Talk:List of University of Minnesota fraternities and sororities/Archive 1

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Page creation notes

I created this page in June of 2014, modeling it after similar pages existing for Cornell, Dartmouth, MIT, Illinois, Arizona State, Georgia Tech, UC Santa Barbara, etc. Some are better than others. I had earlier worked on the Cornell page extensively, which was the inspiration.

This version is intended to be a model for other large Greek system list pages, stylistically, and with that in mind provides a historical profile as well as current Greek system status.

These list pages are the inheritors and continuation, in a way, of William Raimond Baird's life work in development of his "Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities", considered for its 20 successive editions as the seminal reference source for lists of all such societies on all campuses in the US. Following his precedent, the professional, service and honor societies are also listed on this page. As explained, they follow a similar national hierarchical structure, they use Greek letters as identifiers, and they are/were intended by their founders to exist for many years beyond the college years of their original members. Over time, there has indeed been some mission shift in the ranks of these societies, where professional groups become honor societies, or vice-versa, or where professional societies may for all intents and purposes position themselves as academic and social societies. Alpha Gamma Rho is a great example of this, having originally been a Professional Fraternity.

Stylistically, I attempted to add color blocks to the list of honor societies, indicative of the colors of their honors cords or tassels. However, this format became messy, and I abandoned the effort. Instead, I linked to the Honor society page that has these color swatches, should a reader be interested. I left a single example of this in the paragraph introduction, noting Phi Beta Kappa's colors, as a hat tip to that fraternity's status as the first collegiate fraternity in 1776.

Chapter names are rendered in both Greek letter and English formats, to allow easier searching. Addresses are visible in the references, to help generate web search hits. Chapters are listed by order of founding, rather than alphabetically, which follows Baird's convention and is a fairly common method of listing chapters around the nation. I have divided the chapters by their self-selected conferences, and listed multiple conference membership where appropriate. For example, most of the traditionally black fraternities are now members of both the NPHC and the NIC.

Graphics are used in several places to improve readability and make the page more interesting. It would be entirely appropriate for someone with a better camera or access to University file photos to place low-res versions in the public domain and edit them into the page, replacing mine. For example, the photo of the graduating students now used in the Honors section is informative, but it shows (ahem) Missouri S&T students. I couldn't find a photo of Minnesota students, with tassels, handy. Several of the 1930s era Minnesota Gopher Yearbook etchings are wonderful, but would need to be scanned and released into the public domain. Maybe a University staffer can do that? The best ones are mostly after 1923, which is the cut-off year, prior to which content is public domain and simple to use and scan. Jax MN (talk) 15:43, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Your Chapter's Photo

The chapters photographed were profiled in the cited Architecture Minnesota article as highlights among fraternities at the Minnesota campus, with the exception of an architectural fraternity in the international Modernist style that had been torn down since publication. To this short list I added the former Acacia building and neighboring Gamma Eta Gamma, both exhibiting the Richardsonian Romanesque style, of which Pillsbury Hall is a more formidable example. Are they all beautiful? To each his own; but what they are are examples of specific styles, as noted by a working architectural historian. We all have our preferences as to style, and as a campus Greek, I have mine. So I thought that adopting the list from the article was a fair way to treat the subject. In addition to the dialog, I took my own photos and submitted them to Wikipedia, releasing them permanently to the public domain. If you have a nice photo and add it, but it isn't yours to give, don't be surprised if it gets deleted quickly by the copyright patrollers... They're 'aggressive'.

The intent of this section is to show the broad range of styles. Not to promote one house over another, or to point to every single beautiful building, of which Minnesota's Greek System has many, many, many. There are elements in each house, too, that would be notable in a longer treatment, and might have been photographed to call out specific detail. But to add them here would be to expand the article beyond its scope of a summary history and list of chapters, and would require a separate page and its own WP:hatnote. Jax MN (talk) 18:26, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Corrections to make?

When I first posted this article, it already had 321 references and notes. As obsessively comprehensive as that may be, still, there are going to be errors - missing dates, like "19xx", incorrect dates and addresses, even a missing chapter or two. So, even if you are not a practiced Wikipedia editor, let the world know if you see an error by filling in a missing date or fact. How? You can click on my user name below and send me a note, or post a correction yourself. This kind of page will generate a lot of readers once it takes off, if the examples from other schools are any indication. Many readers will doubtless come up with great new information to add.

