Commons Club - History

History

Greek-letter literary and philosophical societies, starting with Phi Beta Kappa (est. 1779), rose at American universities as an outlet for students frustrated with the traditional curriculum centered on the classics. Some early organizations to use the phrase "commons club" were of this type, their name referring to the democracy and debates of the British House of Commons. In the mid-19th century, general or "social" fraternities supplanted the literary fraternities, to the point where "independent" students became disadvantaged in campus awards and activities as opposed to "Greeks" and considered to occupy a lower position in the social hierarchy of the time.

As a counter to this trend, Woodrow Wilson, then a member of the Wesleyan University faculty, reformed the Wesleyan House of Commons Debating Society in 1889 to look after the social need of male students outside the fraternity system. In 1899, sixteen non-fraternity men, led by Frederick Clark, Thomas Travis, and Herbert Ward, formally established the Wesleyan Commons Club.

The success of the Wesleyan Commons Club inspired the founding of similar organizations at Dartmouth College, Middlebury College, and Norwich University. These four formed the National Federation of Commons Clubs in 1906, which would add thirteen additional members by 1918 as well as numerous non-aligned Commons Clubs on campuses throughout the United States and Canada.

Because membership was open, a Commons Club could grow to a size unwieldy to govern, inadequate for forming close friendships, and unsuited to the effective advancement of their stated ideals. Ironically, factions and in some cases whole clubs split away and sought petitions from national fraternities or declared themselves a local fraternity. In 1905, ten members of the Middlebury Commons Club, including President George E. Kimball, left to form a new organization which later became the Kappa Delta Rho national fraternity. The weak organization of the Federation itself left it vulnerable to splits along competing visions. Disaffiliation or disbanding of member clubs accelerated with World War I, resulting in the collapse of the Federation.

At the 1918 general meeting, Clarence Dexter Pierce, a member of the University of Vermont Commons Club, successfully sponsored a resolution to declare the Federation a Greek letter fraternity, with its attendant structure and selectivity. The Commons Clubs at the University of Vermont, University of New Hampshire, and University of Connecticut ratified the plan, forming what is now the Phi Mu Delta national fraternity. While the Union College Commons Club originally intended to join its counterparts in organizing Phi Mu Delta, the group instead elected to refound the Alpha Charge of Theta Delta Chi in 1923 because of pressure from its alumni.