Page 14 - 1918 November - To Dragma

28 TO DRAGMA OF ALPHA OMICRON PI
A PANHELLENIC MAGAZINE
Last f a l l at the meeting of editors in Chicago the Editor of the
Alpha Phi Quarterly presented the idea of a Panhellenic magazine
which was received with much interest, and the meeting voiced the
wish that a committee be appointed to present the plan to the fra-
ternity world. To that end a committee composed of Miss Frances
G. Perkins, Alpha Phi, Miss L. Pearle Green, Kappa Alpha Theta,
and Miss Elizabeth Corbett, Kappa Delta, was appointed. Owing to
the press of other duties the committee has delayed the report, but
it is hereby submitted to the fraternities represented in the National
Panhellenic Congress with the request that it be given early publicity.
Our country is at war. Among other lessons that the American
people will learn before our boys come home are those of thrift
and efficiency. I t is to be hoped that we shall learn to apply these les- through rival editions for material, which is printed and reprinted
sons to every phase of life. College women should be leaders in these
movements and be ready and willing to make such sacrifices as
they may require. Fraternity women must carefully scan their own
organizations and see if they are slackers in this respect. Already
many have given up their conventions, their formal parties, are
limiting decorations at banquets, and carefully watching to see that
the larder is Hooverized. Quarterly editors, too, have carefully
studied the situation and have improved and pruned and omitted
material t i l l they feel that they have struck rock bottom in economy
without destroying entirely the value of their publications. That
we must carefully avoid, because without convention the quarterly
becomes the main dependence of the fraternity and must be main-
tained in its efficiency.
Is it not possible to maintain, nay increase the efficiency of the
fraternity publication and at the same time effect a great saving in
time, which we all need; labor, which is scarce; and material, which
is high? Listen to the plan.
There are in National Panhellenic Congress eighteen national
women's fraternities. This organization has brought these frater-
nities in such close touch and worked so long to procure similarity
of aims that, practically, we have eighteen large groups of college
women fired with the same inspiration and working for the same
great ideals. For certainly, each of us is ready to admit that, though
results are not obtained in exactly the same way, each fraternity
has the same high and noble ambitions expressed by truth, loyalty,
and education.
Eighteen magazines express these great ideals over and over
again, and when we run out of ways of expressing them ourselves,
TO DRAGMA OF ALPHA OMICRON PI 29
we turn to the publications of our sister fraternities and copy their
ideas in our exchanges.
Why, i f we are all working for the same ends, as we most cer-
tainly are, can we not be big enough to unite in one publication, the
best we can make it, edited by a board representing in turn all
eighteen fraternities, this board employing and paying competent
professional or semi-professional women journalists to write and
procure the best literary articles we can get from the whole world
of fraternity women?
What shall we gain by this? We shall save the time of many
weary editors who now seek and write articles for eighteen quar-
terlies. Of many weary exchange editors, who laboriously seek
in magazine after magazine. We shall save the time of printers,
which is needed in important government work and will be more
and more needed as the war goes on.
We shall save the labor of three-fourths of the people now em-
ployed on fraternity magazines, which may be devoted to govern-
ment service.
We shall save materials—especially paper, we shall save postage,
ink, and office supplies now used in bringing to completion eighteen
separate and distinct publications all devoted to the interests of
one group. A l l the points might be much further developed, but
the idea is merely to make them suggestive enough so that each
reader for herself may develop the problem.
What shall we gain beside this saving of time, labor, and materials?
A bigger, better, and broader medium for our great ideals. By
pooling interests we can afford to employ the best talent in the field
and that means efficiency. With the best intentions in the world,
amateurs that we are, we can make small claims for the literary
value of the articles offered in our publications. They may be and
often are inspiring and helpful, but they may be much more than
this i f we have trained people to seek material and put it in shape.
We can afford to have illustrations which many of us are at
present omitting partly or entirely, and we shall here avoid the
great expense of duplication which occurs each time for instance
that a fraternity puts in a new chapter and in writing the account
has plates made for views of the campus. They are never used
but once and never used by another fraternity although another
fraternity the next month desires just such illustrations.
This brings us to objections—of course there are some. Are we
to lose the personals of each fraternity? The chapter letters? By no
means. I f we have not already outgrown this department and i t is