If you add something and then it gets re-worked or deleted, please know that that's how Wikipedia is intended to evolve over time. Don't take offense. Good editors will explain clearly in the Edit Summary line above the "Save Page" button WHY they make changes. If you create a user ID and log in before you make a change, you and other editors may indeed collaborate on changes; anonymous edits typically aren't as 'respectable' in the Wikipedia world, but facts are facts, even if they come from an anonymous user. Just look at the page, and consider if your new factoid helps clarify or if it just muddies up the theme of the page. IF you have a question about it, simply click on the "New Section" tab at the top of this Talk page, and discuss it here. When there is consensus, we can make an edit to the main page. Jax MN (talk) 18:36, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Neutrality Concerns

This article is particularly long, has a lot bold claims and needs to be condensed. I would remind the editors of this article of wiki policy. This is a wikipedia entry, not an advertising space for Greek enrollment. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 156.98.4.11 (talk) 16:55, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

I agree with anonymous editor at IP 156.98.4.11(talk), this page is massive, makes several claims that appear to be WP:POV, and to utilize peacock terms to promote the organizations. Randomeditor1000 (talk) 03:48, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Agree with IP 156.98.4.11(talk) & Randomeditor1000.(talk) This article is clearly written by (and arguing for) the Greek community at the University of Minnesota. Especially troubling is the lack of discussion of issues, criticisms, etc., especially as compared to the extensive section regarding steps being taken to correct problems. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.208.55.186 (talk) 19:52, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

Phi Gamma Delta sorority?

I've been cross-referencing organizational dates and addresses against the archived Student Organization directories found on the Conservancy.umn website.

I thought I had found most of the short lived mid-Century groups, but in this round of edits found that there were more groups to add to the page than I'd first estimated. So, looking closer, in the 1979-80 Student Organization directory I noted a non-residential professional sorority with the name, Phi Gamma Delta, living at the same address, 1029 University Ave. SE, as the fraternity chapter of the same name, FIJI. Hmmm, interesting! Clearly an error, I thought. However, on mulling it over, I remembered that several of the fraternities of the time had well-established little sister clubs, some with their own bylaws, officers, independent budgets and student organization numbers. A-ha! This may have been such a group. Jax MN (talk) 22:53, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

POV check

I've nominated this article to be checked for NPOV because there are sections (primarily the "Response to criticism" section) that appear to be biased in favor of Greek life and in some ways promotional. In the aforementioned section the author appears to be writing a persuasive essay supporting fraternities and sororities and not writing a neutral encyclopedia article. Aspening (talk) 00:58, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for raising the issue, Aspening. As one of the main authors of the page, I was mindful of the necessity for NPOV, and had to do some digging to ensure that the article conveyed a balanced amount of detracting statements in line with appropriate WEIGHT. Any of us who have had involvement in the Greek system know implicitly that the Greeks have their detractors. But the difficulty was in finding substantive and verifiable citations to support the various anecdotes floating out there. I did, and had to do some digging. I hope you would agree that just noting a set of complaints wouldn't be good enough.

