Rah, Rah, Sis Boom Bah! The Birth of College Sports and the NCAA

Posted on August 21, 2013 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

A two-mile, eight-oared barge race between two teams in 1852 was the first recorded American intercollegiate competition. Harvard defeated Yale on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire and their athletic rivalry began. The College Rowing Association was founded six years later by Brown, Harvard, Trinity and Yale.

New England was also the site of the first intercollegiate baseball game. Amherst and Williams met on the diamond in 1859, five years before either Yale or Harvard had a baseball team.

Princeton and Rutgers have the distinction of playing the first intercollegiate football game.  The game they played on November 6, 1869, resembled soccer and rugby more than modern-day football. The desire to standardize football rules led Princeton to invite Harvard, Yale, and Columbia to form the Intercollegiate Football Association [IFA] in 1876. The IFA, the first forerunner of the National Collegiate Athletic Association [NCAA], was in existence until 1894.

The IFA provided a forum for the discussion of the sport’s techniques and regulations. And although IFA membership increased, discord between the IFA members was common. Moreover, despite the discussions and quest for standardization, football became a brutal, dangerous, and deadly sport.

By 1905, debilitating injuries and deaths were occurring with alarming frequency.  During the particularly gruesome season in the fall of 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt invited representatives from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton to the White House. He spoke to them about the brutality and the effect it had upon the sport’s credibility. Little action resulted from the meeting.

The impetus for reform was the death of 19-year-old Harold Moore, Union College’s star quarterback, in a game against New York University on November 25, 1905. Unfortunately, Moore’s was but one of the 18 deaths that season. In addition, 159 were seriously injured. Henry L. MacCraken, NYU’s chancellor, was dismayed by Moore’s death and he wired Charles Eliot, Harvard’s president, and implored him to organize a meeting of college presidents to reform or abolish football. Eliot politely declined. Two representatives from Harvard, Roosevelt’s alma mater, were invited to a second meeting with President Roosevelt. Despite the President’s influence, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton did little to lead the way for reform.

1911-12 football team1911-12 College Football Team

MacCracken was more successful. He invited 19 collegiate representatives to a meeting at New York’s Murray Hill Hotel. Representatives from 13 institutions attended the December 8, 1905 meeting. After heated debate about abolishing football, a majority voted to retain, yet reform, football, but little was accomplished. A second meeting took place on December 28, 1905 and all major academic institutions playing intercollegiate football were invited. Sixty-two institutions sent representatives; together they formed the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States [IAAUS].  Palmer Pierce of West Point was elected its first president. Notably absent from this meeting were representatives from Yale, Harvard, Princeton, University of Chicago, Cornell, University of Pennsylvania and the United States Naval Academy.

The IAAUS had neither legislative nor executive powers; its role was seen as an educational one. In December 1910, at the fifth annual convention of IAAUS, the organization’s name was changed to the National Collegiate Athletic Association [NCAA]. During the early years, the NCAA’s focus was on standardizing game rules and educating game officials. Any legislation enacted by the organization was subject to a “home-rule” principle.

A 1911-12 college footbal team place on what apears to be ice. The fogginess of the sky is only the discloration of the print and not a weather phenomenon.

A 1911-12 college football team played on what appears to be rainwater ot ice. The fogginess of the sky is only the discoloration of the print and not a weather phenomenon. The photos are from a college co-ed’s scrapbook.

The Football Rules Committee was established early in the history of IAAUS and it met with moderate success. This success indicated to the IAAUS/NCAA members that perhaps the rules for other sports could be standardized. In 1908, a rules committee for basketball was formed. Committees to standardize the rules for track and field (1910), soccer (1911), swimming (1913), wrestling (1917), volleyball (1918), boxing (1919), ice hockey (1923), gymnastics (1927), baseball (1928), lacrosse (1929), fencing (1932), golf (1935), and tennis (1937) followed.

REFERENCES

Bailey, W. S. & Littleton, T. D. (1991). Athletics and academe: An anatomy of abuses and a prescription for reform. New York: American Council on Education & Macmillan Publishing Company.

Bucher, C. A. & Dupee, R. K., Jr. (1965). Athletics in schools and colleges. New York: The Center for Applied Research in Education, Inc.

Guttman, A. (1991). The anomaly of intercollegiate sports. In Andre, J. & D. N. James. Foundations: History and philosophy of sport. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Knight Foundation, Inc. (1993). A new beginning for a new century: Intercollegiate athletics in the United States: A final report. Akron, OH: Author.

