Eucleian Society - Culture

Culture

Little has been shared about the system or workings of the organization. The process of membership is said to take several months and to be multi-staged. The aim of the process has been described in general terms to create familiarity among the members and to inculcate the values of the Society. The primary values are excellence, faithfulness, development of the individual, mutual assistance in supporting each member's aspirations and social responsibility. Members are selected once or twice a year.

To date, the Society refuses to induct female members.

If anything could be said about the prevailing culture of the Society during its early era is that it tended to be “progressive”, supporting gender equality and abolition at an early juncture. Society members took an unusually keen interest in the plight and nature of Native Americans, hosting and producing a series of lectures and essays on the philosophy and nobility of the "Indian Character". Perhaps owing to influences from University leaders and advisors such as Rev. James M. Matthews and Theodore Frelinghuysen, a number of Society members became noted Protestant clergy and Protestant religious scholars.

The Society was a manifestation of student debate and literary societies that were popular prior to fraternities and sororities. It is not surprising that men on the Eucleian rolls gave rise to the Zeta Psi fraternity in 1847. These organizations were influenced by Freemasonry's moral code based on Enlightenment philosophy and ritualism. The William Morgan Affair which gave rise to anti-Masonic witch-hunts forced increased secrecy among fraternal organizations, undoubtedly affecting the ethos of secrecy among the Eucleian Society and like organizations.

One early lecturer became a very popular figure with the Society. Edgar Allan Poe was a repeated guest of the Eucleian, and lived on the Square; his poem "The Raven", which had given birth to his celebrity, also became popularly associated with the Society. In a fictional work based on New York University’s history of "secret societies" author Linda Fairstein uses the term “Raven Society”, noting that it was also used in references to a New York University literary society that had an association to Edgar Allan Poe. (There is also a Raven Society at the University of Virginia.) References in early yearbooks, and fraternity insignia that Ms. Fairstein cited gave rise to the use of "Ravens" or "Raven Society", as an alterne name though it is clear the Society rejects this as a formal name and deny Poe was a singular influence.

Two Society publications, The Medly and the Knickerbocker, became popular well beyond campus with New Yorkers in the mid 19th century through the 1920s. Much of the writing was humorous and satirical, finding its fodder in the events and figures of both campus and city. It is not entirely clear which members took part in writing the articles for these literary collections since members of the Society had taken to use nom de plumes. Some of the listed and identifiable writers of the Knickerbocker went on to write for the new Harper's Magazine reducing the Knickerbocker to a magazine only of student interest until it ended publication. Another circle of Washington Square writers originally associated with the Society (but expanded to non-members)took on the name Ravens in the 1930s to 1950s.

In the late 1930s and 1940s the Society became increasingly separate from the University despite having on-campus accommodations. Numbers in the organization dwindled in the 1940s as a result of World War II. Another cause for Eucleian’s lower profile seems to have been the perception of elitism by other NYU students. A quip in a yearbook of the era describes Eucleian as having membership that includes “John Quincy Adams, The Rockefellers, and that crowd”. (The organization did consist largely of the social "elite" of the time.) This alleged snobbery also became a theme of self-effacing humor in the diminishing external publications of the Society in this era; the Society refers to itself, and presumably Andiron Club as "the reclusive old Establishment" in a 1930s NYU yearbook. This tongue-in-cheek reference had to do with the club not taking part as a unit in spirited student games, competitions and hazing of freshmen that occurred in the early fall at NYU.

By mid-20th century on to 1980s, membership also came to encompass New York area students, faculty and literati with and without New York University affiliation. It was at this time late Coleman O. Parsons, (a professor at Columbia and graduate of Columbia and Yale) became the first head of the group with no NYU affiliation.

Other non-specific cultural manifestations, outside of the serious work of self and societal benefit have been noted; in a 1965 Club correspondence a description of the Eucleian claims a "history of pranks in bad taste; formals in good taste and celebrations where taste is temporarily put aside."