To respond to an earlier round of questions about this, I dug for bona fide citations that supported the benefit statements fully, which had been thinner, and are now well-cited. I also provided citations where they were available for the detracting statements. If I were to summarize the nature of such detractors, their categories include concerns about historical exclusion on the basis of religion and race, affordability issues, and the occasional news one hears nationally and locally about sexual assaults or hazing. My sense, in framing the pros and cons, was that the racial and religious exclusion issues were long past, and that Minnesota was in fact exemplary in its abandonment of such negative policies. Further, while in the past, membership was more expensive than the average collegiate experience, today, fraternities on this campus are markedly more affordable. This surprised even me, thus I noted the differential between fraternity living vs. dorm or apartment living in current membership brochures, cited in the article. --I'd no idea that costs of apartments and dorms had risen so much, in comparison to the fraternities. (Note, the sororities still seem to trend above average in expense.) Finally, it may be that Minnesota has thus far dodged a bullet, but I haven't been able to find incidence of any significant trend of hazing, locally, of the sort that hits national news. Nor a citable event of systemic sexual assault - individual cases, yes, but nothing verifiable and none from a citable source that shows the organizations themselves to be supportive of such abuse. Where hazing or an abuse event has occurred, the members have been swiftly expelled. Further, what I did find was that, contrary to the conventional wisdom that 1 in 5 women will be sexually assaulted during their lifetimes, Federal statistics show that the incidence of rape or statutory sexual assault is something like 1 in 55 women -- still too many, but not 1 in 5. Even more importantly, women appear to be safer on collegiate campuses, versus non-collegians. This certainly strikes against the conventional wisdom of a rape culture on campus, doesn't it! Clearly, discussion of this would go far afield of the point of the article, so I didn't get into it here. I thought it would give undue WEIGHT to the issue to note, as some pages have done, a "Controversies" section, listing one or two sporadic, anecdotal instances of someone getting kicked out, due to sexual abuse. While events like this certainly have happened, they are relatively rare, and wouldn't have the same WEIGHT as the immense set of positives that these 150-year old organizations have provided.

Sometimes, institutions and organizations are simply beneficial on the balance, and the negatives are minor. I've edited the page to reflect this balance. Jax MN (talk) 15:04, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

My general feeling is that most of the Criticism and Response should be trimmed. There are a considerable amount of both which is not specific to the University of Minnesota.Naraht (talk) 17:07, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Jax MN, Naraht, there are a number of statements that generally refer to praise and/or criticisms at a national level currently within this particular article. There are also statements which refer to a 1987 Student Organization Office study that were referenced as if the source was explaining the statement in general, and, of which implied for all time. Which was an incorrect way to cite that material on a potentially WP:controversial section. For these reasons I believe the text and sections speaking about these organizations at the national level in praise of and in criticism should be removed from this article that should go on the Fraternities and sororities article. Randomeditor1000 (talk) 19:15, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Randomeditor1000, I've combined my answer to your response in this section into my answer to the new section below. You may be correct that the Gallup study should be included in the Fraternities and sororities article. What was interesting to me was how closely the local campus results mirrored the national study. I also thank you for the reminder that additional citations were required to claim a trend. I have added them, which I hope resolves that concern. I address these issues more, below. Jax MN (talk) 19:57, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Citation for Greek Village Summary Presentation, by CSHI

The stated following source needs to clarified as there is no information about the spurious presentation, why it is a WP:reliableWP:Source. Greek Village Summary Presentation, by CSHI (Community Student Housing, Inc.), as presented to the Board of Regents at their May 2011 meeting. David Salene, author

Each statement using this reference should be revised or removed. The May 2011 Agenda and Minutes from the University of Minnesota Board of Regents does not include anything regarding this presentation, nor a discussion about Greek Housing, nor references to a "David Salene". The content in the presentation is relevant but only as established by another secondary source. The statements claiming that donations by Greek Alumni "dwarf" non-Greek alumni should be referenced elsewhere, otherwise that statement is very clearly WP:UNDUE, WP:NOR and should be removed. See https://regents.umn.edu/board-meetings/may-2011 and https://regents.umn.edu/sites/regents.umn.edu/files/minutes/minutes-0511.pdf.

Randomeditor1000, thank you for your corrections to the main article which more accurately noted the years in which several trends were first identified. I have followed your lead, updating those statistics with additional and more current references. We're talking about a trend that has continued for at least 30 years now (higher grades and faster graduation), and while I do NOT quote a source for each year's success in this arena, these several references do show a trend. To my knowledge there has been no year in that three decade time frame where performance has dropped below or to the baseline of all student performance. (Note, the women's organizations show a GPA trend higher than the men's groups, consistently.) Therefore, the inadequacies of language make it tedious to have to cite each of 30 separate year's statistics to prove the point. I thought two or three references appropriate, and would let the reader determine if this indicates a trend.