Lawrence, P. R. (1987). Unsportsmanlike conduct: The National Collegiate Athletic Association and the business of college football. New York: Praeger Publishers.

Yaeger, D. (1991). Undue process: NCAA’s injustice for all. Champaign, IL: Sagamore Publishing Company.

 (c) Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2013. All Rights Reserved.

Posted in Amherst College, Brown University, College Athletics, Dartmouth College, Fran Favorite, Harvard University, Yale University | Tagged , | Comments Off on Rah, Rah, Sis Boom Bah! The Birth of College Sports and the NCAA

Founders Who Were Sisters First and Then Became Sorority Sisters

Posted on August 19, 2013 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

Sisters, Sisters! Six of the 26 National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) women’s fraternities/sororities have a pair of real sisters among their founders.

Marguerite and Estelle Shepard were students at Syracuse University when they helped found Alpha Gamma Delta. The sisters were the ones who planted the seed for the formation of a new women’s fraternity on the Syracuse campus. They talked the idea over with a professor,  Dr. Wellesley P. Coddington, recruited their friends, and founded Alpha Gamma Delta on May 30, 1904.

Helene and Adriance Rice were enrolled at Michigan State Normal College (now Eastern Michigan University) when they got together with six friends and created Alpha Sigma Tau on November 4, 1899. They and two other Alpha Sigma Tau founders roomed in the home of Mrs. Depew.

Frances and Almira Cheney were students at Lombard College in Galesburg, Illinois when they became founders of Alpha Xi Delta on April 17, 1893. Almira became an ordained minister in the Universalist Church. Frances left Lombard and graduated from Ryder Divinity School in 1895. When Frances died in 1901, she was serving as a rural pastor. Theirs were not conventional careers for women in the 1890s.

Phi Sigma Sigma’s founders include Ethel and Lillian Gordon. Only one organization, Theta Phi Alpha, has two sets of sisters among the founders – May and Camilla Ryan, and Katrina and Dorothy Caughey.

Clara and Emma Brownlee, along with ten friends, founded Pi Beta Phi at the home of Jacob Holt on First Avenue in Monmouth, Illinois, on April 28, 1867. Emma was the organization’s first president and Pi Beta Phi’s coat of arms is based on the Brownlee’s family’s coat of arms.

SM-4944

The Brownlee Family Coat of Arms (Above) and the Pi Beta Phi Coat of Arms (below)

The Brownlee Family Coat of Arms (Above) and the Pi Beta Phi Coat of Arms (below)

© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2013. All Rights Reserved.


 

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Recruitment, OK! New Members, OK! Where? Oklahoma, OK!!

Posted on August 16, 2013 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

The University of Oklahoma and the Oklahoma State University Panhellenic Associations have completed sorority recruitment. Congratulations to the new members of these organizations. Enjoy  your time as a collegiate member and cherish the fact that membership is for a lifetime. To celebrate this event, here are the covers from two vintage rush guides from these campuses.

Both the University of Oklahoma in Norman and Oklahoma State University in Stillwater were founded in 1890, 17 years before Oklahoma became a state in 1907. 

In 1909, Kappa Alpha Theta and Delta Delta Delta chartered chapters at the University of Oklahoma. By 1920, there were 10 National Panhellenic Conference organizations on campus. 

rushee tips 1943 crop

OSU began as Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College. It became Oklahoma State University in 1957. In 1919, Kappa Alpha Theta, Kappa Delta, and Pi Beta Phi all founded chapters there. Lambda Chi Alpha was the only national men’s fraternity on campus in 1919.

ok rushees handbook

The women to whom these rush guides belonged were in college during the war years. Their college careers were turned upside down. Most males of college age were in the armed forces. Men’s fraternity life came to a halt during those years. Rationing of food, gasoline, and material goods became a part of daily life. There was angst and worry about the world situation and loved ones serving in the military. There was no instant communication as we have today (cell phones, e-mail, skype, etc.); waiting for the mailman to bring word from a loved one across the world added extra stress to one’s college career. If you know women who were in college during World War II, ask them what campus life was like. Chances are it was light years away from what the young women who have joined sororities in Oklahoma (and elsewhere) are experiencing today.


 

(c) Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2013. All Rights Reserved.

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Q. “Which Is the Best Fraternity? A. “And There You Are!”

