Theta Nu Epsilon Society - Articles

The Theta Nu Epsilon Society.

Voices from the Dark,

Alpha Delta - Illinois Wesleyan Chapter, The Green Eye, 1921, Vol. XL, No. 12.

This article is reproduced from a chapter publication at the Alpha Delta chapter, Illinois Wesleyan University. This was written about 1921-1923. At that time, Dean Thomas Arkle Clarke was making a name for himself at the University of Illinois for destroying a chapter there. The other Illinois academic institutions felt the same pressure. At the same time, the Madden National of Theta Nu Epsilon was engaged in a program of suspending chapters not willing to become four-year college fraternities.

The result of these two movements was that the undergraduates society-wide felt some pressure, and those at Illinois Wesleyan produced this. It is interesting from a literary point of view in that it runs close outright confrontation, but just keeps within bounds, (with one or two exceptions clearly over the line).

One reason for including it here is that it represents a whole body of writings,—all but paranoid,—written by members at different chapters under the gun. A certain recognizable tone can be traced through all of them, from the 1880’s to today.

We are T.N.E’s. We are a true and loyal band of many thousand members. We are bounded by a love and fellowship which makes our power felt deeply by all with whom we come in contact. We love the sunlight of the day, but even dearer to us is the kind and protecting shadow of night. While the rushing, maddening throng lies buried in deep sleep, we move about with only the recording stars as the observers of our deeds. The sleeper dreams, we see his face and hear his broken laugh or cry. The wakeful walk. We mark their footsteps unobserved. And thus we ever live and move and keep our peace.

We respect age, but despite irrational conservation. Our vision is not so obstructed that we cannot see farther than the end of our noses. We believe in the right of others, not only to exist, but to enjoy that portion of the world’s goods and pleasures to which each is legitimately entitled. We do not propose to rule the university. We recognize the rights of others to do that with our support. We are ordinary human beings possessed of the five senses which go to make up the conscious life of man. In fact, you who read this do not think of us as otherwise. You only think of a band of outlaws, whom, for some reason, or for no reason at all, you are disposed to regard with an unfriendly eye.

We believe that a man is a man not necessarily because he springs from noble ancestors, nor because he has material wealth, nor because he is handsome, nor yet because his is that enviable possession of many great men—an education. We believe that a man is a man, if he is a man at all, because he possesses those indescribable, yet well known qualities that go to make up a true man. And yet we know that we are addressing men and women, who, in all respect to their years and their learning, are so narrow-minded that they will allow personal prejudices to throw a colored mist screen before their eyes so that they see those about them, not as they really are, but as their personal likes and dislikes, disillusioned by a lack of knowledge, show them to be.

We are not cowards. We would say as much to each of you face to face, if we were not educated to the fact that we are forced to deal on unequal terms when we deal with you in the open. Oh, we are not begging. We are not asking that those in power recognize our right to exist as a fraternity. We scorn the thought of such an intention on our part, or the granting of our freedom by the faculty. Don’t worry; we will get along without the co-operation of those of our beloved faculty members who object to our methods. We need not even take this means of making public our sentiments; but we are an organization of red-blooded Americans, who, like rods of true iron, after a time become heated when subjected to the fires of continual maltreatment and misrepresentation. But unlike the rods of iron, we may not be fashioned in any shape or form by those who seek to abuse us. We are a true metal, and once molded, we never change our form; nor should we, for we are extremely careful to make sure that the form we choose is a wise and lasting one. We often know what opposing faculty members and students say about us as an organization. We half suspect that we know their minds in regard to us. They picture us as a band of lawless members of the student body who maintain the practice of secretly meeting, under the cover of darkness for the purpose of germinating schemes for creating disturbances among the students and faculty members of the school. Well, perhaps such guesses are correct. We won’t attempt to deny them, for we believe that what such people do not know will not greatly harm us. Perhaps we are not as shallow as we are given credit for being. We do not make a practice of going around popping off every time our steam is subjected to pressure. We have learned to keep our mouths shut until we have something to say. We would not allow you an audience now, but that this method is our strongest means of expressing our combined sentiments in regard to recent actions taken by the faculty in an attempt to curb our spirit and scatter us to the winds. We smile at the thought. Oh, we do not crow. We know the unexpected can happen. We are acquainted with Tommy Arkle Clark’s method of exposure—and right proud he should be of it, the underhanded fool. But let us warn those who try it that we are very careful to whom we entrust our friendship. Even Tommy Arkle, with all his wisdom, comes in contact with T.N.E.’s every day, who, quite unsuspectingly, he thinks, are his friends. We aren’t hypocrites; we simply see people in a wider field than they see us. We see them from within, as it were, while they, in turn, think to judge us fairly by surface examinations. We are an organization, who loving adventure, cautiously invite into our trusty band men of true worth. And the strength of the bands that bind us is as the strength of the invisible link which joins the night with the day. The little crusades that are directed against us are as hopelessly futile as was the ambitious Thorn’s attempt to raise the earth.

We take great pride in making public the fact that we are stronger in numbers, spirit, and purpose this year than we have been for many years past. And every man of us is a member thru his own choice, and not thru some trick or method of foul play on the part of those comprising the fraternity. We are justly proud of the fact that we can go about among men with our eyes open. We are as cosmopolitan in our relations with others as we are silent in regard to our secrets. We are living men. Within our breasts there beat hearts as true as ever furnished the minds of men with fresh food for thought. And yet I suspect there is no other organization quite so subjected to abuse thru the language of the press and the forum. For the most part we smile at such publicity with the smile of contempt. We look above and beyond the single dimension ideas emerging from narrow minds. What such people say little affects us. But sometimes we are hurt. We hold sacred our respects for those fellow students whom we have learned to care for. And when their minds are poisoned by the lies of our opponents, we feel deeply the cut of injustice. It is doubtless true that the women of the school are especially susceptible to the belief that we are an illegally combined gang of ruffians. Some have been known to openly confide such beliefs with friends whom they little suspected as being wearers of the much feared skull and cross keys of the Green Eye. And in a measure it does sometimes hurt one to learn so very unmistakably that he is held in respect and admiration by his fellow men, not because of his true worth as a man capable of making the world a better place to live in, but for some slight and illogical cause. But we usually smile and endeavor to forget. And in a measure we are successful when the offenses are trivial. But when we feel that we have been done a gross injustice we can’t forget; our memories refuse to forsake us. Depend upon it, there are certain things that we shall remember long after we leave Wesleyan, and that those who carry on our work here after us will have learned and passed on again.

Some top-heavy, mono-man may undertake to exterminate us here. Or many such may combine to take such action. How foolish! Do our devoted tutors forget that a society is not a mere population, but that it exists in the mind? How then will they smother the fires of our existence? Will they seize upon material things? Or command and exact. If so, then they will fail, and fail miserably. The May Flower may have carried to the bottom of the sea all the personal belongings of the Pilgrims, and yet if only the lives of those men had been spared, not one block of the foundation of our great and lasting democracy could have been lost, for the whole of the final social product lay carefully hidden in their minds. Bear this in mind, then would-be destroyers of our tribe—we are as real as we are mysterious.