After autumn 1882, 12 female students at the University of Nebraska formed a club they called T. T. T., an acronym for the “The Tempest Tossed.” The club disbanded at the end of the school year and two of the women decided to try to form a club for the following year. Another person suggested they try to form a women’s fraternity. The women corresponded with the Kappa Kappa Gamma chapter at Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana. Through this correspondence, the Kappa Kappa Gamma chapter was installed on May 19, 1884, making it the first women’s fraternity on the University of Nebraska campus (Walker, 1903).
The Kappa Kappa Gamma Chapter at the University of Nebraska. It is interesting to note the various locations of the Kappa key badge.
The University of Nebraska had been chartered by the state of Nebraska on February 15, 1869. It took five years for the university to open its doors. Although it was coeducational from the start, Nebraska’s experience with students unprepared for collegiate work mirrored the trend of other western universities during the same time frame (Manley, 1969). When the University of Nebraska finally opened, the vast majority of the 130 students were in the preparatory department. One of the five considered a collegiate freshman was a woman (Knoll, 1995). The first woman graduate was Alice M. Frost who received her degree in 1876 (Manley, 1969).
On April 7, 1887, Kappa Alpha Theta joined Kappa Kappa Gamma on campus when its chapter was installed. The chapter was inactive from June 1891 to February 10, 1896 (Wilson, 1956).
Delta Gamma’s chapter on the University of Nebraska campus was assisted by the men’s fraternity, Phi Delta Theta. A local group, through the urgings of the Phi Delts, petitioned Delta Gamma for a charter. The chapter was installed on October 19, 1888 (Stevenson, Carvill & Shepard, 1973).
The University of Nebraska Delta Delta Delta chapter owes its existence, in part, to a Delta Gamma from the University of Nebraska chapter who was visiting Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. While at Knox College she met a few of the Tri Deltas from that campus. Upon her return to Lincoln, she told an unaffiliated friend about the Tri Delta women at Knox and she urged her friend to apply for a Delta Delta Delta charter. It became the organization’s westernmost chapter when it was installed on November 28, 1894 (Haller, 1988).
A Pi Beta Phi chapter was installed on January 21, 1895, and the reorganized Kappa Alpha Theta chapter was reinstalled in February of 1896.
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From – Coeducation and the History of Women’s Fraternities 1867-1902, by Frances DeSimone Becque, Dissertation, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, 2002, pp. 116-7. All rights reserved. The Bibliography will soon be available as a separate post.