Posted on August 14, 2013 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

The academic year is gearing up on campuses all across the country. For some, it means that fraternity and sorority recruitment time is near. Best wishes to the young men and women making decisions as to which organization they will join.

Students have been making those same decisions for almost two centuries. The world was a much different place in 1922, when the following paragraphs were written. Only a handful of college students had access to an automobile (and if they did, it was black, the only color available), few had grown up having their own room and their own bathroom. There were no portable phones, televisions, and the things that today’s college students consider necessities. And yet, the sentiments expressed by George Banta* in the July, 1922 issue of Banta’s Greek Exchange ring as true today as they did then.

“One of the questions most frequently asked of us is as to which is the best fraternity. This most naive question is most often propounded to us by non-fraternity folks who are debating the choice of a fraternity. Rushing season also brings us such inquiries and these latter often take the form of asking us to decide definitely between two different fraternities or sororities. It is no uncommon thing in the autumn for us to receive telegrams which have manifestly found their inspiration in the fierce rushing on the campus.

“It is not merely a question of the impropriety of our undertaking to decide such questions. Any opinion that the editor might harbor would be only his personal opinion. We have long ago learned that choice of a fraternity is a state of mind. There are those to whom the question of size is important; another prefers limitations and exclusiveness; one prefers that which is ancient; another that which is new and plastic and gives opportunity for individual activity, and, it may be for a fight. So, there is with us a great deal bigger reason for not trying to make such distinctions than mere impropriety. It is simply impossible. We do not know which is the best, and we have long ago come to doubt whether there is any ‘best.’ We feel that we might as well undertake to decide between the relative value to the community of the two neighbors who live beside us, one to the north and one to the south. We ourselves prefer our own family simply because it is our own. And we find that each of our two neighbors prefers his family for exactly the same reason. And there you are.”

banta sugnature

*George Banta was a Phi Delta Theta and a Delta Gamma and he is credited with bringing Delta Gamma to the northern states. He was also a wonderful proponent of fraternity life. For more information about him, see http://wp.me/p20I1i-AS


 

© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2013. All Rights Reserved.

Posted in Fran Favorite, George Banta, GLO, Greek-letter Organization, Greek-letter Organization History, Women's Fraternity History | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Q. “Which Is the Best Fraternity? A. “And There You Are!”

Women’s Fraternities, Sororities, and Dr. Frank Smalley

Posted on August 12, 2013 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.
Frank Smalley

Frank Smalley

“Why are some National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) groups women’s fraternities and some are sororities?” is a question I am often asked. It’s a tough one because the 26 NPC organizations are typically referred to as sororities in everyday conversation (i.e. sorority recruitment, office of fraternity and sorority life, etc.).

Credit for this dilemma is given to one man, Dr. Frank Smalley, a professor at Syracuse University. Gamma Phi Beta was founded at Syracuse in 1874. Eight years later, Gamma Phi Beta’s second chapter was founded at the University of Michigan. After the chapter was installed and the two delegates returned to Syracuse, an announcement about the new chapter appeared in the newspaper. On the following day, Smalley made his now-famous comment, “I presume that you young women are now members of a sorority,” thereby coining the word and bringing it into modern usage.*

In the October 1912 Crescent of Gamma Phi Beta, Smalley explained his use of the word, “It appears to me that the use of the word ‘sorority’ to indicate a college Greek-letter society of young women needs no defense.  It is to some extent a question of taste. The word ‘fraternity’ when used of such a society seems a little forced, although the comprehensive use of masculine terms to include women, sometimes justifies it. However, when we have a Latin form sororities, which is specific and exact, why should not the English form ‘sorority’ be used with the same exactness as we observe in the ordinary use of the pronouns he and she?” The roots of the word “fraternity” are in “phratia,” the Greek word meaning people who hold a common interest as well as the Latin word “fraternitas.”

On October 13, 1884, Smalley’s sister, Honta Smalley (Bredin), became a member of the Beta chapter; in 1888, she helped found its Epsilon chapter at Northwestern University and served as Gamma Phi’s first national president. Smalley’s daughter, Carrie Elizabeth, Syracuse University class of 1903, was a member of Gamma Phi Beta Sorority’s Alpha chapter.

Of the 26 NPC organizations, more than half are officially a women’s fraternity or a fraternity for women. Those officially a sorority are: Alpha Delta Pi; Alpha Epsilon Phi; Alpha Sigma Alpha; Alpha Sigma Tau; Delta Phi Epsilon; Delta Zeta; Gamma Phi Beta; Kappa Delta; Sigma Delta Tau; Sigma Kappa; and Sigma Sigma Sigma.