You did raise an interesting point, about conflation of national versus campus trends. In sections where I was the author I did try to make the distinction clear. The Gallup polling was national in nature, but corresponds tightly with similar campus polling, conducted by the University department that monitors Greek activity. As Minnesota's Greek system is large, old and occupies a major university, I thought it interesting that campus results so accurately mirror national responses, in terms of positive perceptions by participants. You may be right that the Gallup results should be included in the main Fraternity and sorority page. Good catch.

i do disagree with you that President Kaler's quote on the scope of Greek giving is somehow UNDUE. That $100M in non-corporate giving represents the vast majority of gifts to the University in that period, and therefore it seems reasonable to say that these gifts "dwarf" others of this category. I suspect they also significantly exceed corporate giving, too. As to testimony presented to the Regents, I suppose the best first person reference would be transcripts of the President's several speeches on this subject. But these were quoted, and presented back to the Regents in a public forum, and have not been challenged in any way, then or since. Had they been inaccurate, I am quite certain that Greek detractors would have said something. The document was presented and discussed at length as a Regents' agenda item in 2012, December, I believe, and NOT in 2011.Jax MN (talk) 19:49, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Jax MN, I understand each of the statements and the claims, yes. In general, these have to be WP:verifiable otherwise they can be challenged and/or removed. If the quotations were from December 2012, then the citation should identify that date as the reference. Even so, without finding the presentation it is hard to be verifiable. Even then it may be unreliable. I searched the MnDaily student news site and I'm still looking if there are other references that document the statements.

Specifically regarding the donations and dwarf statement, it is unfortunate in this case that the specific wording additionally lumped both social and professional, honorific and service societies together as there are strong difference between those two populations in the general student body and alumnus body. While it is true that the President may have said it, even Presidents occasionally get details wrong - even in speeches. If there is a separate reliable source it can be revised and re-added. As an aside, the average person doesn't take the time to fact check academic presidents. Between the TCF Bank Stadium and the new Athletes Village I think it would be hard to know for certain without obtaining a report from the University Advancement Office. So who knows without doing WP:OR...

Regarding the GPA information and satisfaction the source you cited is only relevant and provides information for a specific period of time. If you can provide a reliable source for the remainder of "30 years" then it could be revised and re-added. To be more precise it should also at a minimum explain the differences in performance between social and professional, honorific and service societies as I suspect that there is a strong difference between the two and would otherwise give the reader the wrong impression about both. Randomeditor1000 (talk) 20:13, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Randomeditor1000, getting back to you, with the holiday and work duties I've been unable to address some of the edits you made. As I mentioned, some of these have been supportive and clarifying, and I appreciate that. However, your effort to split the social/academic fraternities and sororities from the professional, honor and other societies is inaccurate and historically unsupportable. I simply have NOT had time to make the corrections and lay out the rational for exactly why the REVERSE is true. I will do so in the near term, and will reference examples because I can now see why someone might assume this to be true, as you did, just looking at a 2017 glimpse of the Greek System out of broader context.

As to the need to offer more than three citations of various years to show a pattern of GPAs being higher in that period, well, I disagree with you. I'd read somewhere about a WP rule that warned against excessive citations. This would be such a case. The issue makes for a sentence or two on a quite-large page, and I think it would become tedious if I were to further expand the GPA analysis into an entire 30-year chart, with each point carefully cited by multiple references. Is your concern that you simply do not believe it to be true? Many of these references would be from the library, and not available online, thus the references themselves would extend the page massively. If someone were really motivated to research this, this Wikipedia page provides a fine pointer to where to find that information, but is not intended to be the final word on the subject. Please consider this. I trust this argument fully resolves your concerns. I understand that, for some, the conventional wisdom would declare that Greeks are less academic. Maybe this is a holdover from Animal House. But the facts show that Greeks consistently graduate earlier, gain better GPAs (especially the women's groups), contribute more as graduates, and self-report a better student experience. At least that is true at Minnesota.

I should also say thank you for rescuing those five incidents of the OSFL report where the links had gone bad. Jax MN (talk) 18:47, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

There is no timeline to revise. I'm not suggesting you specifically have to update - if ever, maybe someone else can do that. As you may already know Wikipedia is not compulsory.

From my understanding (and I was part of several at several universities) the professional, academic and honorific societies have specific purposes that are different than social fraternities and sororities. They have different membership and requirements. Lumping them all together is not only biased it is inappropriate. At a minimum explain how your view of national history of these organizations relates to your view that these groups are related, and, do so with reputable, verifiable sources. Otherwise these claims can be challenged and removed.

