CHARTERING OHIO GAMMA OF SIGMA ALPHA EPISLON
THE PETITION
No local fraternity had been able to get an 
charter is
less than eight years. We wanted to do
it in three for the benefit of founders.
We would need to lobby every one of the 13 houses in Province
Delta. There was no national convention
for 18 months so we would have to convince the province and executive committee
that we deserved to qualify for a mail ballot.
We would need to publish a brochure and attend the next Province Delta
convention. We could expect to
entertain many chapters who would come to look us over and visit most of
them on their campuses. It seemed
impossible, but, then, we were the Tri-Gams!
John Pinkerton was appointed Petitioning Chairman. He had planned a career in advertising and
made a connection with one of the inherited alums, which had an advertising
agency in Cincinnati. Some creative
ideas came out of that connection and helped us formulate the brochure we had
printed to advertise ourselves to every chapter of . John did an incredible job and we all
participated in one way or another.
I think we sent visitations to every campus in the province for overnighters, meeting most every member of each of the 12 chapters. This was all done in the very short period from late spring of '52 and early Fall of that year. We were impressed, had some great fellowship and apparently impressed our hosts, most of whom decided a visit to Athens wasn't necessary.
One visitation we did get was from the s of one very
close university campus. We had a
formal at the house and were asked to line up dates with sorority girls for a
dozen of the visitors. The "visitors" failed to show, embarrassingly forcing us the cancel all
the dates with the girls of one sorority, after the co-eds had dressed in their
gowns for the affair. The "guests" finally appeared, very informally and very late, having
obviously started their party without us.
They proceeded to disrupt the dance, then left. Later, they ran through the house about 3
AM, tossing cherry bombs into each room full of sleeping Tri-Gams. I guessed they thought it was some kind of "hazing".
I called John Moseley at National on Monday and told him of
our concern that the "visitors" would oppose us but he just said,
"Not to worry". We soon
learned the renegade chapter had been put on probation by both their university
and , for related activities.
We particularly enjoyed attending the Province Delta
convention at East Lansing Michigan. We
had a nice welcome from the well-established house there and we all stayed
at the Kellogg Hotel, which is run by students as part of their Hotel
Management Curricula. There was a
Newman Club convention at the same time and they turned out to be great, if
noisy, partiers. We made our presentation to the assembly nervously and were
sent forward to the national convention, unanimously. That not being held until the summer after most graduated, we
needed to convince the Executive Board we deserved a mail ballot to all the
chapters in .
By December of 1952 we had another visit from John Moseley
with Jack Harris, a chapter rep, and had been given the go-ahead for a mail
ballot to take place in the spring of 1953.
Now, we had to complete and mail the brochure to each and every House in the national organization. We
would need a yes vote from 90 % of the Chapters, much greater that the 2/3rds
majority required from an actual convention the following year. Here is the cover:
A final letter went out just before balloting was ending:
Please see the
remaining Pages of the brochure as follows for many photos and the story of the
Tri-Gams presented to :
INSIDE COVER Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 WGAM Pledges Composite Photo of Chapter
There was also a map comparing all the fraternity houses on campus but detail would not be clear enough for the website.