[24381] in APO-L
Re: [APO-L] chapters with illegal women brothers...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Lomax)
Wed Jun 30 18:13:51 2004
Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 18:12:37 -0400
Reply-To: gtg226h@mail.gatech.edu
From: David Lomax <gtg226h@mail.gatech.edu>
To: APO-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
In-Reply-To: <03E8CF5A1005AD4A9CB7419A1327DEE8012CA83F@ngb-66c05-xch02.ngb.army.mil>
I'm a brother of the Gamma Zeta Chapter at the Georiga Institute of Technology
(Georgia Tech). I forwarded your email to one of the advisors in the chapter
and this is his reply:
I was first associated with Gamma Zeta in Fall '74, and we had at least two
women members in the chapter in the 74-76 time frame. I believe the
official term was Affiliate Members, but in practice there was not any
distinction in how anyone was treated in this chapter; although to the best
of my knowledge we did not consciously violate any national rules or
procedures. If there was a different membership ceremony for Affiliate
membership, then I expect we used it, but I don't recall for certain. I
don't remember that any of our women members held any chapter officer
positions prior to '76, but it was a smaller chapter at that time, officers
served for an entire year, and we had fewer positions to be
held. Additionally, at that time, women only made up less than 5% of
Georgia Tech's enrollment, so we actually had a higher percentage of women
in the chapter than did the campus as a whole.
Prior to women being made eligible to become full brothers at the '76
convention, many chapters were under pressure from their institutions to
have women on an equal membership status as men; and many chapters were at
risk of no longer being recognized on their campus if things did not
change. My understanding is that Georgia Tech understood that the issue
was coming up at the '76 convention (which was here in Atlanta), and did
not pressure Gamma Zeta on the issue (the Dean of Students at that time was
a former advisor and strong supporter of APO).
I was one of Gamma Zeta's voting members at the '76 convention. I was
amazed at how strongly opposed a few chapters were to APO having women as
full members. Regardless of how one felt about the issue, since many
chapters would basically cease to exist if they couldn't have men and women
on equal terms, it seemed like a no-brainer decision to me. As I recall,
chapters would not be forced to have women members, but would be provided
that option; so the all male bastions would not necessarily have had to
change their local ways. After a lot of intense discussion, the co-ed
measure was actually voted down when a vote was first called; following a
break, parliamentary procedure rules were utilized that enabled another
vote to be called, and late in the night the measure was finally approved.
I first heard of Omega Phi Alpha near the end of the '76 convention. I was
under the impression at the time that OPA was established as a sorority so
that all-male APO chapters could say that women had an equal opportunity to
participate in a service organization. I don't know when the OPA chapter
at GT was established but it was many years after the '76 convention, and
was in no way done by Gamma Zeta as a response to the '76 convention's actions.
Earl Babbitt
Advisor
Gamma Zeta Chapter
Georgia Institute of Technology
Quoting "Finder, Randolph J Mr NGB-ARNG" <Randolph.Finder@ngb.army.mil>:
> I'm looking to try to put together a list of the chapters which had women
> brothers prior to Dec 1976. This can include any or all of the following
>
> 1) Having women participate in either the pledging ceremony or
> initiation ceremony prior to 1976. (Not counting the female advisors)
>
> 2) Having women with voting rights in the chapter prior to 1974/1976
> (Did women affiliates in 1974 get voting rights in the chapters?)
>
> 3) Names submitted for women to the National Office as pledges or
> initiates either in full, with male forms (Michael for Michelle) or first
> initials.
>
> 4) Having women officers in the chapter prior to 1974. (Were they
> allowed 1974-1976?)
>
>
>
> As of right now, the ones I've heard of are Virginia Tech (ZB),
> Carnegie-Mellon (K), MIT (AX), and UCLA (X). I have heard that most of the
> active chapters in Region X (Current X&XI) had admitted women in some form
> illegally, but I'm not sure.
>
>
>
> Even if the chapter went through and "made them all legal", I'd still like
> to know.
>
>
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