That being said regarding these specific claims I am stating there is a need for WP:BALANCE. You cannot make a broad generalization without specific references. The above statements are not for all time. That is not factual. You should be specific and include specific years. So far I have found nothing that specifically explains as you state at the University of Minnesota:

• "Professional, academic, honorific societies that have greek naming are also part of the Greek society and are thus also fraternities or sororities to be included in the list article"
• "Greeks graduate earlier than the general student population"
• "Greeks gain better GPAs than the general student population"
• "Greeks have contribute more than the general student population"
• "Greeks self-report a better student experience than the general student population"

I have some doubt on these statements. Thus, I have challenged the source that was incorrect and the statements. There may be specific years that some of these statements are true. Even so these are the exact definition of WP:NOR - which is not appropriate for a wikipedia article. At a high level it is also important to remember that this is a WP:list article. Additional topics can be included in a separate more specific article. It may make more sense to publish this a book at wikisource. Randomeditor1000 (talk) 23:24, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Randomeditor1000, I've adjusted the article in reference to your points. Historically there has been much movement and cooperation among the various types of Greeks, rather than they being "unrelated" -- your word. But I can see where someone might assume this just by looking at today's situation. Therefore I've added a rather lengthy reference to the main article that explains this in context with a number of examples. Too many more would lengthen the article unnecessarily. I've further called out that the several citations of academic success were measured during specific years, now showing 3-4 separate citations. Enough to signify a trend, I think. There is no single reference for multiple years' scholastic results. Thus to cite each and every year the body text would look like this: ^{<ref><ref><ref><ref><ref><ref><ref><ref><ref><ref><ref><ref><ref><ref><ref><ref><ref><ref><ref><ref><ref><ref><ref><ref><ref><ref><ref><ref><ref><ref>} --That would entail 30 discrete references for the years 1987-2017, and would inspire someone to call me out as obsessive. Three references is enough for an interested researcher to know where to look if they wish to examine other years within that time-frame.

Prior to reading the 1987 study, years ago, I too assumed the "Animal House" conventional wisdom was true: that Greeks were academic under-performers. But the facts, at least on this campus, showed otherwise. This particular data point has been scrupulously studied by both the administration and by the undergraduates. Anecdotally, as a long-time fraternity adviser, I would have heard of the startling news that Greek grades had dropped below par, as this would have resulted in an extensive fire drill looking for root causes and addressing performance. But I cannot find a single contrary reference that says Minnesota's Greek student grades have fallen. The single negative citation I found about Greek grades was a study which nationally looked at a few campus (not Minnesota) where fraternity students who topped out with "B"-grades nevertheless had better career success than 4.0 "A" students who weren't in fraternities. This seemed to me to be out of scope. --It was sort of a back-handed compliment anyway, noting the value of the "whole student experience." But without a specific analysis of Minnesota's Greeks, I thought it inappropriate and muddy.

Thank you for the suggestion about including this as a long-form document in Wikisource. I've thought about this, and about splitting the list of chapters from the historical and structural stuff, but haven't worked on this yet. Perhaps sometime. Jax MN (talk) 18:21, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

I should note too, that in addition to AGR, FarmHouse, Delta Chi, the several multicultural Greeks that also conference with the NIC chapters, and Evans Scholars, other examples where the lines blur include ΑΣΚ sorority, Triangle Fraternity, Theta Tau Fraternity, and several examples of former professional chapters that became honorary. Even venerable Phi Beta Kappa had a social aspect within its early chapters, for almost 80 years until abandoning that for a more purely honorary model. Finally, most of the academic and social undergraduate chapters host their own honorary societies, which are not listed among the honor societies here, but are nevertheless active. Anecdotally, members of undergrad chapters tend to accrue to honor societies as graduation nears, and some have gone on to join or lead professional chapters while in grad school. Jax MN (talk) 20:57, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

The older OSFL reports do not contain 100% accuracy and do not back your claim that "gain better GPA's than the general student population". In fact, they expressly omit when grades were not released (page 3 State of the Greek 2013). The 2017 OSFL Viewbook does not contain GPA information nor does it include academic, professional and honorific societies. (E.G. see college graduation handouts). For example, Gamma Theta Upsilon is not included in either the 2013 OSFL Report nor the 2017 Viewbook. Neither is the International Golden Key Chapter.. Not exactly 'grouped' as in the previous text. Sure there may be some historical links between social societies and professional or academic. But in general social societies follow the five specific criterion identified on Fraternities and sororities which is very different then the definition of honorific societies on Honor society and also on Professional Fraternity Association. Clearly there are very specific differences that do not group them altogether.

