Page 33 - 1918 October - To Dragma

328 TO DRAGMA OF ALPHA OMICRON PI

T H E SORQRITY SITUATION AT WISCONSIN

B Y GEORGE BANTA, 3» A ®, from Banta's Greek Exchange

The fraternity world knows that a few weeks ago there occurred
a curious explosion among the sororities at the University of Wiscon-
sin. I n a quiet way, i t has been discussed pretty thoroughly, of
course. The essential point of such discussion is just the one point
as to the occasion of the explosion.

While I had no reason to anticipate such a happening just at that
particular time more than any other given time, and, therefore, was
not definitely anticipating it just then, the affair brought to me no
surprise.

There was, I readily admit, an element of surprise to me in the
fact that the whole thing originated within the ranks of the sororities
themselves. This was a thing I had not expected. There is a spirit
at Wisconsin which I can best describe to myself as bolshevikism. I t
has been there a long time. The attempts of a few years ago to secure
legislative action against the fraternities had its origin among those
students tainted with this curious spirit and found its most active
lobbyists among them. The spirit itself has never died and I have
always felt that open manifestation of i t has been likely to appear at
any time.

Shortly after the official visit of Mrs. Collins to Madison, I had the
opportunity of being there and found a little time to make some
inquiry into the occurrence. The question in my mind before I reached
Madison was whether the move was merely an upthrust of purely local
gases or was preliminary to a larger explosion. I came away feeling
that it was entirely local.

By that I mean that i t came out of the peculiar individualism of
the particular students who were concerned in it. Everyone with
whom I talked was strong in the statement that each girl resigning is
an individualist of the strongest type. As one informant expressed
it, they found themselves hampered as they thought by the group
force of the particular chapter to which each belonged. The evidence
rather tends to show that they are not really true democrats, but pure
individualists, and they resented what they considered to be the con-
finement of their wings by the wires of the sorority cages. I was
assured by one who is in a position to know that some of the girls
already very much regret their action and would be glad to recall
it. The truth of i t seems to be that the movement was a pure group