4, 1914 edition of the Washington Evening Star said:

"High school sororities will quickly decline...because of action taken by the National Pan-Hellenic Congress."

Later, the article says a letter from NPC was circulated to high school girls notifying them that if they maintain membership in their high school sororities, it will make them ineligible for NPC groups after September 1915.

Never knew this. Maybe I missed it on here before.

[Sciencewoman]

I'm always kind of amazed by "the more things change, the more they stay the same." Whenever the younger generation is up to some questionable shenanigans, the older generation is irritated and thinking up ways to stop said shenanigans.

[psy]

Weren't high school sororities and fraternities banned in many places because they often functionally became gangs, IIRC?

[Titchou]

Maybe but not here in the deep south. They were still popular into the 60s and after.

[Sen's Revenge]

Originally Posted by psy

Weren't high school sororities and fraternities banned in many places because they often functionally became gangs, IIRC?

I've never heard that it was because they operated like gangs.

Fraternities were definitely banned in DC schools in the middle 90s when I was there. The rationale I was told was because we couldn't have selective organizations.

However, all the NPHC orgs in DC had some sort of youth affiliates after school hours, so if we really wanted that experience, we could be in a beautillion or cotillion from the Alphas, AKAs, or the Links; Jabberwock or Delta Academy from the Deltas; Sigma Beta Club with the Sigmas; Archonettes with the Zetas;, Rhoers with Sigma Gamma Rho; or Kappa League. The National Sorority of Phi Delta Kappa for teachers also had Xinos for girls and Kudos for boys. The Ques now have the Rhino Club, which didn't exist when I was in school.

All that to say that we didn't miss high school Greek life.

[Cheerio]

Originally Posted by psy

Weren't high school sororities and fraternities banned in many places because they often functionally became gangs, IIRC?

Originally Posted by Titchou

Maybe but not here in the deep south. They were still popular into the 60s and after.

Young ladies attending my high school during the 70s, 80s and 90s formed many special clique groups, kind of like sororities, that wore individual group t-shirts every Friday. Some of the t-shirts were emblazoned with popular beer commercial quotes. Some groups stuck a nickname on the back of each members shirt; some nicknames were just as bad as the beer slogans on their shirt front.

The type of gals forming these mixed groups were mostly popular kids with a high GPA ranking: cheerleaders, poms, yearbook and newspaper editors, student government leaders, and really good friends of same. Most group members also enjoyed living with parents who were community leaders, teachers, school board members and/or monetary supporters of school functions.

These special high school groups were only banned at my old school when an executive principal decided they were too exclusive, never banned or demoted due to poor taste displayed in their shirt mottos/nicknames.

A good percentage of the women from my HS class in these special HS groups became NPC members, in a truly wide variety of NPCs.

[Sen's Revenge]

I guess this is just the time of year that I do this kind of research.

From a Washington Post article dated February 22, 1959, seven sororities existed at Wilson High School in Northwest DC. Their names are:

Alpha Zeta
Delta Rho Gamma
Kappa Beta Psi
Omega Phi Delta
Pi Alpha Phi
Sigma Beta Nu
Sigma Delta Nu

If anyone is looking for any cultural context, DC schools had been desegregated for a few years by the time of this article, but it is highly unlikely that Wilson had more than a handful of Black students. These sororities were probably all white by virtue of the school and neighborhood composition.

[nyapbp]

From 1912 until 1921, high school fraternities and sororities were on the radar of GLOS. This is from a synopsis I did for a Pi Phi manual decades ago.

1912 11th NATIONAL PANHELLENIC CONGRESS
October 17-19, 1912, at Congress Hotel in Chicago. Cora Allen McElroy, Alpha Phi, presided; Lillian W. Thompson, Gamma Phi Beta, was secretary. Phi Mu and Kappa Delta were admitted to membership.
Ida Shaw Martin, Delta Delta Delta, was elected to serve as historian for the following five years. Prior to the meeting, the Grand Presidents met as a group for the first time. All but two of the Grand Presidents were in attendance. High school fraternities were creating an image problem for the collegiate organizations. John Calvin Hanna, a member of Beta Theta Pi and principal of the Oak Park, Illinois, High School, presented a paper entitled “High School Fraternities, Especially as Related to College Fraternities.” The Congress was impressed with Hanna’s message and agreed to condemn the existence of high school fraternities.

1913 12th NATIONAL PANHELLENIC CONGRESS
October 16-18, 1913, at Congress Hotel in Chicago. Lillian Thompson, Gamma Phi Beta, presided; Lois Smith Crann, Alpha Chi Omega, was secretary.
The Congress adopted a uniform scholarship blank and uniform house rules, favored extension of the women’s fraternity system and, again, condemned high school fraternities. The Congress contributed $200 to the Chicago Collegiate Bureau of Occupation, an organization which attempted to place women in professions other than teaching. The editors of fraternity magazines held a separate session before the official NPC meeting and agreed to cooperate. A chairman was elected to act as a clearinghouse for editorial information.


1915 14th NATIONAL PANHELLENIC CONGRESS
August 12-14, 1915, at Claremont Hotel in Berkeley, CA. Amy Olgen Parmalee, Delta Delta Delta, presided;
Lena G. Baldwin, Alpha Xi Delta, was secretary; Mary Love Collins, Chi Omega, was treasurer.
A Panhellenic Creed was adopted. It was voted to hold biennial meetings instead of yearly meetings. A study of cooperative buying and catering was authorized. Banta’s Greek Exchange was named the NPC’s official publication and a Panhellenic Editor was appointed. A year was set as the time limit before a student, who had broken her pledge or resigned from one NPC fraternity, could be asked to join another. A ruling was made regarding the ineligibility for membership in an NPC group to women who had belonged to high school fraternities.

The ruling was revoked in 1921 "because of the feeling that the rule had served its purpose in expressing the opposition of NPC to high school sororities and was promoting injustice in a few isolated cases which came within its scope."

[Sen's Revenge]

Originally Posted by nyapbp

The ruling was revoked in 1921 "because of the feeling that the rule had served its purpose in expressing the opposition of NPC to high school sororities and was promoting injustice in a few isolated cases which came within its scope."

Interesting!