Adding your opinion that President Kaler said "xyz" without having the actual source is not a WP:verifiable source. If there is no single or multiple references for multiple years regarding academic performance than you have no verifiable source and the statement should be revised to reflect the specific year it evaluated. Nothing more. Where the data does not support your claim then the text can be challenged and removed. The existing text was undue POV that needed to be grounded in neutral terms without long commentary on both the positives or the negatives of social societies at the University. I have revised the article to remove some of the undue statements, removed the above source as it doesn't exist. Randomeditor1000 (talk) 21:23, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

References

Jewish fraternities

I'd originally included this as a simple reference note, but the topic got too complicated.

Many Jewish themed chapters (locals and national organizations) formed and flourished in the first half of the 20th Century, but consolidated or closed in the decade and a half after WWII. Why the sudden change? The Sanua reference, "Going Greek," provides an extensive discussion on this trend, but the summary is as follows: Exclusively Jewish chapters were popular in the pre-War era to provide cultural bonding, responding to strong rabbinical and family support. Their presence offered Jews visibility on the larger campus at a time when reflexive mistrust of others was common. (I'd originally used the term "mild Antisemitism" but it doesn't convey the correct meaning to today's readers.) The State of Minnesota was very homogeneous in that period. Far more than today, Catholics grew up insulated from Protestants, Jews similarly led separate lives. Even Protestant churches were distant from each other, and therefore wary. While actual, hateful Antisemitism was whipped up from time to time in the Twin Cities, for most people the only form it took was simply wariness due to our not crossing paths nor working with those of other creeds or origins. The college experience during the pre-War period (WWII) was insular, but the world was getting smaller and all this insularity was about to change. Jewish fraternities and sororities allowed controlled mixing in an era of chaperones: These groups typically socialized with each other for the purpose of dance parties and dating (as did mainstream Greeks among themselves) while more casual mixing with "Gentile" chapters occurred through classes, inter-Greek projects and sports. Sanua points out that incoming Jewish students wanted an experience like the mainstream Greeks, but they (and their sponsors) didn't want to jump into a secular or non-Jewish experience. Jewish-themed or affinity houses were the answer.

WWII brought an abrupt end to this, as at war's end, all Greek societies became more egalitarian, more diverse, and more secular. 'Exclusionary' or 'discriminatory' bans were dropped from the bylaws or "unofficial policies" of Gentile, Jewish and Black organizations. Minnesota was the second Big Ten school whose Greek societies dropped all bias clauses. As a result, smaller Jewish nationals merged into larger ones. (Nationally, about 3/4 of these groups disappeared in the decade after WWII, some to merger, some to dissolution) - yet Jews continued to join fraternities and sororities enthusiastically. Jewish commentary at the time may have bemoaned the loss of Jewish chapters, but nevertheless there was a strong current of support for post-War inclusion of Jews in the general institutions of society, as full participants. So in a way, the mission was accomplished: pluralistic inclusion.

For the purpose of this article, former organizations with Jewish roots are noted as such. Active groups, even with noteworthy Jewish heritage are not specifically labeled as Jewish except where a group continues to specify Jewish culture as an organizational objective. (Affinity interests are similarly noted for Christian, 4-H and other groups.) On the Minnesota campus, active groups that began with a Jewish heritage have adjusted to a more general, interfaith or secular model, open to a diverse membership, while proudly acknowledging their roots. Jax MN (talk) 09:32, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

References

Northrop's Fraternities

I’m fixing an error, one that I thought I’d caught when editing this page some years back. It’s about the fraternity memberships of “Prexy” Cyrus Northrop, second president of the University of Minnesota.

