Page 7 - 1914 September - To Dragma

306 TO DRAG MA OF ALPHA OMICRON PI

that this year the lowest average of any woman's fraternity is
50 per cent above the passing grade shows progressively good results.

The University of Missouri and De Pauw co-operate with us
in a similar way, while several other places the faculty formally
report grades and averages to the individual chapters at the
university.

This fall, a dean of women at a college where the social rules
of the women's self-government association were very inadequate,
called into conference a number of the alumna? to discuss what she
desired to establish as social standards f o r the college. Several
of these alumna: chanced to be fraternity women, each of whom
a few days later voluntarily, and without the knowledge of the
dean, called together her college chapter and discussed the whole
social situation with it and asked its aid in setting a better stand-
ard. When the dean proposed her new plan to the self-govern-
ment association these chapters gave it their sincere support and,
as a result, wise rules that few thought this independent self-
government association would even consider, became part of its code
of conduct.

Another dean within the past month told me that she had found
that an appeal to the fraternity chapters was always given courteous
consideration and never rejected unless for reasons that she herself
had to acknowledge as convincing. Also, that once the fraternity
chapters were pledged to a cause, the rest of the student body, two-
thirds of which is non-fraternity, would fall into line too; while
measures first presented direct to a mass meeting of students often
failed of endorsement.

A president of a great university, with many hundreds of women
students, recently dined at a chapter house where I was a guest.
To me he said, " I t is such a relief to know that even twenty of our
woman students are comfortably housed under wholesome supervision
such as this house gives. Without adequate dormitories, which we
never can provide i f the student body continues to grow as i t
has the past few years, it is a grave problem to give our women
students proper housing conditions. The fraternities have done
much to help us solve the problem, not only through their own
homes, but, also, because they have encouraged and helped other
groups of girls to club together and at least engage all of some fair
boarding house, thus making it more or less of a home."

Another college opened its first woman's dormitory recently and
for its conduct adopted in toto the house rules its chapter house
fraternities had themselves made and kept for some years.