Barnard College, in the late 1890’s, was the first separate college for women to be affiliated with a great men’s university such as Columbia University. AOII’s four Founders were in the class of 1898, young, and unlike most of the women who had entered Barnard in previous years. They were friendly, adventurous, frank and merry, and enthusiastically devoted to each other and to the class of ‘98. Determined to make a democratic, unostentatious society, the four women, Stella George Stern, Helen St. Clair, Elizabeth Heywood, and Jessie Wallace climbed a little winding stair into the stackroom of the old Columbia Library. While the four sat in a deep window seat, pigeons outside and snow lightly falling, they pledged one another at the beginning of the year 1897. Founded on January 2, 1897 at Barnard College in New York, Alpha Omicron Pi began as a dream by 4 young college women to continue their friendship throughout life. One of AOII’s founders, Stella George Stern Perry, wrote in 1936, “We wanted a fraternity that should carry on the delightful fellowships and cooperation of college days into the workaday years ahead and to do so magnanimously. Above all, we wanted a high and active special purpose to justify existence and a simple devotion to some worthy end.”
Stella’s wish for AOII then, remains AOII’s wish for her members today: “May you have the joy in it all, dear children, that we (founders) have had all the way! May you love one another as happily always as we four have done in a life-long fellowship without a break! And may your descendants in Alpha Omicron Pi bring to you the glory that you yourselves are to us today!”
