Cat's Greek life stories evolved over time

Long gone are the days when the Wildcat ran photographs of sorority girls adorned with the pin of their latest fraternity beau.

The Greek system has gone through many changes since its birth in 1917, and the Wildcat has reflected those shifts.

The lives of Greek members ran like a soap opera through the pages of the University of Arizona student newspaper in the 1940s.

In October 1948, two fraternity men who serenaded their new fiancees in front of the womens' sorority grabbed newspaper headlines. All of the UA had the opportunity to relive the two Gamma Phi women's heartwarming moment, right down to the heart and arrow the men formed with kerosene and lit on the sorority's lawn.

Other routine stories in 1948 announced new sorority housemothers, fraternities getting new furniture and who danced with who at Greek formals.

A UA reader who missed valuable gossip during the week could always rely on the Corral Fence for an update. Each week, the Wildcat included this popular Greek gossip column in the 1940s and 1950s. The Corral Fence included such news as lists of women who had received pins from fraternity men over the weekend and Greek men who had proposed.

One week in 1948, the Corral Fence announced, "If a prize were given to the organization with the greatest number of girls who lost their maiden names during vacation, Gamma Phi and Delta Gamma would run close competition." What followed was a list of newly married Greeks.

The Wildcat was not the only student publication that absorbed the gossip of Greek life on campus. Vicki Stanton, a Kappa Alpha Theta alumnus, says her father, Bob Vance, a Phi Gamma Delta alumnus, started his own small publication in 1942. Stanton says her father and a fraternity brother ran the Pussycat, a private tabloid filled with Greek gossip.

In the early days of student publication, no one seemed to mention a negative side to the Greek system as seen today in some Wildcat editorials and stories.

Journalism professor James Johnson, a Sigma Chi and Wildcat reporter alumnus from the 1960s, suggests the reason the Wildcat may have focused on the virtuous side of the Greek system years ago was due to the faculty's Greek interests.

Being Greek was popular in the 1960s, Johnson says. "If you weren't a Greek you were a geek," he says.

Even many faculty members were Greek alumni. He suggests Greek-affiliated faculty might have contributed to the newspaper's mainly complimentary publicity of the Greek system.

Despite the positive image of Greeks portrayed in the Wildcat, Johnson remembers the coverage of partying most of all. Johnson recalls a Sigma Chi prank his fraternity brothers pulled that backfired. In the early 1960s, Johnson said the Sig's planned a "panty raid" on the Delta Gamma sorority. When they arrived, pounding on the door with a pole, the housemother stood on the other side, urging them to stop. The men continued, hit the housemother between the legs, knocked her down and broke her arm.

A Wildcat reporter at the time, Johnson was asked by his fraternity brothers to keep the incident out of the paper. To the dismay of Sigma Chi, the faculty adviser insisted their prank be published in the paper.

"We were in deep doo-doo," Johnson says.

Greek coverage started to change the most in the 1970s. Stanton says times began to change when she went to UA from 1970-72.

A male ran for Homecoming queen, and students protested the Vietnam War on the UA lawn, she says.

"My generation was breaking away from the norm," Stanton says.

Individualism and anti-establishment grew popular and Greeks were seen as followers.

Mark Woodhams, director of student media, says student editors' definition of newsworthiness also started to change in the 1970s. The paper no longer offered a one-dimensional, positive view of the UA and its institutions as in the 1940s, Woodhams says.

Fraternities and sororities were no longer celebrities on campus and had little to no coverage in the paper during the 1970s.

An article in the Desert yearbook in 1972 reflects the poor opinion of the Greek system at the time. "Three-quarters of the university community has a negative and very critical attitude towards (the Greek system) without having the slightest idea what" it really is, wrote Debi Mickey, the Greek Organizations editor.

By the late 1970s, Greek life slowly became popular again. "It was the end of the hippie years," says Scott Gibson, a Phi Gamma Delta alumni who graduated in 1978.

The Vietnam War was over and Greek life crept back up on campus. Greek coverage in the Wildcat reappeared, but would never be as positive as in the 1940s through 1960s.

The Greek system was covered like any other aspect of campus life, says Christine Donnelly, Wildcat reporter and editor in the 1980s.

"If Greeks made news, good or bad, they were in the paper," Donnelly says.

Donnelly says she remembers when some fraternity men got into trouble on campus and came to the newsroom, begging the staff not to publish anything about them in Police Beat.

The Wildcat refused to leave the incident out. The next morning, most copies of the Wildcat were missing from campus. Eventually, a reporter and photographer went to the men's fraternity house and found the stolen Wildcats under a blue tarp.

"Here the guy didn't want his name in Police Beat and instead the story of the newspaper theft ended up getting picked up by the AP wire," she says.

"The Greek system definitely goes through fluctuations," says Kappa Alpha Theta alumnus Ruth Kester. By 1987, it was very popular to go through Greek Rush again, says Kester, who attended UA 1987-91.

Although the Wildcat covered some Greek news, "there was never enough press as there should be," she says. The Wildcat seemed to overlook positive publicity and focus on negative Greek news, she says.

Now, her sorority has a public relations officer who is in charge of getting all the good that they do out to the public.

Griff Anderson, a current member of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, says the Wildcat covers positive and negative news of Greek life today. The Wildcat tends to focus more on the negative aspects of Greek life probably because the bad news is more interesting, he says.

Wildcat Editor in Chief David Cieslak says the paper covers Greeks like anything else on campus. "We cover more pressing issues today," he says.