*Sir Thomas More (Saint Thomas More to Catholics) used the word “sorority” in the early 16th century, it is not known whether Smalley knew of More’s usage of this word.

(c) Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2013. All Rights Reserved.

 Honta Smalley (Bredin), Frank Smalley's sister, a member of the Beta chapter of Gamma Phi Beta at the University of Michigan

Honta Smalley (Bredin), Frank Smalley’s sister, a member of the Beta chapter of Gamma Phi Beta at the University of Michigan


 

Posted in Alpha Phi, Fran Favorite, Gamma Phi Beta, Greek-letter Organization, Greek-letter Organization History, National Panhellenic Conference, Northwestern University, Syracuse University, The Crescent of Gamma Phi Beta, University of Michigan | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Women’s Fraternities, Sororities, and Dr. Frank Smalley

“Baconian Biliteral Cipher, on the Estate of Colonel Fabyan,” National Security, and Elizebeth Smith Friedman

Posted on August 9, 2013 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

“Elizebeth Smith, ’15, and Wm. F. Friedman, Cornell, ’13. May 21, (1917). At home.
Riverbank, Geneva, Ill.. where both are engaged on the Baconian Biliteral
Cipher, on the estate of Colonel Fabyan,” is the notice of the marriage of a Hillsdale College Pi Beta Phi member. It appeared in the December 1917 Arrow of Pi Beta Phi.

Elizebeth Smith Friedman and her husband William

Elizebeth Smith Friedman and her husband William

The “Baconian Biliteral Cipher, on the estate of Colonel Fabyan” sets my mind buzzing! Elizebeth, became a member of Pi Beta Phi’s Michigan Alpha chapter as a junior, when she transferred to Hillsdale from Wooster College. She must have been an exceptional student, for the chapter letter which appears in the December 1914 Arrow mentions her by name, “We are so happy in having Elizebeth Smith really, truly one of us. She was pledged last year and initiated October 10.”  It was later noted that she was literary editor of the Collegian, in addition to winning second prize in oratory, and being on the commencement program.

Luckily, my friend Penny Proctor, a Hillsdale College Pi Beta Phi alumna, edited a history of her chapter for the 125th anniversary last year. What follows is the entry she wrote about Elizebeth Smith Friedman. (It should also be noted that Penny is an outstanding Hillsdale alumna in her own right; she won the International Amy Burnham Onken Award when she was a senior at Hillsdale). Thanks, Penny for sharing your research!

The National Security Agency and other intelligence-gathering branches of government have been getting a lot of attention lately. That, and the approaching anniversary of her birth (August 26, 1892) make this a perfect time to remember the contributions of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, a Pi Beta Phi, to the creation of the NSA.

Elizebeth – who insisted on that spelling of her name to avoid the nickname “Eliza” – joined Pi Beta Phi while a student at Hillsdale College. After graduation in 1915, she accepted a position with Riverbank Laboratories in Chicago for the purpose of researching the bilateral codes of Francis Bacon in the works of William Shakespeare; the project was intended to prove or disprove, once and for all, the myth that Shakespeare and Bacon were one and the same. While there, she met fellow researcher William Friedman, and they married in May, 1917. Work on the Shakespeare project stopped just before the United States entered World War I, when the federal government asked Riverbank to loan out the services of William and Elizebeth to work on cryptography for the War Department and the Justice Department.

They almost immediately became involved in breaking a ring of spies working for Germany while living in the United States. Their plan was to foment revolution in India (still a British possession) and thus distract the United Kingdom from the fighting in Europe. The spies used a code in which numbers related to the page, line and word in a very specific book – and William and Elizebeth correctly deciphered 95% of the messages without having the book in their possession. Elizebeth is also credited with training new cryptanalysts in the newly formed Signal Intelligence Service, the first military department devoted to code breaking.

In 1920, the Friedmans moved to Washington, D.C. where they each accepted positions with different branches of the government. Elizebeth’s projects focused on the increasingly sophisticated communication codes used by bootleggers and smugglers who brought illicit liquor into the county. The smugglers sometimes used multiple types of codes in the same message. Elizebeth not only had great success in breaking these codes, but testified in over 30 trials. Her reputation as an expert witness who spoke with clarity and confidence was so great that at one trial, seven defense lawyers rose as one to object when she was announced as a witness.

