Page 26 - 1913 May - To Dragma

TO DRAGMA OF ALPHA OMICRON PI 183

man pledging, practised since fraternities have first been admitted
to the college.

W h e n the vote on freshman or sophomore pledging was called
f o r , there were f o u n d to be five i n favor of and six opposed to
freshman pledging. According to our constitution, however, there
must be a unanimous decision in the case of pledge day. N o one was
w i l l i n g to compromise and each fraternity felt confident her view was
the correct one. Upon studying the minutes of our assoociation. how-
ever, to our great delight we found that the regulation making
eligible for fraternities only the girls who had made nine hours
work, was to be tried f o r only one year. We thought then freshman
pledging would be reinstated immediately and a l l the haranguing of
four months stopped.

I t was at this point that those in favor of sophomore pledging
called for the view of the Faculty on the question. A f t e r the Faculty
had considered it, our Dean spoke to Pan-Hellenic and said that,
whereas the Faculty wished to leave such matters to the fraternities
to decide, and to send their decision to him f o r his approval, in this
case he would have to settle the question by the minutes of Faculty
meeting of October 17, 1910. I t seems that after the fraternities i n
1910 had decided to t r y sophomore pledging f o r one year only, the de-
cision was sent to the faculty with the " f o r one year" clause omitted
by mistake. The faculty had approved of this resolution, and on the
strength of it only, had admitted two new fraternities into Randolph-
Macon. Doctor Pattillo said that as soon as Pan-Hellenic sent
another unanimous decision to the faculty, they w o u l d probably agree
to i t , but not unless unanimous. We were thus l e f t w i t h the same
conditions of pledging, that the m a j o r i t y of us dislike. I have gone
into this discussion fully, for the threatened break of our Pan-Hel-
lenic Association has been heard of by many of our friends, and they
have asked quite often f o r a f u l l explanation of i t .

Having had this judgment forced upon us, we all decided to work
together with utmost determination to get the best results possible.
T o lessen the time and money spent in a year's rushing was our first
important question to meet. Some of our Pan-Hellenic representa-
tives thought that it would suffice to put before all fraternities that it
was necessary, and w o u l d be considered honorable, to cut down
rushing in every way. T h i s was tried, and f o u n d to be very unsatis-
factory, especially for our chairman, who was called upon time after
time to decide whether or not such and such a case w o u l d be con-
sidered "too much rushing". We then tried to make some
rules to regulate our rushing. This was, of course, a very difficult
t h i n g to l i m i t , and was only settled by having what seems to be i n