Bound By a Mighty Vow: Sisterhood and Women's Fraternities, 1870-1920

3 A National Society to Rank with the First in America: Expansion and Exclusion in the Women’s Greek System

A National Society to Rank with the First in America Expansion and Exclusion in the Women’s Greek System Upon taking their oaths of loyalty to Kappa Alpha Theta, Kappa Kappa Gamma, or any of the other leading women’s fraternities, new initiates became part of a nationwide fraternal network and not just of the particular chapter into which they were initiated. The vows required of sisters, that they pledge to “befriend and to comfort, to assist, support and defend the members of this fraternity in all their laudable efforts toward a higher intellectual and moral life and like-wise to have a due regard for their temporal wants, if occasion should require,” covered all women no matter their age, geographic location, or place in society.1 In their ideal, the vows binding all sisters together served as the very basis of the fraternal relationship, enabling as they did extensive networks of support, assistance, and friendship. They fostered ties that brought rewards for those who took them, opening academic, extracurricular , social, and even vocational doors that otherwise may have remained closed.2 At the same time, though, these bonds of sisterhood also brought complications, as their relatively broad-reaching nature—in encompassing members of multiple social, cultural, generational, geographical , and socioeconomic backgrounds3 —created situations in which women sharing little in common other than a fraternity badge found themselves in “sisterly” relationships with one another, expected to support and nurture one another because all had taken a pledge of loyalty to the same organization. As Kappa Alpha Theta and its fellow women’s fraternities developed into nationwide networks comprising many thousands of women, maintaining a sense of unity among members and common ideals for the organizations proved challenging. 3 81 By 1900, enough women had pledged themselves to a secret society that members of a particular group no longer came from similar social, geographic, and cultural backgrounds. Indeed, between 1879, the first year for which such statistics exist, and 1920, Kappa Alpha Theta alone ballooned from 275 members to a total of 8,133 members, 677 of them active collegians and the rest alumnae. During the same period of time, the average size of each college chapter expanded, from anywhere between roughly four and nine members in the first two decades of the fraternity ’s existence to between 33 and 46 by 1920. Kappa Kappa Gamma experienced even greater growth, expanding from 558 members in 1883 to 9,329 in 1920, a number exceeded only by Pi Beta Phi’s 10,571.4 Along with this growth in membership, Kappa Alpha Theta, like its rivals , also expanded its reach by adding new chapters in a process the fraternity world called “extension.” Between 1870 and 1880, the founding chapter of Kappa Alpha Theta helped form several other branches, four of which remained in operation at the close of the decade. In the next ten years, the fraternity added eleven more branches, for a total of sixteen chapters. By 1900, Kappa Alpha Theta boasted twenty-two active chapters comprising a collegiate membership of 401 women, and in the next ten years it added an additional eight branches for a total of thirty chapters . Theta’s fiftieth year, 1920, marked the fraternity’s growth to fortythree chapters, a number that brought Kappa Alpha Theta only one shy of Kappa Kappa Gamma’s forty-four chapters.5 The soaring numbers of women pledging themselves to Greek-letter societies raised the profile of these organizations on campus and brought them greater networking capacities in social and vocational arenas. At the same time, such growth also increased tensions between different chapters of each fraternity and heightened conflicts over the meaning of fraternity membership. Opening a society to too many individuals brought the risk of weakening a fraternity’s claim of including in its ranks only the worthiest female collegians. With so many women representing different viewpoints as well as social worlds united together under the banner of Kappa Alpha Theta, Kappa Kappa Gamma, or Pi Beta Phi, it was perhaps inevitable that conflict would develop over who among the collegiate women of the country should be allowed to join particular fraternities, what fraternities ought to represent, and what sisterhood and loyalty ought to mean. Indeed, in Kappa Alpha Theta, from the time each chapter received its charter, the women who belonged to the different branches imbued their 82 | A National Society own...