When I enrolled as a freshman at Carolina in the Fall of 1967, Lyndon Johnson was president, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was evolving, and the Vietnam War was being fueled by young men who did not attend college. The burgeoning movement for women’s equality, generally referred to as Women’s Liberation, was gaining more publicity than results. Girls who insisted on equal treatment and opportunity with men in all matters were pejoratively called Libbers by the unenlightened and considered troublemakers.
Fall ‘67 was the first semester in UNC history that girls were allowed to wear pants to class. Before I graduated, there were co-ed dorms.
Pi Lam was recovering from being the third Jewish fraternity on a campus which could only support two Jewish fraternities and Pi Lam membership had gotten very lean. The 1968 graduating class consisted of only one senior. The membership had become a mix of Jews and gentiles. I pledged the Omega Beta chapter of Pi Lamda Phi in the Spring of 1968 in a pledge class of nineteen.
The concept for the women’s program was to admit women on the same basis as the brothers so that we could deal with women as people and as friends, not as actual or potential dates. The idea to pledge women came from Mike Piller, then chapter president, in 1970. I don’t recall much controversy about the idea and the resolution to initiate girls into the fraternity was presented at a chapter meeting. Piller asked the Parliamentarian (me) what percentage of votes was required to pass the resolution. I responded that I found nothing in our charter, etc. restricting membership to men so I responded it required a simple majority. Piller responded that he would require a 2/3 majority. Piller needn’t have worried. I don’t recall any negative discussion prior to the vote, and the resolution passed unanimously, or nearly so. The resolution which was enacted was simply that the chapter would admit women as members. There were no restrictions on their admission or on their rights afterward; the women were to have the same status as the brothers.
Piller was an RTVMP major, and the next day issued a press release that Pi Lambda Phi at UNC was admitting women to the chapter. There was one television in the fraternity house, and we crowded around it that night to watch the local news on WRDU, a station in Raleigh owned by Jesse Helms. Helms nightly delivered a diatribe about whatever he deemed counter to his values and on that night he did not disappoint. We were Helm’s topic. Helms, as expected, railed indignantly against admitting girls to a fraternity historically male only, but made no attempt at logic to justify his indignation. We were elated. Helms was subsequently elected to the U.S. Senate where he served the good people of North Carolina for thirty years.
We got the word out as well as we could and held a sort of reception for interested women. Of those who showed up, some were known to some of the brothers and some were not. My best recollection is that we pledged thirteen women and initiated all except one who left school. The interested women attended the house during rush in the spring semester of 1970 and were pledged along with the men in that pledge class. As pledges, the women were treated exactly like the men and women went through the same initiation process and ritual. Since I was initiated in ‘68, Omega Beta had gradually phased out those physical parts of initiation which might have been seen as hazing but the basics were the same: exhaust the pledges before their participation in an initiation ritual.
I do not recall a single negative comment from the brothers regarding the Women’s Program. The initiated women frequented the fraternity house as equals, played on intramural teams and took their turns at chores around the house,
Omega Beta’s delegates to the next Pi Lam chapter convention moved to allow local chapters to admit women. Pi Lambda Phi National opposed the motion with an undocumented claim that many or all colleges would revoke the charters of Pi Lam local chapters, and the motion failed.
National did say that the chapter could have a women’s auxiliary of the kind some other chapters had, generally known as “little sisters” so long as the women were not initiated into the fraternity. The term “little sisters” was offensive, so Omega Beta created an auxilary called Sisters of the Lion. It was never the same.
I believe that I matured a bit as a result of the Women’s Program and I am proud that I was a part of it.
- Written by Branch Henard
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