March 15, 1923, Vol. 4, No. 5

If you're currently a pledge in a colony of Alpha Rho Chi (I'm looking your way, Severus), and you think you're going to put out the most bang-up, boss, swell, radical, bitchin, kick-ass petition for affiliation, you best be looking at the submission that Paeonios put together back in 1923.

Not ONLY did they include a dozen 7x11 inch views of the campus, individual pictures of all the petitioning members, and endorsements from the President of the School, the Dean of Engineering, the head of the Intra-Fraternity Council at the university, the Registrar and the Head of the Architectural Department, they also bound the thing in a soft, brown undressed leather cover, which bore the gold seal of the Kansas State Agricultural college.

The postage on that baby? $2.00. In today's dollars, that would be $24.11

I wonder whatever happened to that petition, described as a "masterpiece" by the Archi Editors.

In Other News..

There is a lovely response to the Archi Editors from an Alumnus, inquiring about an article in a previous issue:

"In the last issue of the Archi, there was considerable mention of the Alumni Association taken up at the convention. However there was nothing said of its purpose, development or benefit. It is the opinion of the members of the Chicago Alumni Chapter than an article should be published in the Archi giving some information regarding this issue."

Let this serve as a warning to you, my fellow brothers - people who stick their necks out like that end up getting elected Worthy Grand Architect. You see, the letter was signed by a G. A. Whitten. Yes, That would be future WGA, Silver Medal Recipient, and namesake of our annual Scholastic Achievement Award, George A. "So" Whitten.

February 1, 1923 Vol. IV, No. 4 Part1

When I read through these issues the first time, Convention issues generated more glee in me than almost all of the other things they may have written about. It's hard to believe that our fore-brothers would hold Convention over the Christmas holiday, often times forcing our brothers to leave their homes the day after christmas for a 2-3 day trek.

The 8th Convention in 1923 took place at Demetrios, and this was a good one indeed. This convention marked the election of Dwight Palmer "Pop" Ely to the position of Worthy Grand Architect; a position he would hold for 30 years! However, this almost was not to be. In a race between himself and Harold Peterson, the incumbent WGS, the election was tied. The Convention took another vote, undoubtedly after a few additional endorsements for each nominee, and again, the vote was tied.
This was resolved when the nominator from Mnesicles withdrew his candidate, who was not present. It doesn't say whether Brother Peterson, who was also on the Archi Board, was aware of his nomination.

At the 8th Convention, our organization continued the discussion the idea of having Alumni Associations associated with each chapter "to which all graduates of that chapter would belong regardless of where situated." This would be in lieu of city based Alumni Associations, as they were operating presently. The scheme was introduced at the 7th convention by Brother George A. "So" Whitten, and though it appears to have been met favorably, they hadn't worked all the bugs yet. Can't wait to see what happens in the 9th!

On Page 3, there is a little gem:

Are baldheaded men considered more handsome, more brainy, more impressive, or more agressive than others? At least that was our conclusion after sizing up the bunch around the convention table, for fully fifty per cent of those there had no superfluous hair on their domes.