The records of the Collegiate Sorosis document one of the oldest secret societies for women at the University of Michigan. The record group has been divided into five series: Minutes, Alphabetical, Finances, Photographs, and Scrapbooks.
In 1886, the Michigan chapter of Kappa Alpha Theta, then one of the three secret societies for women at the University of Michigan, feeling dissatisfied with the limitations of a secret organization, resigned from the national society. A group of the former members immediately laid plans for the founding of a society that would have a broader social and educational influence. Contact was made with the New York Sorosis, a women's organization with many distinguished members, which had been founded in 1868. After a period of discussion, the Ann Arbor women received permission to found a college chapter of Sorosis at the U-M. The charter for this Collegiate Sorosis was granted on May 12, 1886.
Collegiate Sorosis was a University of Michigan sorority, supposedly the first on campus to build and have its own home. Its purpose was to "promote agreeable and useful relations among women of literary, artistic and scientific tastes, and to afford an opportunity for discussion among women of new facts and principles." (Collegiate Sorosis, History File) In this period before there were dormitories for women, before the establishment and building of the Michigan League, Collegiate Sorosis provided a place where its members could live within a nurturing environment.
With the decline of fraternity and sorority participation in the 1960s and 70s, and with the elimination of the university regulation that women students reside either in dorms or sororities until age 21, interest in Collegiate Sorosis dropped. In 1973, the alumnae of the chapter voted to disband and to sell the house. After a brief period, however, in 1978, some members of the Sorosis Club of Michigan expressed an interest in reviving (or recolonizing) Collegiate Sorosis. In 1980, ten members pledged to Sorosis and moved into a house on Cambridge Road. The sorority survives into the 1990s because of the energy and dedication of its alumnae.
