CHAPTER X
FRATERNITIES AND STUDENT ACTIVITIES
Clubs and societies, organized for almost every conceivable purpose, lay and academic, have always played an important rôle in undergraduate affairs and have formed the most characteristic avenue for self-expression outside the class room. Many, if not most, of these organizations have had only a brief existence. Others, in one form or another, have continued through long periods, and have often exercised a strong, though not always an obvious, influence in the whole fabric of university life. Within the last twenty-five years, too, athletics have come to have a predominant interest, but this aspect of student life at Michigan will be discussed in a separate chapter. Aside from the organizations which have accompanied this overwhelming preoccupation of the masculine student, probably the most conspicuous evidence of the gregarious tendencies of the undergraduate have been the fraternities, and following the introduction of co-education, the sororities, as they soon came to be called. After the great struggle between the Faculty and the fraternities which culminated in 1850, the fraternities came to have an acknowledged place in undergraduate affairs. New chapters soon followed after the first three had made their place secure and within thirty years or so several of the older societies had grown sufficiently in prestige, and particularly in alumni support, to begin the practice of owning their own fraternity houses that has now become the rule. The first thought, nowadays, of any newly established fraternity is to find ways and means for building or buying a chapter house.
At first, nearly two-thirds of the students were fraternity members; but the extraordinary growth of the University soon reduced the proportion of fraternity men. This came partly as a result of the relative slowness of the national bodies to establish new chapters in competition with the societies already on the ground, and partly because of the reluctance of the fraternities themselves to increase the size of their chapters or to take in students from the purely professional schools. For these reasons the percentage of fraternity men was reduced to about one-third the total number of students, a proportion which remained fairly constant for many years. The rise of fraternities in the professional schools and the comparatively recent establishment of many new fraternities, however, has brought the percentage up somewhat, though the growth in general attendance during the same period has prevented any marked increase in the relative numbers of fraternity members over the "independents."
Following the establishment of the first three fraternities, Chi Psi and Beta Theta Pi in 1845 and Alpha Delta Phi in 1846, whose early adventures have been noted, some twenty-eight other general fraternities have been established. Among the first of these were Delta Kappa Epsilon, 1855; Sigma Phi, 1858; Zeta Psi, 1858; Psi Upsilon, 1865; Beta Theta Pi, which had lapsed and was re-established in 1867; Delta Tau Delta, 1874, re-established 1900; Phi Kappa Psi, 1875; Delta Upsilon, 1876; Sigma Chi, 1877; Phi Delta Theta, 1864, re-established in 1887; Sigma Alpha Epsilon, 1888, and Theta Delta Chi in 1889. Since 1890 this list has been more than doubled and includes the re-establishment in 1902 of Phi Gamma Delta originally established in 1885, and Alpha Tau Omega first established in 1888 and re-established in 1904.
The Tug of War across the Huron
The Freshman losing in the annual Freshman-Sophomore Contests