I just returned from a celebration of the 100 year anniversary of my fraternity, Delta Upsilon on the University of Washington campus (1910 to 2010). Our national fraternity was founded in 1834 at Williams College in Massachusetts. It is North America’s oldest and largest non-secret Greek letter society.
The fraternity motto is: Justice, Our Foundation. The four founding principals are:
The Promotion of Friendship The Diffusion of Liberal Culture
The Development of Character The Advancement of Justice
I can’t speak for other fraternities, and while I’m sure these values have been weak at times over the years, they remain with us today. And from what I saw at the reunion, are being strengthened each year by a new group of undergraduates.
Our current Delta Upsilon whole house grade point average is 3.2. We had around 100 members in the fraternity when I was there and now they only have about 60, but have a pledge class of 24, which is quite good.
When I was in the fraternity, they called the member in charge of the pledges, The Pledge Trainer. He is now called the Pledge Advisor. They no longer have a Hell Week, but we old alums gave them some solid ideas of what they could do to instill the concept of loyalty through means other than the Hell Week ritual.
What I noticed the most was the positive attitude at the reunion. There wasn’t any negativity. Four hundred people showed up to the social and banquet. This included the undergrads. It was a great evening and a great week. I spent the week with Jamie Parsons and his wife, Marybeth and left feeling like a new person. Jamie was president of the fraternity when I was vice-president. We spent the days prior to the event making name tags, putting ribbons on them, and making sure all the names were spelled properly and the correct graduation year was on the tag. The best part was we laughed and joked a lot.
The event was on Friday. On Saturday, we visited the fraternity house and then tailgated in Bob Stewarts huge RV out in the parking lot prior to the game, which we lost 52 to 24. It wasn’t pretty. I thought scores like that only happened to me. Some DUs from Nebraska joined us at the tailgate party. I of course told them I knew Allan Behrman and had jumped a frog for Nebraska at the Angel’s Camp Frog Jumping Contest. Many of them had Husker sweatshirts and I kept telling them they’d spelled it wrong and it should have an ies after Husk so it spelled Huskies.
This has gotten a bit long and I have more to say, but will leave it here for now.
