In 1964 President Hahn said that the university “could not recognize social fraternities,” but a change in social climate led to reconsideration of the question. And with the growth in numbers came renewed efforts to attain recognition. Later, they reinstalled the Greek letters.Īs student body enrollment mushroomed in the 1960s, so did the local fraternities. Delta Kappa Sigma immediately took down its Greek letters, renamed its house the Blacksburg Sports Club, and continued business as usual. The board reaffirmed its existing policy. President Newman took the request to the board of visitors with the suggestion that the board’s policy on social fraternities be re-examined and either revised or reaffirmed, with Newman writing the board that “the administration feels that social fraternities are not desirable at VPI.” One town group called Delta Kappa Sigma petitioned the administration for recognition in 1953. Seventeen students petitioned the administration in 1951, requesting approval of dormitory clubs that would “promote good fellowship and good citizenship and give expression to the social and civic interests of the members.” The petition was granted for the on-campus clubs, but the social facilities in the dormitories were woefully inadequate, and the clubs soon afterwards began to move their operations into town. The fraternity question arose again following the great increase of civilian students on campus after World War II. 14, the board of visitors once again denied official recognition to the fraternities. One of their main arguments was that secret societies fostered “internal friction” on the athletic teams and would be “against the best interest of the school from an athletic standpoint.” The cadets succeeded in convincing the officers of the Alumni Association, who announced in July 1916 that the association “as a whole” did not favor recognition of the societies. At first the administration indicated that it would approve the fraternities, but a group of cadet officers, led by the president of the corps, opposed college approval and conducted an anti‑fraternity campaign. By 1916 the fraternity movement had grown to a point where some students asked the college administration to approve the organizations. Kappa Sigma Kappa continued to initiate students for several years, but in 1886 the college required all students to sign a pledge “on honor, that I will not join, or form any connection with, either directly or indirectly, any secret club or society, fraternity or other organization, composed in whole or in part of students of the college, or attend the meeting of any secret organization, or wear the badge or colors of any secret society.” The pledge had disappeared from the college catalog by 1890, and in the ensuing years several local social fraternities were organized. 1, 1880, and, coupled with a decline in student body enrollment to 50, most of the chapters folded. A Committee on Reorganization studied the situation in 1879, and among many other rules and regulations it adopted was the following: “No student, during his connection with the college, shall belong to any secret college society, nor an association, except such as shall have been approved by the faculty nor shall any assembly of students be held for any purpose whatever without the express permission of the President.” The rule became effective on Jan. In the late 1870s the board of visitors of the college evidently placed much of the blame for an increasing lack of discipline in the student body squarely on the membership of the national social fraternities. But they did exist in town, albeit for a very short time, and it can also be assumed that the college’s refusal to supervise them led to acts of mischievousness, rowdiness, and destruction of property. Since neither official college publications nor student publications of the era ever reported any existence of the social fraternities, it can be assumed that there was never any official approval of the organizations by college authorities. A charter for the Southern Xi prime chapter of Kappa Alpha was issued to two students in 1877, but the chapter never initiated any other members and quickly folded. It was soon followed by the Epsilon chapter of Sigma Alpha in 1873 (name changed to Black Badge Society in 1877) the Nu chapter of Kappa Sigma and the Zeta chapter of Kappa Sigma Kappa in 1874 and the Alpha Phi chapter of Beta Theta Pi in 1877. The first social organization of any kind established by students at Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College was the Epsilon chapter of Pi Kappa Alpha, a national social fraternity, on Nov.
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