This week during our “Shelter in Place” order, I began cleaning out my GLO History cabinet. In the way back I found an unopened box with a bookstore’s label on it. I just put it aside while I whittled down the piles and placed things in file folders. This morning I opened the box. In it were 12 issues of The Fraternity Month. It was an eBay auction won in 2006 (the date on the receipt) spending more than I should have. I have no idea why I never opened the package or how it ended up in back of a file box never to be seen for 14 years. I suspect it involved company coming and a million things on my plate at the time. Out of sight, out of mind perhaps.
Banta’s Greek Exchange and The Fraternity Month are some of my favorite magazines to read. Both ended publication in the early 1970s. Tau Kappa Epsilon Leland F. Leland, and his wife Wilma Smith Leland, Alpha Omicron Pi, began the Fraternity Press. They published Fraternity Month from 1933 until 1971. The cover art is vivid and wonderfully done.
A University of Minnesota alumnus, Leland worked for the George Banta Company before striking out on his own.
The October 1933 edition of The Fraternity Month included this introduction:
Fraternity Month and its staff greet you. To tell you what kind of a magazine it is would be to be trite, for you may see for yourselves. We hope you find it all that you may expect of a new, interfraternity publication. Many of you have asked for one which will be read by undergraduates as well as by more mature members. This is the type of magazine we want to produce. Coming with regular frequency, our news will be current and vital.
Our articles will be by persons prominent in their field. We will follow a policy of liberalism. Our articles will not reflect our own opinion for this is your magazine and each of you may direct the thought of it so long as you may direct the thought of it so long as you keep within the bounds of good taste. We welcome your contributions, your suggestions and, about all, your criticisms.
It will be our earnest endeavor to publish all the worthwhile news of all fraternities and all sororities all the time. You may help us by calling our attention to items which you wish to emphasize.
We want timely news, but we are alert to the splendid history and background that Greek-letter organizations have a right to claim. So there will be articles concerning the heritage of fraternities.
We expect our magazine to be read by prominent people who do not wear a badge, and we will feel it a privilege as well as an obligation to interpret the fraternity system to the outside world in a manner fair and honest.
Controversial articles will present both sides of the question. We do not strive to be smart, but to be intelligent with enough levity to be appealing to a public whose tastes are varied. Our magazine is, first of all, a fraternal and educational journal and we expect to keep it so. It is published without profit by the Fraternity Press in a desire to be of real service to the fraternity system.
