…for those of you who ever delved into the history of fraternities and sororities in general.
First, the webmaster at Los Angeles High School has indulged my personal request to post a 1901 vintage year-book here. As you can see, high school fraternities were common back then, but pretty much unheard of today. Or are they? Is it just because of the region I live in (California) that I’ve never heard of HS fraternities? On the same website, LAHS also offers to the curious the complete 1935 student handbook. Among other interesting bits of lore, we find that fraternities were strictly forbidden by 1935, not merely by school rule, but state law. How did that happen?
My other question is about chapter denomination. It seems that you have a “grand” or founding house, so to speak, then you assign greek letters to the new chapters as they are chartered. When you run out of Greek letters, then you start doubling them up…alpha alpha, alpha beta, alpha gamma, and so on.
But I notice that some chapters have names like “alpha san”, and that’s what I’m wondering about. What is ‘san’ short for? Sigma alpha nu?
My hometown had high school sorta-sororities for the girls sponsored through the local Y, but absolutely refused to sponsor high school fraternities. Reason: you thought college fraternities got out of control…
I can see the reasoning behind it. Drinking, girl chasing, and arcane ritual should best be left for a time of more maturity, or at the very least less immaturity.
Before anyone flames me, I was a proud member of the most immature fraternity to ever be disavowed by a school.
Hm, I’m afraid the bonds of brotherhood aren’t helping me with either question… I’ve never even heard of something like “Alpha san”… maybe I’m just out of it. Probably.
Oh, I would second the notion that high school fraternities were banned because of certain actions we’re all famous for, the more so for them being underage.
I too, was a proud member of a club that got put on social probation. It wasn’t a GLS, however, just a club that had many of the same features…pledging, membership by invitation, and so on.
Of my college fraternity, college band, and high school band initiations, by far the high school band was the wort. (And it really wasn’t that bad, I just had to give a foot massage to one of the senior flag twirlers.)
As for the naming conventions, each national/international organization chooses their own convention. Many go straight thru the greek alphabet, but others do not. Some will name chapters after founding members, the college with which they’re associated, or anything else that strike their fancy when the second chapter in formed.
I’m a alumnus member of Alpha Chi Rho Fraternity, and have some familiarity with chapter naming in my fraternity and others.
As a high school student in suburban New York in the 1980’s, we didn’t have any high school fraternities or sororities. My mother, however, has said that she was a member of a high school sorority in a large public high school in Queens in the 1950’s.
As to chapter naming, each national fraternity does it differently. Some fraternities may name their first chapter Alpha and then go on from there, but many don’t.
Alpha Chi Rho has a tradition that all chapters have the Greek letter Phi in their name. Our first chapter was Phi Psi at Trinity College, our second was Phi Chi at Brooklyn Polytechnic, and our third was Phi Phi at Penn (my chapter). After that it was Phi Alpha, Phi Beta, etc., and then Alpha Phi, Beta Phi, etc., though there are some irregularities in the pattern. New chapters now have three greek letters, one of them being a Phi.
I know that some other fraternities name their chapters based on their state: Pennsylvania Alpha, Pennsylvania Beta, New York Alpha, New York Beta, etc. And others may have their own naming schemes. I’ve never heard of a “san” naming scheme, however, but I’m not really an expert.
No, not band, though I’ve heard some frightening tales about band initiations.
The club I was in was the “Student Organization for Alternative Production”, or SOAP. One of the four founding brothers had done an exchange term at Dartmouth and pledged a Greek society while there, and this inspired the four to form the club after the model of a fraternity. The four originators got seven or eight others to join them and SOAP was born.
The objective of the club was to organize dances, parties, and other events for the student body which the established University Events outfit was unwilling or incapable of. The basic strategy was to realize profit on the showing of movies, then spend that money putting on a theme party. Usually it worked pretty well, and a lot of fun was had by all.
Though the objective was to benefit potentially the entire student body, we also adopted, as I said, some of the procedures and trappings of regular fraternities. As for initiation, which in our case was executed at the time of becoming an active member, and not when pledging, it wasn’t bad. We all merely drove out to the desert and camped, and the ceremony consisted of kneeling on an Persian rug and knocking back a belt of Steinhager.
I was in Theta Chi. Our chapters were identified by Greek letters assigned sequentially – with doubles skipped. So the chapter inducted after Omega was Alpha Beta. Then Alpha Omega was followed by Beta Alpha, then Beta Gamma.
Eventually we started on the Theta group. Some discussion must have came up about who would have the honor of being Theta Chi Fraternity, Theta Chi chapter. The decision was to make that chapter a special chapter, unattached to any college, and reserved for honorary memberships awarded by the Grand Chapter (aka fraternity headquarters).