For some years, the Alpha Delta Phi chapter at Minnesota had been claiming him as a member. As a past University president, and a man much-loved by the students, he was of some renown. My guess is that it was an innocent error. I’d ‘’thought’’ the error was simple: Northrop was really an Alpha Sig, and his son was a Alpha Delt. But somehow I bobbled the reference back then, and now learn that the younger Northrop was a Deke, instead. And his famous father was both a Deke AND and an Alpha Sig. Here’s how it all worked out, with references:

Alpha Sigma Phi’s Minnesota chapter history on their national website claims that Northrop was an Alpha Sig, and curiously, a national officer of Alpha Sig around the year 1919, which would have been late in his life, ten years after he retired from the University. -He died in 1922 at the age of 88. Making him 85 years old if he served that fraternity in 1919… So at first I doubted this linkage. But it’s true: Late in his life he served as National President for Alpha Sigma Phi. I’ve tracked this down with their national historian, who writes: "Cyrus Northrop was indeed an Alpha Sig in his sophomore year at Yale, initiated in 1854. He was Grand Senior President of Alpha Sigma Phi from 1915 to 1919. It is likely that he was a Delta Kappa Epsilon or less likely an Alpha Delta Phi the following year, as those were two of the three Junior fraternities at Yale at the time…" [From personal correspondence in May 2020, given here because it includes a searchable reference.]

Digging further, the Dekes (Delta Kappa Epsilon) here at Minnesota, confirm in several sources that Northrop is theirs. --Both Northrops were. The son, Cyrus Northrop Jr. indeed had been a member of Deke at Minnesota, in 1893, and the father was a Deke at Yale decades prior. Tying it together, here is the historical evidence I have:

The first is a 1890 University of Minnesota yearbook, where “Prexy” - Northrop Sr’s record is as follows [my comments on this quote in brackets]:

"Cyrus Northrop, LL. D., President

BA., 1857, LL. B. 1859, LL. D. 1886, all from Yale

[His fraternities were listed by Greek letters only, and I inferred the ‘class’ by a secondary reference (Yale Sheffield history), below:]

* ΚΣΕ- Kappa Sigma Epsilon, a freshman society

* ΑΔΦ- Alpha Delta Phi, at points a juniors or (briefly) a three-year society during his years there [Note, it is clear ΑΔΦ is a Gopher yearbook typo, should be ΑΣΦ - I'll circle back to this.]

* ΔΚΕ- Delta Kappa Epsilon, a juniors society at the time

* Skull and Bones, a seniors club

* ΦΒΚ- Phi Beta Kappa, honors society.

He was a professor at Yale from 1863 to 1884."

That provided the first pass at all this.

So Prexy was a member of TWO national fraternities? Ah… At the time, this was legal (pre-NIC) and Yale societies operated under different rules: you’d join a new fraternity each year in those days. I found a further record, the Yale Sheffield Monthly, vol XX, for October 1913 to June 1914, which confirms the existence of those class societies at those times, noting which class they served at publication time (1913), and also noting that Alpha Delt AND Deke were listed as junior societies in 1913. It clarified that Alpha Delt was normally a junior society (thus unavailable to Northrop as a Sophomore), noting it was briefly dormant (1873-1888) and when it was a three-year society (1888 – 1895) - not while Northrop was an undergrad. (Only later, the national fraternities all shifted to today’s model of multi-year membership, with the senior “finishing clubs” like Skull and Bones, or Wolf’s Head remaining for upperclassmen only.) Alpha Sigma Phi was definitely listed, while Northrop was an undergrad, as a sophomore society. So, from this reference it seems possible and indeed more probable that Northrup Sr. was an Alpha Sig, not an Alpha Delt. But that would mean there was a typo in at least one Minnesota yearbook from the 1890s. I started reading them.

The 1891 yearbook lists the son, Cyrus Northrop Jr. for the first time, among the freshman class. It did not list “Prexy’s” fraternities that year.

The 1892 yearbook had a briefer mention. Northrup Sr’s listing in the 1892 yearbook omitted several of the groups, and ONLY lists Deke and Phi Beta Kappa. Perhaps for brevity. The books also show Cyrus Northrup Jr. on the Deke page listing.

