Theta Nu Epsilon Society - Articles

The Theta Nu Epsilon Society.

Cass’s Comments,

De Lysle Ferree Cass, published as ‘Those Gay Old Dogs,’ College Humor, January 1929.

Let us begin by noting that this is a frequently quoted article. As such, it should be reproduced here in full. Further, given some of the surprising statements made by the author, the credibility of any one statement should be evaluated with the credibility of the others, so that a careful reader can evaluate the whole together.

It is hard to know what to do with Mr. Cass. He was a Wesleyan man, and a member of Theta Nu Epsilon. In this article he presents himself as no fan of Theta Nu Epsilon, yet in other articles, he shows himself to be quite an ardent supporter. One can evaluate his forthrightness by noting in this article here, he makes no mention of his membership. The answer to this seems to be that here we catch Mr. Cass here willingly sensationalizing the history of the Society and exploiting his own past connections for the sake of an article.

In any event, we think the case he makes against Theta Nu Epsilon is most effectively answered by giving close attention to the contradictory and excessive nature of his claims.

There is also a broader structural problem to Cass’s argument in that he implies a symmetry of development that isn’t really possible to maintain. There are today class societies and fraternities. He implies that class societies came first, had certain characteristics, and then were succeeded by fraternities with different characteristics. However most, if not all, pre-1850’s fraternity chapters had class year limitations, (frequently limited to Juniors or Seniors). What the whole of the historical record shows is an undifferentiated range of societies, with a variety of characteristics, and then later, different consistent sets of characteristics among different groups of societies. It was patterns emerging from chaos, which is what we would expect. If you ignore his developmental scheme, there is still some useful information here.

There is also a significant problem with Mr. Cass’s characterizations of social life prior to the 1920’s. Some of these are serious problems; many of them can be attributed to the era in which he lived.

We include this piece because Cass does present a lot of information collected here. The framework he provides seems to be lacking, and some of his conclusions are also skewed. However, this piece seems both impossible to correct, and impossible to ignore. So we present it here entire.

Did you know that Phi Beta Kappa was once a convivial society? Here are sober yet staggering facts about early secret organizations.

This is an authentic recital of the gay dogs of traditionally romantic yesteryears-and yet it is by no means a dog story, nor even necessarily an explanation of how deplorably students aforetime went to the bowwows. The facts recounted were more or less preserved in alcohol, in obscure secret archives, and in the fond reminiscences of men who once were wont to “hold their own.” Ere they are altogether lost for the delectation of posterity, they here have been exhumed and are presented as one of the formerly most characteristic and fondly remembered effervescences of undergraduate youth in the days before “Anything doing?” succeeded “Bottoms up!” as the popular keynote of extra-curriculum student activities.

Preliminary to treating of the drinking societies themselves, it is requisite that an account be given of conditions contributing to their origin, It is with difficulty that the college man of today can comprehend the relations between the two prime elements in eighteenth century American colleges. Until practically 1830 our colleges were little more than training schools for clergymen. Most of their regulations were those of a theological seminary and ecclesiastical interest dominated all faculties.

Our first glimpses into the social life of student prior to the Revolutionary War reveal a dreary round of puritanical fast days, early chapels, severe punishments, and bad board. Students were treated as mere boys, and women were not permitted enrollment at any institution of higher learning in the country. Prayers were read twice each day, usually at unreasonable hours. As a literary exercise the students were compelled to summarize the previous Sunday’s sermon. Blasphemy and the diffusion of unorthodox ideas were the most heinous of crimes. The professors’ chairs usually were filled by clergymen. New colleges were established solely because of theological differences of opinion. Yale was a protest against the doctrinal laxity of Harvard; Dartmouth an embodiment of evangelical distrust of Yale formalism. Brown represented the Baptists; King’s College (Columbia), the Episcopalians; Princeton, the Presbyterians; and so on.