In 1934, she helped avert a potential international incident in a smuggling case involving a smuggler’s boat that was sunk by the Coast Guard even thought it was flying a Canadian flag. By decrypting the ship’s communications, Elizebeth was able to prove that, regardless of the flag, the ship was under the exclusive control and management of U.S. citizens for illegal purposes. This effectively resolved the jurisdictional dispute and defused the increasing tension with the Canadian government.

The Canadians were so impressed by her work that in 1937 they asked for her help in the prosecution of an opium smuggling gang in Vancouver. It took only six days for Elizebeth to successfully decipher a code based on the Chinese language, despite the fact that she neither read nor spoke Chinese.

During World War II, Elizebeth gained fame for her pivotal role in unmasking an American feeding information on Navy ship movements to the Japanese. Velvalee Dickinson, known as “the Doll Woman” because she used her doll shop as a vehicle for transmitting data, was convicted of espionage based on Elizebeth’s deciphering of her coded messages. She was also part of the team that broke the famed “Purple” code used by the Japanese.

After the War, Elizebeth worked for the International Monetary Fund, creating communication security systems. She and William also finally completed and published their analysis of the Baconian Bilateral Cipher, concluding definitively that Bacon did not write Shakespeare’s plays. A reviewer in the Chicago Tribune praised it for its “graceful, uncomplicated style and …surprise charges of needle-sharp wit,” adding, “the book is a monument of sanity in a field of scholarship noted mainly for its inscrutability.”

In 1999, William and Elizebeth were among the inaugural honorees named to the “Cryptologic Hall of Honor” at the National Security Agency. (His career was even more distinguished in the field.) In 2002, the NSA named its new OPS1 building the “William and Elizebeth Friedman Building.”

She was fond of telling her staff, “We don’t make them [codes], we break them.” She and William are buried together in Arlington National Cemetery. Their joint headstone bears the inscription, “Knowledge is Power.”

 

Sources

Website: “Women in American Cryptology: Creating the Legacy – Elizebeth Smith Friedman” http://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/women/honorees/friedman.shtml

Website: “NSA Cryptology Hall of Honor 1999 Inductee Elizebeth Smith Friedman” http://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/hall_of_honor/1999/friedman_e.shtml

“Enormous Amount of Research by Hillsdale Alumni Went Into Book,” The Hillsdale Alumni Magazine, April 1, 1958, p. 5.

Class News, The Hillsdale Alumni Magazine, June 1, 1956 p. 25.

Class News, The Hillsdale Alumnus Magazine, May 1, 1938, p. 64.

Joyner, David. “Elizebeth Smith Friedman – Up to 1934” Online paper dated 07/30/2013 http://www.wdjoyner.com/papers/elizebeth-friedman_early-crypto-work3.pdf


 

(C) Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2013. All Rights Reserved.

Posted in Cornell University, Fran Favorite, GLO, Greek-letter Organization, Greek-letter Organization History, Hillsdale College, Notable Fraternity Women, Pi Beta Phi, The Arrow of Pi Beta Phi | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on “Baconian Biliteral Cipher, on the Estate of Colonel Fabyan,” National Security, and Elizebeth Smith Friedman

1839 – on the Eighth Day of the Eighth Month at Nine in the Evening – Happy 174th Birthday, Beta Theta Pi!

Posted on August 8, 2013 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

August 13, 1839, was Commencement Day at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Five days earlier, on August 8, at the first official meeting, eight young men established Beta Theta Pi, the first men’s fraternity founded west of the Allegheny Mountains. The men, “of ever honored memory” were John Reily Knox, Michael Clarkson Ryan, David Linton, Samuel Taylor Marshall, James George Smith, Charles Henry Hardin, John Holt Duncan, and Thomas Boston Gordon. The first three were members of the Class of 1839. 

Miami University was founded in 1809 but it was 1826 before it conferred its first baccalaureate degree. From 1826 through 1839, there were 222 graduates, they were all male, as Miami was not yet coeducational.

The Beta Theta Pi chapter became inactive in January of 1848 due to the “Snowball Rebellion.” It was the goal of Erasmus D. McMaster, Miami’s president, to rid the institution of the fraternities and a decree came down from the university banning them from the institution. The students rebelled. It snowed heavily, as it often does in Ohio in winter. To protest his decision, the main entrance was blocked off and a dozen or more huge snowballs found their way to the first floor of Old Main. McMaster was livid! He was determined to expel the men involved. The second chapter of Alpha Delta Phi had been founded at Miami in 1833. At the time of McMaster’s edict, they were the only two national groups on campus.

