Student Social Organizations at The College of Wooster - History

History

The College of Wooster opened in 1866 with no dining facility, so groups of men began to form dining groups to help share the costs and responsibilities of meals. These groups, beginning in 1870, eventually took on Greek letters and integrated themselves into the fraternity system that was sweeping through Ohio's colleges. These men's groups were quickly joined by sororities.

In 1913, the school embarked on a campaign to raise $1.2 million to build three academic and residential buildings, now known as Ebert Art Center, Severance Hall and Kenarden Lodge. The College's president at the time went to Cleveland philanthropist Louis Severance to request money (he had already paid for most of the college's reconstruction after the 1901 fire). Severance, according to the book Wooster of the Middle West, felt that a Presbyterian school like Wooster was allowing its moral character to be broken down by fraternities. He strongly impressed upon the President that he did not want to see fraternities at the school. He also offered the school hundreds of thousands of dollars for their buildings. At the February 1913 meeting of Wooster's Board of Trustees, the President asked for and received an order preventing Wooster's fraternities and sororities from pledging new members. Knowing that the ban was imminent, the fraternities and sororities worked through the night for weeks pledging as many new members as they could. The last few national Greek members graduated in 1918.

Many of the national groups continued to function as fraternities and sororities of sorts, only without letters. Upon moving into Kenarden Lodge in 1918, the groups began to call themselves by numbers. Eventually these groups took on new Greek letters as well. As each fraternity lived in a section of Kenarden, the groups began to call themselves Sections. The sororities eventually called themselves Clubs.

By the 1940s, each of Kenarden's 7 sections had a group of their own, and there were at least 9 sections on campus by the 1950s, as well as several clubs. To cope with this expansion, which according to the Wooster Voice included 99% of men on campus from 1953–1957, the college built three new dorms, Armington Hall, which housed sections I-III, Stevenson Hall, which housed sections IV-V, and Bissman Hall, which housed sections VI-VIII.

The College of Wooster has connections to secret societies as well. In 1891, the Tau Chapter of Theta Nu Epsilon (ΘΝΕ) was established at the college by members of the Alpha Chapter at Wesleyan University. The Alpha Chapter at Wesleyan University was first established by the Skull and Bones, a secret society that formed at Yale University. In 1923, the group's charter was allegedly revoked by the national organization.

On March 3, 1983, hazing became a crime in the state of Ohio. In response to the state ban on hazing, the school's longstanding policy of don't ask-don't tell evolved into a crackdown of hazing activities.

In 1991, in response to pressure from the faculty to "decide the Greek issue once and for all", the Board of Trustees issued a statement reaffirming the ban on national groups but offering support for the clubs and sections, officially allowing them to refer to themselves by their Greek letters. The Board also clarified that the ban could be rescinded by vote of either the Trustees or, due to a quirk in the college's Campus Council agreement of 1968, the faculty.

In 1993, according to the Wooster Voice, the school told the fraternity Omega Alpha Tau and the sorority Pi Kappa that they could not take pledges due to alleged hazing. In both cases, the decisions were later reversed by the Judicial Board due to lack of evidence. In 1999 the school received national attention when four Kappa Chi members were arrested for hazing pledges by beating them and urinating on them, leading to the ban of the fraternity.

On January 26, 2006, Dean of Students Kurt Holmes proposed bringing in national fraternities again to alleviate many perceived problems with the local model.