Page 6 - 1926 February - To Dragma

OUR FOUNDERS

(Extracts from toasts made at Upsilon Founders' Day Observance and
Sigma Initiation Banquet January 18, 1926, by Laura A. Hurd.)

I HAVE BEEN asked to offer a toast to our four beloved Found-
ers, and also through the pages of T o DRAGMA to give my
impressions of the Founders as I know them. I do not feel that
I can do justice to my subject as the impression I would convey
must be one dealing with qualities of the personality and spirit,
warmth and depth of being, the inner and finer feelings. But I
can, in some slight degree, express my reverence and gratitude
for their friendship and sisterly guidance, and for their great
g i f t of Alpha Omicron Pi to us and to the world.

For some of us, it has been our good fortune to serve in the
high councils of our fraternity and to walk close to our Found-
ers, always supported by their ever-ready help and example.
They are still as interested in our welfare as in the days when
they were classmates at Barnard. Through us, and in them-
selves, youth and appreciation of youth is perpetual. They are
just girls with us. They are proud and yet humble in the con-
sciousness of the greatness into which Alpha Omicron Pi has
grown. Confidently they face the future and know that the
greatest achievements lie before us. The plans they planned,
the dreams they dreamed, are being realized and fruition reached
in us, individually and collectively.

Our rituals are not alone idylls of beauty, but are for vital,
consecrated practice each day from the very moment of investi-
ture at initiation with the privileges of fraternity.

Recently in my fraternity reading I came across statements
such as these: "Rituals of all sororities are alike: they were
formed in the Mid-Victorian period. But they have wholly lost
their meaning to present day chapters. That fineness of ideal is
gone." I can well imagine our Founders would chortle with
merriment in being catalogued with the Mirl-Victorian..s. and
they know and we know, that the fineness of ideal abides. Times
and styles may change but, fortunate f o r Alpha Omicron Pi, the
depth of meaning of the principles of our foundation increases
with the years. Our rituals were cast in a vital form and have
us in their embrace. Let us anew resolve to seek the perfection
of that practical idealism in daily living. The earth yearns for