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'''Alumnae Achievement Award Recipients:'''
'''Additional Outstanding Barnard Beta Epsilon Alumnae:'''
Alice Duer Miller—author Miller, author and poet who wrote many columns on the Women’s Suffrage Movement for the New York Tribune; Shelley Smith Mydans—author; wife of Mydans, author, a Life magazine staff writer who with her husband Carl Mydans; , a Life magazine photographer, spent their married life working side-by-side. They were captured by incoming Japanese troops in Manila in January of 1942. They were held as Prisoners of War for almost two years. After a respite in New York, they both returned to the combat zone, this time in Europe as World War II wound to a close. Mary Harriman Rumsey—founded Rumsey, founded the first Junior League chapter in New York in 1901. (, Association of Junior Leagues International, Inc.) ------------------- Louise Comfort Tiffany and Julia de Forest Tiffany, granddaughters of founder of Tiffany & Co., Charles Lewis Tiffany. Julia was the fall 1907 tennis champion at Barnard.
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==The Early Years (From The History of Kappa Kappa Gamma 1870–1976)==
A sophomore pledge day and the careful issuing of invitations to women whose scholarship, personalities and abilities were well known, accounted for this unvarying affirmative. The Fraternity was well aware of Barnard’s superiority. Kappa’s emphasis on high scholarship, positive action and alumna progress was received by Barnard members as if scholarship, action and progress were the most natural demands in the world.
==Honors and Activities==
At a faculty meeting May 26, 1913, a resolution was made stating that for the three-year term starting October 1913, no society at Barnard of which the organization, the emblems and the rites were in any way secret, and which had national affiliations, should be allowed to elect new members.
==Anti-Fraternity Sentiment==
Anti-fraternity feeling caused the chapter to abandon the idea of becoming a local group. In the spring of 1914 Barnard’s fraternities proposed certain reforms within their groups but the petition was refused by the faculty.
On April 25, 1916, the Barnard chapter announced that, although it was convinced of the advantages of fraternities, “we do not wish to reorganize … under the system in force three-years ago,” and on May 29 a committee recommended the adoption of a resolution against reorganization. This was the end of Greek social groups at Barnard. The Fraternity mourned, “As a chapter she had always borne the Kappa standards high, and in all matters … served faithfully.”
In a list of charges and conclusions put together by the student-faculty committee, the first mentioned was that “fraternities cause snobbishness by overemphasizing lines of social cleavage, especially race lines” with the conclusion “That there is considerable truth in this and it is important.”
The poisonous presence of anti-Semitism and the fact that some Greek letter fraternities were indeed discriminatory was openly acknowledged. A suggestion made by West Virginia at the 1914 Convention that “Jewesses be excluded from membership” was not approved by the Fraternity Council. Kappa was not, in theory, discriminatory, and in practice Beta Epsilon was not. Their members were judged for “individual fitness” and the chapter was proud to be able to say that “Kappa has no constitutional rulings against Jewesses and Beta Epsilon boasts several among its present members.”
The proudest day in the life of Beta Epsilon, with its many proud days and its many reasons for pride, was the day that Dean Gildersleeve was installed. In her acceptance speech she said “…If I fail to render such service … as at this moment my gratitude and affection for Barnard make me long to give, it will be because my own powers are inadequate not , not because … of any lack of noble inspiration in the traditions that Barnard … has already created … ”
Beta Epsilon maintained its strength for more than 25-years, and it was not with a thought of the weakening of her own chapter that Dean Gildersleeve helped bring about the decisions that were finally made. Nor did the Fraternity, true to its policy of non-interference between chapters and the institutions to which they owed their existence, ever suggest that Beta Epsilon was anything less than exemplary. The Fraternity had lived through the birth and birth of chapters before.
On November 27, 1896, when “Miss Gildersleeve” was one of six initiates the chapter correspondent to The Key wrote, “What is Kappa Kappa Gamma to be to them . . . ? Is it to be a small room with some good times? . . . We ask for them that (they) may feel themselves part of a larger world than the chapter they are just beginning to know.”
Virginia Gildersleeve, the Dean of Barnard, had become “part of a larger world.”
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The previous information was excerpted from The History of Kappa Kappa Gamma Fraternity, 1870-1976.