On the following evening, the rebellion continued. Doors were nailed shut, and Old Main was filled with snow. McMaster cancelled classes for a week and began disciplinary proceedings. All but nine seniors and five juniors were expelled from the University. 

Three of the men were admitted to Centre College in Kentucky and founded the Epsilon chapter. That spring, the two remaining members left. The Alpha chapter did not come back to life until 1855. Miami University’s decision to fire McMaster due to the loss in critical revenue resulted in a change of course for the institution regarding Greek-letter organizations. The story of Miami University’s role in the history of the fraternity movement is a rich one, but it will have to wait until another day. Happy Birthday to the first of the Miami Triad!

 Scan0003

I love this map and it relates to Beta’s founding.This is what the country looked like in 1839 when Beta was founded. It’s from a copy of the Son of the Stars:A Manual for Pledges of Beta Theta Pi, by G. Herbert Smith, President of the Fraternity, 1947. The top legend states “The Fraternities in 1839” and the bottom one reads “the United States and Territories in 1839 when Beta Theta Pi was established showing the colleges with fraternity chapters.”

(c) Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com. 2013. All Rights Reserved.

Posted in Beta Theta Pi, Founders' Day, Fran Favorite, GLO, Greek-letter Organization, Greek-letter Organization History, Miami University | Tagged , , | Comments Off on 1839 – on the Eighth Day of the Eighth Month at Nine in the Evening – Happy 174th Birthday, Beta Theta Pi!

Sorority Members Rush To and Fro in the Summer of 1910

Posted on August 7, 2013 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

scan 2013_08_06 19-58-29

Has Fran finally lost it? Why is she using this picture? It looks like a hot mess all the way around. In 2013, taking a candid picture is not at all noteworthy. But back in the summer of 1910 when this photo was taken, it was not the norm. Pictures were carefully posed.

Most of these women are college students. They are attending a women’s fraternity convention. Look at the white hat, the long dresses, the corseted waists, the parasols, and the women rushing to and fro. Can you imagine being dressed like that in the middle of June? Neither can I.

I often think of this photo when someone asks me how rush (now known as recruitment) got its name. In the days before the founding of the National Panhellenic Conference (NPC), the organization of 26 women’s fraternities/sororities, and recruiting rules were written down and agreed upon, there was often a mad scramble to extend an invitation to membership as quickly as possible after a new student arrived on campus. There are stories of meeting an incoming coed at the train station and giving  her an invitation to membership, especially if she was known to members of the organization. An endorsement from a member, i.e., “My cousin Tillie’s best friend from Oquawka is studying here in the fall. She’d be a great XYZ,” was sometimes all it took to invite a new student to membership in the 1800s. That practice did not last very long, for the women’s organizations on a campus came together and set rules for themselves, even prior the NPC’s creation, but the name “rush” carried on for more than a century. (There is a blog post about the recruitment rules created in 1888 by the three women’s fraternities at the University of Kansas. http://wp.me/p20I1i-Xm )

(c) Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2013. All Rights Reserved.


 

Posted in Conventions, Fran Favorite, GLO, Greek-letter Organization, Greek-letter Organization History, National Panhellenic Conference, University of Kansas, Women's Fraternities | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Sorority Members Rush To and Fro in the Summer of 1910

“The Best Man/Woman in the Chapter” With Thoughts of Thomas Arkle Clark

Posted on August 5, 2013 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

One of my all-time favorite magazines is Banta’s Greek Exchange. Sadly, it has not been published since 1973. For 60 years Banta’s Greek Exchange printed information from fraternity and sorority magazines along with feature articles and other items of interest to the Greek world.

This appeared in the September 1922 issue of Banta’s Greek Exchange. It was reprinted from an Alpha Phi Quarterly which in turn had “taken a few liberties with the leading article in The Palm of Alpha Tau Omega by Thomas Arkle Clark which he calls ‘The Best Man in the Chapter.’ Substitute girl for man and it works just as well to our introspection.”

The Alpha Phi commentary noted that “Dr. Clark does not believe that the best man in the chapter is he who is ranked at least close to the best student, has good manners, is well known about the campus, whose morals are unimpeachable, and whose family connections are excellent.”

According to the Alpha Phi Quarterly article, “Gleaned here and there through the article Dr. Clark does believe that the best man in the chapter is:

He who is first of all a good student.

