Alpha Omicron Pi was founded on January 2, 1897, at the home of Helen St. Clair (Mullan). She and three of her Barnard College friends, Stella George Stern (Perry), Jessie Wallace Hughan, and Elizabeth Heywood Wyman had pledged themselves to the organization on December 23, 1896. That first pledging ceremony took place in a small rarely used upstairs room in the old Columbia College Library.
Celebrating a Founders’ Day on the second day of the new year proved to be a challenge for the organization, so Alpha Omicron Pi now celebrates Founders’ Day on December 8, Stella George Stern Perry’s birthday.
Alpha Omicron Pi’s second chapter was halfway cross the country and to the south, 1,300 miles away from Manhattan. Stella contacted Evelyn Reed, a classmate from New Orleans. Evelyn’s sister, Katherine, was a student at H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College.
On September 8, 1898, Katherine Reed became the first pledge of the Pi Chapter at Newcomb College. Not only was it Alpha Omicron Pi’s second chapter, but it was also the second women’s fraternity at Newcomb. A Pi Beta Phi’s chapter was established in 1891. “The little Greek community at Newcomb was very delightfully entertained at a charmingly original birthday party, given by the Alpha Omicron Pi girls, to celebrate the first anniversary of the founding of their chapter,” reported the Pi Phi chapter in the January 1900 Arrow of Pi Beta Phi.
Years later, Perry reflected on the founding of Pi Chapter and the differences between the institution in New Orleans and the one at which AOPi was founded, Barnard in New York City. She said:
If Alpha Omicron Pi can bring a closer connection between the beauty and kindliness of the Newcomb spirit, and the sane bluff stability that marks colleges farther North and West we shall do a good work in making the sweetness of the one a little more filled with the light of common sense and the light of the other a little softer with the sweetness of courtesy.