The 1893 yearbook is Alpha Delta Phi’s first listing as a new chapter at Minnesota, and they list several faculty and an earlier president (Folwell) who was a member, but NOT Northrup. Could the 1890 yearbook be wrong? Was he an Alpha Sig instead?

The 1894 yearbook again notes Northrop Sr. to be a Deke, AND again mentions he was a Skull and Bonesman, AND member of Phi Beta Kappa. So if dropping Alpha Delt was an error, it was a persistent one. That 1894 yearbook also shows a picture of young Cyrus Jr., a member of the Junior class and a DEKE, listing this in several places.

As an aside, during this period the national fraternities were somewhat marginalized at Yale and Harvard, compared to other schools. Elsewhere in the nation, a student would join for 2, 3 or 4 years, and the fraternity chosen as a sophomore would remain their fraternity as a senior, and as an alum. In the latter 1800s, at Yale and Harvard, it was the Third Year societies that earned that lifelong allegiance, even while a man's tenure in that chapter may have been brief. Yale and Harvard still had their "finishing clubs", i.e: Skull and Bones, Wolf's Head and others, which were for seniors. Northrop was unique in that he maintained a strong allegiance to both Delta Sigma Phi and to Delta Kappa Epsilon, his Second and Third year societies, whereas for other men, the connection to their freshman and sophomore chapters faded.

Skipping ahead, the 1923 yearbook, over two decades later, has a "Cyrus Northrop" listed on the Alpha Sigma Phi page as a faculty member of that fraternity. This was published in 1922, the year Prexy Northrup died. The reference did not list whether this man was Junior or Senior. That same book lists Cyrus Northrop as a faculty member of Deke, again, not notating whether it was Northrop Junior or Senior. A third fraternity, Delta Theta Phi professional Law fraternity, also lists a Cyrus Northrop as a faculty member. All three of these listings of the Northrop name vanish in the 1924 yearbook, telling me they intended to recognize Northrop SENIOR. In case you wonder, Alpha DELT does not mention him as a member that year, either.

Finally, Deke’s alumni catalog lists BOTH father and son as members, in the 1900 edition of that book:

Cyrus Northrop, College President, class of 1857, Phi chapter at Yale

Cyrus Northrop, Jr, no occupation listed, class of 1893 and a recent grad, of the Phi Epsilon chapter at Minnesota.

To wrap up, these memberships for Northrop Sr. are really on solid ground, from an historic perspective:

• ΚΣΕ - Kappa Sigma Epsilon, a freshman society – initiated in 1853 – Absolutely solid info
• ΑΣΦ - Alpha Sigma Phi, a sophomore society – initiated in 1854 – Multiple sources say he was an Alpha Sig, as a sophomore at Yale, later serving that fraternity as national president 1915 to 1919. The errant reference to ADPhi is clearly a typo.
• ΔΚΕ - Delta Kappa Epsilon, a juniors society at the time (founded there) – initiated in 1855 – Absolutely solid info
• Skull and Bones, a seniors club – initiated in 1856 – Absolutely solid info
• ΦΒΚ - Phi Beta Kappa, liberal arts honors society. – tapped in Spring 1856 or ‘57 – Absolutely solid info
• ΠΒΝ - Pi Beta Nu, general honors society, (local) – tapped as an honorary member in about 1883 while at Minnesota. First listed in 1921 yearbook. Solid info
• ΔΘΦ – Delta Theta Phi, or one of its predecessor groups, Delta Phi Delta or Alpha Kappa Phi, law honoraries. First noted in the 1921 yearbook. Solid info
• Cosmopolitan Club, became an honorary member after 1914 and before 1919. A U of MN social club to aid foreign students. Solid info

Obviously, Northrop loved fraternal organizations, students and the University.

Regarding his son, Northrop JUNIOR, clearly, he was a Deke. I don’t believe there was a linkage for him with Alpha Delta Phi, either at Minnesota or elsewhere. He joined his father’s Third year fraternity.

Since this issue generates occasional edits and questions, I thought I would go long on my answer, and show you the research. Comments welcome. Jax MN (talk) 05:43, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

References