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Fraternities:
The Founding
"Believing that Secret
Societies are calculated to destroy the harmony of the College,
to
create distinctions not founded on merit, to produce strife and
animosity, we feel called upon to exert ourselves to counteract
the evil tendency of such associations."
-Preamble,
constitution of Delta Upsilon fraternity, Delta Upsilon Archives,
Middlebury College (Stameskin, The Town's College)
.jpg)
| Fraternities
dominated the student social life at Middlebury College for
over a hundred years, beginning with the founding of the Alpha
Mu chapter of Chi Psi in 1843 (Stameshkin, 174). The first
three fraternities Middlebury were Chi Psi, Delta Kappa Epsilon
(DEKE), and Delta Upsilon (DU). Begun as secret groups at
other northeastern colleges, fraternities spread to Middlebury
and helped to alleviate students' dissatisfaction with existing
extracurricular activities and organization, often academic
in nature. The morality, comradeship, small size and general
liberal outlook of fraternities attracted many male students.
Later fraternities were instrumental in the formation of a
sorority organization at Middlebury (Stameshkin, 264). The
first sorority, Alpha Chi, was founded in 1889 and by 1917
female students had organized four sororities on Middlebury's
campus. Sororities at Middlebury never gained as much popularity
as fraternities, but the groups still provided women with
an important opportunity for social and political experiences
as well as acting as a needed female complement to the male
groups. |
| The fraternity
system at Middlebury College developed out of a number of
small secret societies that emerged and became an important
part of campus social life in the mid-1850s. The transformation
from anti-secret societies to non-secret fraternities was
a gradual process over many years. Initially, the townspeople
and college faculty were avidly opposed to a fraternity system
at Middlebury, as it posed a threat to the strict, conservative
Christian regime of the school. In 1864, Delta Upsilon (DU)
forged a strong campaign against anti-secret society organization
(Stameshkin, 176). DU's attitude toward secrecy was that non-selective
and non-elitist fraternities could accomplish the same goals
of morality and general social culture as secret groups. The
two original secret societies, Chi Psi and Delta Kappa Epsilon,
were primarily opposed to forfeiting some of the freedom they
had as secret underground groups. By the 1870s, fraternities
had completely abandoned their secret ways and existed openly
as an important role in the social life of the school (Stameshkin,
177). |
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More
Important Dates:
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Alpha
Chi sorority - 1889
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Pi
Beta Pi sorority - 1893
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Alpha
Chapter, Kappa Delta Rho fraternity - 1905
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Alpha
Sigma Phi fraternity - 1911
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Inter-fraternity
council - 1913
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| For
a look at other major events in Middlebury College history,
visit the timeline |
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Sorority
plaque and three silver spoons with the Alpha Chi crest,
1915 (Bain, The College on the Hill)
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