As a result of this predominant ecclesiastical bias, discipline was austere and rigorous, and the long list of regulations and penalties far surpassed anything one might even expect. Rules dealing with every possible variation of conduct were drawn up, with lists of fines attached, The Harvard laws enumerated eighty-five separate offenses. At Yale student could not go sailing or hunt without special permission. Theatrical performances, billiards, dice and cards were on the black list. A student might not lie down on his bed in daytime, or spend his own money without first securing the consent of the college authorities. He was strictly prohibited from leaving his own room except at certain specified hours, and never was allowed to attend town elections or mingle with the citizens. The teaching staff of the college did police and detective service in ferreting out and punishing all violations of this code.

As the eighteenth century advanced; the signs of student restlessness began to make their appearance and gradually a change in undergraduate manners and morals took place. “Profane cursing and swearing, the frequenting of taverns and alehouses, the custom of keeping wine, beer and distilled liquors in college rooms” all increased, to the dismay of the governing bodies. Tutors were insulted and unlawful combinations against the college administration became frequent. New laws were made, penalties inflicted, and remonstrances repeated without either eradicating these insubordinate evils, or even materially diminishing them.

From this originally developed the class bond or consciousness, still second only to loyalty to the college itself in all Eastern schools, although of practically negligible interest in the more recently founded Western institutions where faculty tyranny never engendered it. However, there yet was no thought of formal student organization, either for undergraduate defense or amusement.

The debating society was the first independently organized student activity, and it origin lay in the fact that most sermons in those days were disputatious in form as also was most public speaking, which latter concerned itself largely with arguments against English tyranny. The debating society, really serious in intent and gradually expanding along general cultural lines, had at first to be conducted secretly, owing to faculty disapprobation of independent thought, but it rapidly became so popular that Harvard, Yale, and Princeton about 1765 reluctantly were constrained to sanction and even encourage it under professorial supervision. In order to escape faculty regulation and to widen the range of interest, students even then, however, still kept many of their debating societies secret. It became popularly recognized that to furnish the authorities with information concerning any prank or violation of the college statutes was the worst offense any collegian could commit in the eyes of his fellows, and the bare suspicion of such promptly subjected a man to social ostracism.

It was, of course, necessary that the entire student body stand united in this attitude, whence originated effort to impress it upon incoming freshmen, enforcement being ordinarily entrusted to the sophomore class. From this recognition of interclass spirit, hazing shortly became a regular practice. Sometimes, in early days, hazing was done by a self-constituted committee of sophomores. Occasionally a secret tribunal, descending from class to class, added the terrors of mystery to those of violence. Yale possessed such an institution which was known as the Court of the Areopagus, with a published list of officers, abounding in fantastic names and titles. The list was printed in heavy type, surrounded by mourning rules. It significant that Theta Nu Epsilon, the largest and most celebrated of all American collegiate class convivial societies, had an identical origin many years afterwards as an exclusive sophomore organization, intended for the hazing regulation of freshmen and similarly protecting its active second year members by naming them in the college yearbooks only by indecipherable agglomerations of letters and symbols. (Editorial note: Theta Nu Epsilon never operated as a court.)

The governing boards of the colleges tried to extirpate hazing, but without success. Public sentiment among students condemned the man who gave information to the faculty, and there was no other way of its obtaining such information. Long after the original self-protective reason for hazing had become nullified by more liberal faculty attitudes, hazing was persistently continued on the grounds that it was the only available method of disciplining freshman egotism.

The genuine cause for its maintenance, though, lay in the conservatism and reverence for an established procedure which is characteristic of one period of youth. To the student, the physical hazards attendant upon violent interclass rivalry only added spice and zest to college life, which it for long was the students pride to differentiate as markedly as possible from the humdrum, routine existence of noncollegians.

It should be remembered that the national manners of a century ago were those of a frontier people—rude, boisterous, overassertive; yet, even so, we hardly would expect to find that, at Harvard, outrages involving not only a large destruction of property, but even peril to life, as, for instance, the blowing up of inhabited buildings, occurred every year. The undergraduates at Yale celebrated Christmas by smashing the windows of the college buildings and barring the doors so fast that their professors were compelled to break them open with axes. Incidentally the oil lamps were filled with water; the president’s house was painted (by night) red, white and blue; and a cow was placed on the top floor of one of the principal dormitories. Personal assaults upon members of the faculty, drunkenness, and the like, are recorded as “very common” by the historian of Delaware College.

