About the Chapter: Historical Sketch

1930 to 1955

Having expanded eligibility to include candidates for the B.S degree, by 1939 the Alpha of Texas was fully coeducational, with 20 men and 19 women being elected. As the specter of war loomed, such distinguished students as Frank Erwin were elected and their excellence was celebrated on the eve of Pearl Harbor at the banquet held on 6 December 1941.

In the last stages of the war in 1945 the chapter honored Admiral Nimitz with honorary election and took an ever more active role in the university and the nation. On Feb 15, 1945 the chapter defended academic freedom resolving: "Such a [liberal] education can be imparted only by a faculty which is imbued with the ideal of selfless devotion to the search for truth through scholarship, and which feels that it may pursue this ideal in the spirit of freedom of teaching and research - in a word, of academic freedom."

Throughout the 1940s, under Presidents Calhoun, Parlin, Battle and Burdine, the Alpha of Texas defended and championed the excellence of UT and of Texas universities both locally and nationally.