Empowering Activism

Sisterhood Offered Framework for Future Women’s Groups

by Jordan McCord ’10

January 2, 2010

Andrea Alexander ’05, a former American-studies and sociology major, says “I conjured up my inner activist” while at Dickinson. Today she contemplates a career as a litigator.

“I’m a woman phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, that’s me.”

It was with these lines from a Maya Angelou poem that the Sisterhood, an organization developed on the principles of strong unity and support among women, began all of its rituals. Although the Sisterhood has disbanded, founder Andrea Alexander ’05 strongly believes that it served its purpose during its few years of existence.

“You need to think about the Sisterhood as an entity bigger than you,” she said. “What’s important is what people will say about it for the time it was here.”

As a part of the 125th anniversary of women’s admission to the college, Alexander was asked to speak on Oct. 1 at a Common Hour titled Women at Dickinson: Past, Present and Future. Alexander represented student organizations, in particular, the Sisterhood.

Director of the Women’s Center Susannah Bartlow invited Alexander because she believes the Sisterhood provided an important framework for Dickinson organizations that have succeeded it.

By including Alexander and the Sisterhood in the Common Hour program, “We could create better institutional memory for inclusive student organizations and student women’s leadership,” Bartlow explained. “Sisterhood, the organization Andrea developed, was a great model of a positive and committed community of women, and I think that’s something the entire campus benefits from.”

The Sisterhood was a networking social group that focused on providing skills that would serve members during their time in college as well as after graduation. The group focused on any basic skills needed for success in college, including tutoring and mentoring programs. Members supported many organizations, including the YWCA, by hosting an array of events including an annual fashion show.

Joyce Bylander, special assistant to the president, was the Sisterhood’s advisor and helped launch the organization. She was sad to see it go. “I thought the Sisterhood was a 21st-century iteration of a sorority,” she said. “It was a wonderfully supportive environment that created space where women could speak across generations and helped us to understand what women were going through.”

The Sisterhood was originally designed for any Dickinson woman—student, faculty or staff member—who identified as a person of color. But by the end of Alexander’s sophomore year, it had grown to 28 women and included anyone who could fulfill the group’s community-service obligations and pay dues.

Although Bylander believes that no organization since has provided quite the same cross-generational, cross-cultural nexus as the Sisterhood, its dissolution was likely a result of positive advancement. The Sisterhood grew out of Alexander’s wish for a new kind of community that perhaps sororities at that time were not offering, she said.

“As the college has changed and become more diverse, all students feel less [of a] disconnect,” Alexander added. “Also, more formal associations, through multicultural sororities, have begun while traditional sororities have become more racially and culturally diverse.” This includes the recent colonizing of a chapter of the historically African-American sorority Delta Sigma Theta in 2007.

A first-generation American from New York City, Alexander not only founded the Sisterhood but was one of the 10 members of the first Posse group at Dickinson. The Posse Foundation awards full scholarships to students with great potential from inner cities in the United States.

Although she appreciated receiving free tuition to one of the top liberal-arts colleges in the country, Alexander realized her first year that something was missing. She yearned for the strong support of the women she grew up with (as the second of four daughters) and felt there were strong pressures for Dickinson students to conform and play it safe.

The Sisterhood was born when she reflected on the strong female support she’d had, particularly from her older sister, who reminded her not to complain about the things that she tolerated but to put her frustration into action. Using this mantra, Alexander realized that it was time to let go of her anger and resentment and create a forum for her concerns and aspirations.

Not only does Alexander still keep in contact with former members of the Sisterhood, but she continues to support proactive networking organizations. Even though she is a third-year law student at Tulane University, Alexander makes time to assist Redemp-tion Inc., a nonprofit organization in New York City committed to preparing students for college.

To current Dickinson students she offers a message of empowerment: “If you feel something is missing, do something to change it because you have the power to make that [empty] feeling go away.”