Student rebellions on a grand scale occurred from time to time against regulations of the faculty. These revolts were not usually accompanied by acts of violence, but took more the form of boycotts or strikes. One of the most common grievances on the part of students was the quality and quantity of food served them in the college commons, which generally seems to have been bad. Any sudden change in the curriculum or methods of instruction might be the occasion of a revolt. These rebellions en masse date from as far back as 1750 in the colonial colleges. One at Harvard in 1766 was of such dimensions that it interrupted all regular work of the college for more than a month. Another outbreak in 1768 led to the expulsion of numerous students. In 1790 Harvard sustained still another general revolt against public examinations, but the most famous uprising of Harvard undergraduates occurred in 1807 when all exercises of the college were brought to a standstill. As in most controversies of the sort, the students were nominally defeated and their leaders “rusticated.” Often, however, the revolts were indirectly effectual in procuring the desired results.

Another prolonged rebellion took place at Harvard in 1834, when much property was willfully destroyed. Yale had formidable student revolts in 1819, 1828 and 1830, the last named caused by a change in the method of teaching mathematics. At Princeton there were six en masse disturbances during the first three decades of the nineteenth century, In 1806 one-half the students were expelled and the college was dealt a blow which impaired its usefulness for many years thereafter. At Amherst in 1837 the entire student body went on strike, demanding that the expulsion of a certain student be rescinded by the faculty, to which the faculty finally was compelled to accede.

It was the class spirit of cohesion which made these organized strikes and boycotts possible; hence the faculty attitude toward all sorts of class organization was bitterly hostile. The laws of Harvard, Union College, Yale, and many others, for long absolutely prohibited class meetings, “whatsoever their alleged purpose.”

From this variously instigated opposition arose the need for class secrecy, especially as concerned leaders of the class and those special class bodies upon which leadership devolved. Mystery and secrecy is dear to the youthful mind. Hence mine gradually definitely organized class societies in steadily increasing number.

Typical of these earliest class societies were the Philopogonia and Mu Kappa Sigma at Amherst. The former, whose name is Greek for “Love-beard,” was formed by agreement of the class of 1852 to abstain from shaving for the entire term, at the conclusion of which a grand supper and celebration was held. The Mu Kappa Sigma society appeared in 1857. Its meetings mine on Saturday night, after which some act of rowdyism would be perpetrated. The notice of meeting was adorned with a woodcut from a comic almanac or illustrated newspaper, representing scenes of gross dissipation and violence. The notice likewise contained two or three lines indicating to the initiated the special object of the meeting. The students at large taxed their ingenuity with fruitless endeavors to decode these cabalistic signs. It later was discovered that the entire affair was simply a burlesque on secret societies: the signs were meaningless. The plan originated in a meeting of a few friends weekly to make molasses candy. The real significance of Mu Kappa Sigma was Molasses Candy Society.

However, the frankly predatory clubs far outnumbered the more innocent forms of association. The Ranters of Bethany College, Virginia, were typical of that classification. They committed all sorts of rascalities and mischievousness, both upon their fellow students and on the neighboring townsfolk. The company was commanded by one selected from the parry, called the Grand Ranter, whose order must be obeyed under penalty of expulsion of the person offending. Among the stunts commonly indulged in were those of robbing hen and turkey roosts and feasting on the spoils of such raids; of stealing horses from the townspeople to enjoy hilarious midnight crosscountry rides. If detected or betrayed to the faculty, the Ranters revenged themselves by shaving the manes and tails of the favorite horses belonging to the person informing against them. Similarly riotous bands known as the Moonlight Rangers at Jefferson College, Pennsylvania, and as the Annarugians at Centre College, Kentucky, flourished for quite a number of years.

As previously has been noted, the college debating society originated in Revolutionary times. At first their regular programs consisted of prepared orations, declamations and critical papers, but extemporaneous speaking was most common.

About 1830 the debating societies had fallen victim to factional contests. In some colleges cliques for controlling elections in the literary societies had crystallized into formal clubs and weirdly named class societies before the appearance of the first regular Greek letter fraternities as we know them today. The advent of the fraternity greatly hastened this tendency to dissolution. The debating society became the arena in which rival fraternities and other secret and nonsecret student societies fought for the supremacy. Literary exercises were neglected while rival factions struggled for the offices considered to be college “honors.”

