A multi-generational group of dedicated alumnae comes together to renovate their beloved Alpha House and restore governance to the thriving sisterhood
In the late 1920s, Occidental President Remsen Bird announced an ambitious plan to build sorority houses on campus near the newly constructed women’s dormitories, Orr and Erdman halls. “It was to be an elaborate complex, including a swimming pool and tennis courts,” Addie McMenamin ’40 wrote in a history of Alpha Lambda Phi Alpha sorority. “Alphas raised almost enough for a down payment on one of the proposed campus sorority houses —and then the plan was called off.”
Two decades later, the Alphas finally bought their own house in 1947. Built in 1931 and located at 4549 Alumni Avenue, the 4,000-square foot structure was financed with loans from individual Alphas, $5,500 in bonds (the product of “many rummage sales” and other benefit events, McMenamin noted), and a mortgage held by the College, which the chapter paid off in seven years.
Alpha sorority was founded in 1900 as a literature club for women at Occidental—and for nearly 80 years, the Alpha House has been synonymous with cultivating lifelong friendships and sisterhood. After nearly a decade without alumnae oversight, however, the house was deteriorating rapidly—a situation that accelerated following the pandemic.
An upstairs bathroom plumbing problem led to the collapse of the ceiling below. A first-floor room, damaged by a huge sewer leak, was exposed to the elements and had been cordoned off with hazard tape. Mold was spreading, and in the summer of 2022, an inspection of the house revealed asbestos in the vents and problems with the windows.
“We didn’t really know the half of it until we saw the damage,” recalls Tracy Merritt ’84, who spent more than two years working with Alphas from multiple eras (including ’84 classmates Susan Bradley Krant and Cris Humbaugh Weekes) to shore up the governance structure of the organization and restore the house to livability. They tapped members with fundraising and legal expertise and gathered bids from construction firms. A recent graduate, Carol Beckett ’20, organized a GoFundMe campaign in 2022 that raised nearly $40,000 for emergency repairs. (The total cost of the renovation ran well into six figures.)
Now, Merritt says, “we have a mortgage and construction is essentially complete.” Two years after the house was declared uninhabitable, six Alphas moved in at the start of the school year, and twice that number have shown an interest in living there next fall. “I almost cried when I saw a picture of their first meeting back in the house,” she says.
“One of the big reasons why we wanted to live in the Alpha House is that you got to live with your friends,” she adds. “We had 14 to 16 women living there when I was at Oxy, and that experience was incredible.”
With their maintenance issues under control, the alumnae leadership hopes to re-establish the sense of community that is as important to young women today as it was to their predecessors—a sentiment to which Ginny Goss Cushman ’55 can relate. “It was a different time and place when I was a student, but I loved my experience as an Alpha,” she says. “We had a houseboy, and the girls had dinner together there every night. We were supposed to make our beds every day —and the house mother checked.”
After graduation, Cushman’s pledge class of 15 members started a round robin letter that remains active to this day. “There are still six of us keeping it going,” she says. “I made lasting friendships and that’s what I think a sorority is supposed to be.”
