Highlight: Women's Literary Societies
Among the student organization collections in the University Archives at Rod Library sit boxes with titles such as Alpha Society, Cliosophic Society, Eulalian Society. These boxes contain beautifully intricate programs, group pictures in the yearbooks, and articles in the newspaper singing praises of their open sessions. So much activity in the first fifty years can be attributed to these groups, but what were these societies, and what was their purpose?
According to the 1927 Alpha-Philo Yearbook on page 7, when the Iowa State Normal School was first established in 1876, the campus was fairly isolated from the rest of the city. With busy schedules and little time to get off campus to socialize, students had to create their own methods of meeting up and collaborating with their fellow students, and so literary societies on campus were born.
In 1877 the first women’s literary society was formed, the Alpha Society. This organization was dedicated to developing the arts of writing, reading, singing, socializing, and debate. They would hold their programs on campus and were known to work with the only men’s society at the time, the Philomathean Society. Page 7 and 8 of the 1927 Alpha-Philo yearbook details that the two societies were sometimes criticized for working together to work around the strict social rules regarding men and women interacting.
The Alphas were also key in developing the first student newspaper. They had a small weekly publication known as the Alpha Current. This soon became The Student’s Offering, where the Alphas and Philomathean worked together on publication until the publication was discontinued in 1884. Noted in Faculty Meeting Minutes volume 2 page 13, the faculty had discussed the continuation of the Student’s Offering, but decided to officially shut down the paper on September 23, 1884.
The first instances of competitive women’s basketball were also found in these societies. Most societies had basketball teams and had the first game and first tournament in 1909, Shakespeareans vs Delphian. As chronicled on page 296 of volume 19 of The Normal Eyte, on February 12, 1909, the Shakespeareans became the winners of one of the first official women’s basketball games on I.S.N.S campus.
The Alphas influenced a great deal of campus life for women and paved the way for the creation of many other societies. Cliosophic, Chresto, Delphian, Eulalian, Homerian, Ossoli, Shakespearean, and Zeta were all prominent social and literary groups on campus.
Along with papers and programs, there is a small photo collection of some societies in the “Literary Societies” series within the Student Organizations (ORG) subject in the University Archives Photograph Collection. These photos give a great insight into the different activities these ladies were involved in.
We may think of students from a hundred years ago being more serious, studious, and proper, but these collections show the human side to early student life. Doodles in meeting minute journals, handmade invites, letters between societies, and photos of these women doing fun activities like parades show that they were not so dissimilar from current campus life and organizations.
If you need to learn or explore the earliest forms of student organizations, campus life, and women’s basketball on campus, the women’s literary society collections are the perfect materials to explore.
Contributed by SC&UA student intern, Alexis Stuhrenberg, April 2022
References
Alpha-Philo year books, 1927, in the Alpha Society collection, box 3, “Alpha-Philo year books 1927” folder Alpha Philo 1927, #17/03/09, University Archives, Rod Library, University of Northern Iowa.
Faculty Minutes v. 2, in the Faculty Meeting Minutes collection, box 1, #07/01/02, University Archives, Rod Library, University of Northern Iowa.
Contributed by SC&UA student intern, Alexis Stuhrenberg, April 2022