Thus the new class and fraternal social organizations became the center of interest, while the old traditional “cultural” societies slowly died.

Actually the fraternity, which, even in that day, should no wise be confused with older existing class secret societies, was representative of the new social movement just making itself felt. Its rise marks a new turn in American life. The free democracy of the frontier was giving way to complexity, social class distinctions, and divisions. A leisure class was evolving itself, indifferent to polities, but sensitive to higher refinements.

Phi Beta Kappa, the first national Greek letter society whose active membership was not confined to a single undergraduate class was organized in 1776, with aims that were purely social. The Yale chapter was installed in 1780 as “a select debating society, with initiation suppers where the juice of Bacchus flows.” The secrecy feature was abandoned because of the anti-Masonic excitement in 1830, and since that time membership has been almost exclusively an honorary distinction granted to the best scholars in the senior class.

Chi Delta Theta was the first imitation of Phi Beta Kappa. It was a senior society at Yale, founded in 1821, and extended by a chapter at Amherst in 1822. It was seriously literary and “deplored the bacchic orgies sorrily characterizing Phi Beta Kappa” in that day. (Editorial note: Several historical inaccuracies here in relation to Phi Beta Kappa and Chi Delta Theta.) Those two were preparatory to the modern fraternity movement, which may be said to date its origin from the organization of the Kappa Alpha society at Union College in 1825. It was in its external features reflectatory of Phi Beta Kappa, but the tie between its members was a much closer one. Other succeeding fraternities were rapidly organized.

These fraternities were entirely different from all the older, purely class societies in operation, extent and intent. They deliberately made themselves national by installing chapters in other colleges, whereas most of the class societies did not do so. They had the secrecy feature and, in some cases, Greek letter nomenclature in common with the class societies, but the fraternity was conducted as a serious social association, primarily aspiring to none of the license or (originally) college political amities of the typical class society. Except at Yale, Harvard and Princeton the fraternity flourished amicably side by side with the older class societies. Those at Yale and Harvard were, however, so firmly established in undergraduate tradition that even local chapters of the national fraternities were forced to relegate themselves to the status of merely junior class societies. Delta Kappa Epsilon at Harvard is recognized merely as the Dickey Club. At Yale, Psi Upsilon, Alpha Delta Phi and Delta Kappa Epsilon amount to no more than third year organizations, subordinate in importance to the senior Societies, Skull & Bones and Scroll & Key.

Another noteworthy point of differentiation between the fraternity and the class secret society is the comparative variation of faculty attitude toward them. Fraternities as a whole are favorably regarded by the college authorities, most professors themselves haying been initiated in their own undergraduate days. That is, however, far less true as concerns class secret societies, which are far less amenable to regulation and which frequently clash with the authorities upon matters of college administration. In many colleges the senior societies work as an honorary board of student control in amity and complete conjunction with the faculty, but in other institutions that is not the case. The same is even more true of the junior and freshman class secret societies, the latter being modernly disapproved of as detrimental to order and scholastic concentration in nearly all American colleges except Yale and Harvard.

It is obviously impossible in so brief a sketch as this to enumerate all, or even a majority, of the class societies which from time to time have exerted important influence upon their respective colleges, and it here must suffice to consider only a few typical examples. Generally speaking, the class society in the Middle and Far Western university has occupied the same position of relative unimportance as the class consciousness and differentiation—that in direct contrast to the Eastern schools. (Editorial note: With the obvious exceptions of Berkeley and Stanford.)

In the East we find the Hasty Pudding Club being founded as a senior society at Harvard as early as 1795 “to cherish the feelings of friendship and patriotism.” It became a secret organization, with a regular initiation ceremony. Pi Eta, also founded at Harvard, was not permanently sanctioned by the faculty until 1869 as a senior society. The Signet, another fourth year order, was established in 1870; the Porcellian Club, the first distinctively Harvard society to include members of more than a single class, was formed in 1791.

