Category Archives: Recovery and Expansion, 1850-1869

Well aware that expulsion awaited them once the faculty learned what they had accomplished, the new Dekes decided to follow the practice of the current Know Nothing party in denying all knowledge of the new organization. They also asked the Parent Chapter not to make known their existence; a request which was granted. They held their meetings late at night and steadily initiated new members without creating suspicion that there was a fraternity on the campus. The first disclosure is said to have been made at the commencement of 1856 when one or two seniors were reported to have worn Deke pins while delivering their graduation orations. By the fall term, however, the existence of a D.K.E. chapter was no longer a secret.

Faculty sentiment, one may judge, was not entirely hostile since three of the professors were fraternity men: Beebee, who in his college days had been initiated into Psi Upsilon at Hamilton College; Dodge, a member of Alpha Delta Phi at Brown; and President Eaton, an ardent Sigma Phi of the Alpha chapter at Union, whose two sons, both members of the Class of 1856, had joined the Hamilton College chapter of their father’s fraternity. Whatever the faculty’s personal feelings may have been, their responsibilities as officers of the University required them to enforce its regulations as ratified by the Trustees. Since none of the latter were college men, they may naturally have felt that potentially disruptive or dangerous customs on other campuses should have no place at Madison University. It is also quite possible that the Trustees believed the condition of the institution as it recovered from the Removal Controversy was too precarious to risk alienat­ing patrons and churches, many of whom still held anti-Masonic prejudices of an earlier day.

The faculty did not take up the problem in a formal way until December 1856, when they agreed that the rule against secret societies should be reaffirmed and strictly enforced. Protracted investigations and discussions lasted on into the spring with every effort being made to induce the Dekes to disband. They countered with the proposal that the faculty should always be represented in the fraternity by a regular honorary member, and elected Professor Gallup, whom they knew to be unfriendly to the chapter; he declined the membership. They also promised to cooperate with the President to improve the academic standing and general conduct of any brothers in danger of expulsion for irregularities, to prohibit the use of liquor at their festive occasions,