He who gives some thought to the work and welfare of the other fellows in the chapter as well as to himself.

He who knows other fraternities and fraternity men and does not always think that their men are inferior to those in his own chapter.

He who is always a man of principle and a man with a backbone whose fraternity ideals must be something more than mere words.

He who is not only loyal to the chapter but loyal to the college who respects its regulations who knows its traditions who respects its good name.

Thomas Arkle (“T.A.”) Clark was born in Minonk, in north central Illinois, on May 11, 1862. On September 15, 1886, he entered the University of Illinois. He was older than most students and it took some work for him to get there. His father had died when he was 15 and he was left to support his mother and invalid brother.

The University of Illinois Alumni Quarterly and Fortnightly Notes dated September 1, 1916, had this entry written by George Shawhan, an alumnus from the class of 1875, who was the county superintendent. He said of Clark: 

The undoubting Thomas was then 22 years old, living with his mother and invalid brother on a farm east of Rantoul, about 20 miles north of the University. Judged by neighborhood standards it was high time for him to begin wearing a beard in winter and to be winding his own clock. He was about five years past school age; neighboring boys of his maturity had quit school and taken wives without having learned whether the north or the south won the Civil war. Young Clark was well enough equipped as he stood to wrest a living from the land. In fact he was worth a little premium, for had he not taught the Maple Grove school two winters before? He will point out to you in Rantoul the very spot where the head school trustee stopped him one day and said ‘You are going to teach our school this winter. I have been watching you. I saw your grades in the paper.’ He might be willing also to locate the site of the hitch rack near the old Urbana court house where stood his horse while he wrote the teacher’s examination fee, $1, George Shawhan, ’75, county superintendent.

When he made the decision to attend college, he had already taught in a nearby school for several winters, even though he had not graduated from high school. Except for a short stint after graduation teaching in town and graduate study at Harvard, he spent his entire professional life at the University of Illinois. Clark graduated in 1890 and earned membership in Phi Beta Kappa. 

He served as a professor of English from 1893-99. In 1895 he was head of the Department of Rhetoric. It was then that he helped organize the Gamma Zeta chapter of Alpha Tau Omega at the University of Illinois and was the chapter’s first initiate. At that point, the fraternity system at the University of Illinois was quite small and young; Delta Tau Delta (1872); Sigma Chi (1881); Kappa Sigma (1891); Phi Kappa Sigma (1892); Phi Delta Theta (1893); Kappa Alpha Theta (1895, with a charter dating to 1875 which had been transferred from the chapter at Illinois Wesleyan College); and Pi Beta Phi (1895). 

Clark married Alice Virginia Broaddus on August 24, 1896. She was also a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

In 1900, Andrew Draper, the University of Illinois’ President asked Clark to help tame an unruly student, Fred Applegate. His actions warranted dismissal from the university, but Applegate’s father was an “influential supporter of the institution,” according to Kenton Garyas, who wrote about Clark’s life from 1901-17 (Journal of Educational Administration and History, 30(2), 1998).

Clark tried a new tactic, requesting that Applegate inform Clark when a trangression  (i.e. drinking, gambling and other tomfoolery) had taken place and the two would discuss it. Applegate became a successful student and an alumnus of the university. According to Garyas, “This requirement of honesty on confessing one’s own transgressions, as well as reporting those of others, would become a trademark of Clark’s modus operandi.”

President Draper began sending other wayward students to Clark and by 1901 he became Dean of Undergraduates and Assistant to the President. In 1904, a change in the University of Illinois presidency brought a change in title, dropping the “Assistant to the President,” yet his duties remained the same. In 1909, he became the Dean of Men. On March 22, 1923, he founded Phi Eta Sigma, an honorary society to recognize academic excellence among freshmen men.*

He was one of the first administrators in the nation to hold that title and his success in the position set the standards for Deans of Men and Women at institutions the country over. He also helped develop the modern fraternity system.

He served Alpha Tau Omega as Worthy Grand Chief, High Council member, and Educational Advisor.

Clark served as the Dean of Men until 1931. He died in 1932. His replacement was his former assistant, Fred H. Turner. In 1918, Turner began his tenure at the University of Illinois as a student. He retired in 1968, serving as Dean of Students from 1932-68. Turner also served as Grand President of Sigma Alpha Epsilon.

