Page 23 - 1914 September - To Dragma

3 2 2 TO DRAGMA OF ALPHA OMICRON PI

ALPHA KAPPA LAMBDA

On April 22, 1 9 1 4 a new non-secret, national fraternity was in-
corporated. Its ideals are to develop the social, intellectual, moral
and religious welfare of its members, also to foster and encourage
among its members Christian principles, service, higher education,
culture and refinement.

THE SORORITIES

T H E WESLEYAN SITUATION

May would seem to be the month when the anti-sorority germ
gets in its deadliest work. A year ago it was Barnard sorority life
that fell under its blight j this year it is Wesleyan's. This college
is not very well known in the country at large, so the decision of
its trustees to permit no further initiations will not attract the atten-
tion that the faculty fiat did in the case of Barnard. Wesleyan
College, incorporated by the Legislature of Georgia and opened in
1839, was the first woman's college to receive a charter from any
state, and was one of a number of schools opened about the same
time in various parts of the South for the higher education of
women. As its name would indicate, it is a church school, as are
so many others in that same section of the country. I t was not
until rather recently that the college did work that would be accepted,
year for year, by standard universities, but the institution has always
demanded much of its students and has always attracted serious-
minded girls, many of whom have gone after graduation into the
foreign missionary field.

Quite a few of the present matriculates are at Wesleyan, because
mother or grandmother claim it as alma mater. There is a bit
of convent flavor about the college, a flavor imparted to it perhaps
by the compulsory chapel and by the call of the chapel bell, which
rings for classes as well as for religious services. For Wesleyanites
the ringing of this sweet-toned bell has much of history and even
romance connected with it, for the original bell, a brass one, was
melted into bullets by the women of Macon during the Civil War.
The present bell was presented to the college by the Macon Chapter
of the Daughters of the Confederacy, a chapter which bears the name
of the South's sweetest-voiced poet, Sidney Lanier.

Wesleyan was the birthplace of the two oldest sororities, Alpha
Delta Pi and Phi Mu, which were founded in 1851 and 1852 re-
spectively as the Adelphean and the Philomathean societies, but
which took on Greek names and policies about a decade ago, when
they were incorporated under the laws of Georgia with a view to