I was recently asked about the significance of “the goat” in sorority history. The long, thesis type answer is complicated, but suffice to say, goats show up regularly in the lore of sororities from the 1870s until about the 1930s, when searching through the literature of the sororities.
Goats personified the hazing which often surrounded joining a sorority in those early years. And the same can be said of many organizations of the time, including men’s fraternities. I recall reading the history of a state P.E.O. chapter where the B.I.L.s (husbands and sweethearts) provided housing for the chapter’s goat. This is the nickel answer to her question about goats.
“Riding the goat,” whether a real goat, a mechanical one, or just the threat of one, was an often heard phrase. “Goat” also referred to the member herself and “goating” sometimes referenced personal service (making beds, carrying books, etc.) that a prospective or new member was expected to perform. Toasts to “The Goat” were often included in banquets and at conventions. Songs and poems about “The Goat” were included in song books and materials.
This goat figurine, about six inches tall from hoof to top of head, was recently donated to the Pi Beta Phi archives. It belonged to a Hillsdale College alumna who was initiated in the early 1900s. Those are wine and blue ribbons around the goat’s neck.
Chicago Tribune, October 5, 1892 article about the Kappa Kappa Gamma chapter at Northwestern University and two goats.
The January 1893 Chi Phi Chakett reported on this incident, too, but used the Chicago Herald version of the story:
College girls tried to ride the goat in Evanston last night and disaster followed. All this was at a session of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority at the Northwestern college. The occasion was the initiation into the mysteries of the order of the Misses Isabel Drew and Harriet St. Clair. This is the most sacred rite of the Fraternity and was to be made more than usually impressive by the participation in the exercises of two live billy goats which were stealthily conducted up the fire escape from the alley to the sorority chapter rooms during the early evening darkness. How far the ceremonies had proceeded before a startling finale is not known but suddenly the attendants on the kirmess being held just across Davis street from the Hong building where the sorority rooms are were startled by feminine screams and joined hurrying Evanston residents to the scene of the disturbance. As they reached the stairway to the sorority rooms the suppressed screams and exclamations of excited girls became plainer and suddenly into the startled crowd plunged a dozen college girls excited disheveled and with their attention and energies concentrated on the subjection of two goats which had broken away and plunged down the stairway dragging their would be captors into the midst of the crowd of curious spectators. Then all embargo was taken off the use of female lungs and with wild exclamations the members of Kappa Kappa Gamma covered their faces with their skirts and abandoning their goats fled precipitately up the stairway hastily terminated the initiation ceremonies and sought seclusion elsewhere.
In the exchanges section of Vol. 11-12 of The Anchora of Delta Gamma, there is a snippet that also refers to the above news item:
A writer upon fraternity life in the Northwestern University in the January Palm of Alpha Tau Omega thus sums up the sororities at that institution: ‘Upsilon Chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma is one of the strongest sororities in the university. The members are a studious set and are well represented in the literary world of Northwestern. There is an old, old story with which Kappa Kappa Gamma and a muscular William goat are intimately connected. They had secured the said animal for the purpose of making use of him in their dark and mysterious initiation rites, and the frolicsome goat, possessing a will of his own, secured his freedom by strategy, and before he was recaptured by the breathless members of the sorority nearly all Evanston was in an uproar. Since that happening it is claimed by many that the initials K. K. G. which adorn their frat-pins stand for Kant Kontrol Goat.‘
A song from an 1889 issue of The Key of Kappa Kappa Gamma
Another ode to the goat from an 1890s Anchora of Delta Gamma
The University of Colorado Delta Gamma chapter, in the same Anchora volume, included this reference to a mechanical goat:
Into this dainty case was slipped the menu-card, the front of which was adorned by a photograph of ‘our goat,’ that cute little arrangement which goes around on wheels, and gives vent to its feelings by a series of indescribable sounds whenever the string is pulled.
A mechanical goat, circa early 1900s. These are still available for purchase, in case anyone is wondering.
On February 2, 1889, 18 members of Alpha Phi’s Alpha Chapter at Syracuse University traveled to Cornell to install the chapter there. They brought with them:
the goat and other mysterious paraphernalia, with the purpose of giving to nine girls the initiatory ride. At twelve o’clock the initiative committee met the candidates at the Ithaca Hotel, where the dread rites were duly performed.
When Alpha Xi Delta celebrated its 20th anniversary as a chapter at Lombard College and its second anniversary as a national organization, Josephine Ericson presented a toast to “The Ruminating Goat” at the banquet. The 1904-05 volume of The Quill of Alpha Xi Delta included multiple references to new members “meeting the goat.”
In addition, the magazines of other NPC organizations include similar references. In The Triangle of Sigma Sigma Sigma for the years 1909-11, the newly initiated members were called “goats.”
From The Themis of Zeta Tau Alpha
Alpha Chi Omega Goat Song, early 1900s
This toast takes up a number of pages in Vol. 8 of The Eleusis of Chi Omega
From the 1918-19 volume of The Themis of Zeta Tau Alpha
In 1893, the Pi Beta Phi convention body cautioned against mock initiation, but change was difficult for some chapters. By the 1920s, its Constitution and Statues prohibited any form of mock initiation, and a manual for the Pledge Supervisor, as she was then called, included this information:
Pi Beta Phi allows no pledge ‘Goating’ of any kind whatever and no requirement of any personal service for actives. Bed-making or book-carrying for actives is personal service and is not to be required by any active. You as Pledge Supervisor are responsible for seeing that the Constitutional ruling against ‘goating’ is kept both in letter and in spirit.
Volume 12 (1915-16) of To Dragma of Alpha Omicron Pi noted that its Kappa Chapter at Randolph Macon Woman’s College voted the previous year against “goating” because it was:
inconsistent with the serious purpose of our fraternity, but it is not out of style for the goats to still make up our beds and sweep around the house a little. We tell them they work so well we can’t possibly take them in for four months, but, really, by the time this is in print we shall have twelve new sisters in Alpha Omicron Pi.
In the early 1920s, Sarah Blue, an inspector for Kappa Delta, spoke to the NPC chapters at Florida Women’s College. Her talk, according to a report in The Trident of Delta Delta Delta, focused on the NPC chapters working together to foster a greater Panhellenic spirit. Moreover, she discouraged “goating.”
The goat seemed to disappear as life changed in the first half of the 1900s, especially in the years between two world wars and in the face of the great depression. Or so the National/Grand Council of the NPC and AES groups tried to make the term obsolete, as evidenced by Pi Phi’s edict referenced above. However, the term “goat” still rears its head now and then. A reader referenced the “Goat Show” at George Washington University in the 1960s and another remembers hearing fraternity pledges referred to as “goats” in the 1980s at the University of Missouri.
In the 2000s, calling someone a GOAT became a way of saying “Greatest Of All Time.”