*Maria Leonard, Dean of Women at the University of Illinois from 1923-1945, founded Alpha Lambda Delta in 1924; it was originally an honorary to recognize academic excellence among freshmen women. A year earlier, University of Illinois Dean Thomas Arkle Clark founded its male counterpart, Phi Eta Sigma. In the mid-1970s, both organizations became coeducational. For more information on Maria Leonard, see http://wp.me/p20I1i-y3

Thomas Arkle Clark, circa 1910. Photo courtesy of the University of Illinois Archives)

Thomas Arkle Clark, circa 1910. (Photo courtesy of the University of Illinois Archives)

(c) Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2013. All Rights Reserved.

Posted in Alpha Phi, Alpha Phi Quarterly, Alpha Tau Omega, Fran Favorite, GLO, Greek-letter Organization, Greek-letter Organization History, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, University of Illinois, Women's Fraternity History | Tagged , , | Comments Off on “The Best Man/Woman in the Chapter” With Thoughts of Thomas Arkle Clark

8/3/1923 Calvin Coolidge, ΦΓΔ, and Grace Coolidge, ΠBΦ, Their First Full Day as President and First Lady

Posted on August 2, 2013 by Fran Becque, Ph.D.

969615_780000291105_1084938994_nNinety years have passed since Grace Goodhue Coolidge went to bed the evening of August 2, 1923, as the wife of the Vice President. She was awakened in the middle of the night, dressed and went downstairs to join her husband in the parlor. As her father-in-law, a Windsor County notary, administered the oath of office to her husband by the light of a kerosene lamp, she suddenly became the First Lady of the Land.

Warren Harding had died suddenly late in the evening after he became ill in a San Francisco hotel. The Coolidges were in Vermont at the family homestead in Plymouth Notch.  President Harding’s death happened four hours before news was delivered at 2:30 a.m. to the farmhouse where Coolidge had been raised.

Colonel John Coolidge’s home did not have a telephone. President Harding’s secretary had telegraphed the initial message of Harding’s death to White River Junction, Vermont. The public telephone operator who received the message sought out Coolidge’s stenographer, W. A. Perkins, and Joseph N. McInerney, his chauffeur. They alerted a reporter. Much activity ensued in a short amount of time. Colonel Coolidge answered the door and received the news. He trudged up the stairs to wake his son.  The President recounted the night in his autobiography,

“…I noticed that his voice trembled. As the only times I had ever observed that before were when death had visited our family, I knew that something of the gravest nature had occurred.

“He placed in my hands an official report and told me that President Harding had just passed away. My wife and I at once dressed.

“Before leaving the room I knelt down and, with the same prayer with which I have since approached the altar of the church, asked God to bless the American people and give me power to serve them.”

The oath administered by Colonel Coolidge was taken in the 14′ x 17′ parlor. Electricity had not yet reached the house and the oath was taken by the light of a kerosene lamp. President Coolidge’s mother had died when he was young and her Bible was on the table at his hand.

First-hand accounts vary as to the people in the room when the oath was administered. That is understandable given the haste of the activity, the darkness of the night, and the solemness of the occasion.

If you’re ever near Plymouth Notch, Vermont, you can stop by and see the room where Grace Coolidge became First Lady by the light of a kerosene lamp. And on that night, Grace Coolidge, a charter member of the Pi Beta Phi chapter at the University of Vermont, and Calvin Coolidge, a member of the Phi Gamma Delta Chapter at Amherst College, became the first President and  First Lady to have been initiated into Greek-letter societies as college students.

 (c) Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2013. All Rights Reserved.

For more posts about the Coolidges:

Calvin Coolidge, Pride of the Amherst College Phi Gamma Delta Chapter

Grace Coolidge and Orange, Connecticut

Signed, Grace Coolidge

Grace Goodhue and Calvin Coolidge – Pi Beta Phi and Phi Gamma Delta – The First President and First Lady Initiated into Greek-Letter Societies while in College

GRACE GOODHUE COOLIDGE – MY FAVORITE FIRST LADY AND A LOYAL MEMBER OF THE VERMONT BETA CHAPTER OF PI BETA PHI

“If My Father Were Your Father, You Would.” – Calvin Coolidge, Jr.

Posted in Amherst College, Calvin Coolidge, First Ladies, Fran Favorite, Grace Coolidge, Phi Gamma Delta, University of Vermont | Tagged , , | Comments Off on 8/3/1923 Calvin Coolidge, ΦΓΔ, and Grace Coolidge, ΠBΦ, Their First Full Day as President and First Lady