Page 17 - 1908 November - To Dragma

12 TO DRAG MA OF ALPHA OMICRON PI

THE INSTALLATION OF EPSILON CHAPTER

The way it happened was this—last fall I went up to Cornell
to do a year of graduate work. I n passing, let me add that that
is a very interesting and delightful thing to do, and I recommend
it heartily to all my A O I I connections.

I was from the first, naturally interested in Cornell fraternity
life and I began straightway to ask a. hundred questions. I found
out that none of the girls' fraternities had houses at Cornell except
the A *'s who were experimenting in that direction for the first
time. The other fraternities (and when I use that word, I mean
feminine "frats") all had their headquarters at Sage, the dormitory
for the women of the University.

There were, previous to the coming of A O IT, the K's, the @'s,
the A 3»'s, and the A T's, with an average membership of about 18
including graduate students.

The fraternities have no room, or rooms, devoted to their use;
they hold their meetings in the most suitable apartments that any
of their members have to offer. A pennant or two tacked up on the
wall, and the room is transformed into a veritable sanctorum.

At the time of my appearance at Cornell this was a general feel-
ing in and out of the fraternities that there was no place for another
frat in the University. However, as I have said, there were in exist-
ence four fraternities numbering not more than 20 members each,
and, as there were at least 400 women on the campus, I felt that this
was a splendid time for Alpha

To be sure, there is no end to the clubs that exist among the
barbarians; I never dreamed that there could be so many thriving
organizations of this nature in one college

A t first glance, an observer might think that these clubs could
not interfere with the growth of fraternities, but upon a closer
acquaintance with the conditions at Cornell, he would come to under-
stand the power exercised by these societies over their various mem-
bers I t happens, but seldom, that a girl who has pledged her faith
to one of these barbarian organizations, will ignore her club to join
a frat* I t is not my belief that the fraternities often try to lure
such a person from her earlier associations

During all the time that A O IT was coming into life at Cornell,
there was a deal of excitement in the air about outside fraternities
that were trying to wedge their way into the university There was
a special crowd of girls whom we knew were banded together for
the same purpose as were we

The interesting part about this set was that they had grown out
of the same circle of congenial spirits, from which we had drawn
our prospective A O n's