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.
Alpha Omicron Pi’s Founders
Aeroplanes make a buzz at Kansas University in 1920
The Phi Chapter at Kansas University was chartered in 1918. The November 1920 issue of To Dragma includes this news about the chapter house:
Phi has a new home this year and everything else seems unimportant. It is a lovely three-story home of brick and wood and is finished throughout in hardwood. It has both gas and wood fireplaces, besides the furnace, which appeal to us very much. The location is near the hill and very pretty.
But then this paragraph captured my attention:
Tomorrow K.U. plays football with Washburn College of Topeka, Kansas, so today two aeroplanes came over the campus and dropped cards saying that K.U. was doomed: Washburn would win and other horrible things. However, we will teach them something else tomorrow. Some of the sororities and fraternities had planes rush week, a biplane showered the campus with political propaganda yesterday (and it was not the ticket we are supporting, worst luck) and the prize offered for selling one hundred copies of a campus publication is a flight in a plane.
The propaganda was for the class officer election. Kansas won that game on October 9, 1920 between the Jayhawkers and the Washburn Ichabods. The score was 6-0 and the headline in the newspaper read “Lacked the punch but won any way.” The pamphlets dropped from the plane was indeed a novel idea. Apparently it was a thing in Kansas in the 1920s according to this newspaper article which appeared that summer.
Hutchinson (KS) Gazette, July 27, 1920
This might have been the type of plane seen flying over Lawrence by the AOPi members.
What is meant by “Some of the sororities and fraternities had planes rush week,” is open for interpretation. Aeroplanes as a fraternity recruitment tactic seems to have been short-lived, but it is an interesting glimpse on the world 100 years ago.
Sadly, Alpha Omicron Pi’s Phi Chapter at Kansas closed in 1996. And again, Happy Founders’ Day to AOPi members everywhere!