At that time a number of intimate friends were in the habit of meeting in each other’s rooms on alternate Friday nights for purely social intercourse, the “exercises” always terminating with a supper and characteristically eighteenth century indulgence in old sherry and Madeira wines and good Barbados rum. The association was known as the Argonauts, but one evening a young pig was roasted whole, and so successful was the occasion that the society thereafter was called the Pig Club. It early aspired to an exclusive social position and assumed the title of the Gentlemen’s Club, which shortly was again changed to the Porcellian.

Meetings always were extremely convivial, and the club still exists as one of the most prominent at Harvard. Its small but very distinguished membership roster includes such names as Wendell Phillips, Everett, Adams, Channing, Story, Prescott, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Palfrey, Charles Sumner, John Lathrop Motley, and James Russell Lowell.

The Yale system of secret societies always has been much more strongly organized than at Harvard. A rigid class basis is maintained throughout, each year of the course having its distinctive societies. In 1870 the freshman order of Delta Kappa was founded, standing for “good fellowship and sociability.” Baggs, in his Four Years at Yale, graphically describes the initiation which comes one week after the opening of the college term. “Each freshman,” he tells, “is taken in hand by a particular sophomore who, at the appropriate moment, guides him to a building from which the sounds of pandemonium are issuing. A red devil in the passageway, assisted by a living skeleton, redolent of phosphorus, quickly blindfolds him, and he is hurried upward. When he has reached an elevation of several hundred feet, a new element in the continual din assures him that at last he is in the inquisitorial hall. But, just as he begins to reply to the last nonsensical questions put by an attendant fiend, someone jostles rudely against him and down, down, down, down he falls until he strikes a blanket held in readiness for him. Then he flies up into the air again amid admiring shouts of ‘Go it, freshie!’ ‘Well done, sub!’ ‘Shake him up!’ until a new candidate demands the attention of the tossers.

“Then he is officiously told to rest himself in a chair, the seat of which lets him down into a pail of water, though a large sponge probably saves him from actual wetting. His head and hands are thrust through a pillory and he is reviled in that awkward position. He is rolled in an exaggerated squirrel wheel; a noose is thrown around his neck and he is dragged beneath the guillotine, where the bandage is pulled from his eyes and he stares up at the glittering blade of block tin which then falls within a bare foot of his throat and cannot possibly go farther. Being thus executed, he is thrust into a coffin, which is hammered upon with such energy that he is at length recalled to life, pulled out again and made to wear his coat with the inside outward. This is a sign that the initiation is over.”

At Dartmouth, Rho Kappa Tau, the freshman drinking society, was founded in 1893 and flourished for long. At Brown, the upperclass society of Pi Kappa was instituted in 1864. At Dartmouth the Sphinx senior society dates from 1886, and Casque & Gauntlet also fourth year, from some time later. At Wesleyan, Connecticut, the senior society of the Skull & Serpent was founded in 1867, and the Owl & Wand Mystical Seven in 1868; the junior society of Corpse and Coffin in 1872, and Sigma Tau in 1896; and so on, ad infinitum.

With the advent of the regular fraternity into class politics, it was furthermore discovered that clashes were inevitable between it and the local sophomore secret societies, which theretofore had largely dominated in such matters, and most fraternities were moved to add their selfish disapprobation of the sophomore societies to that of the faculty.

The strongly entrenched and triply secret, powerful Theta Nu Epsilon is a case in point. It is asserted on quite reliable authority that over an interval of more than forty years there was not a man elected to office in any college where T.N.E. had established a chapter who was not, unbeknown to his own fraternity brothers in most cases a member of that sophomore order. (Editorial note: An obvious exaggeration.) All the fraternities, year after year, solemnly framed their electoral slates for the college “honor” offices trading candidates between themselves and the nonfraternity portion of the student body and pledging every brother to vote for the candidates thus agreed upon. However, a totally different slate usually was elected, to the surprise, indignation and consternation of the fraternities, owing to the unknown members of T.N.E. within their own chapters. (Editorial note: Does the author suggest fraternities should be allowed to rig elections, and not other organizations?)

The result was official condemnation of Theta Nu Epsilon by the national governing bodies of Phi Delta Theta, Beta Theta Pi, Delta Kappa Epsilon, and numerous other leading fraternities, and the issuance of an ultimatum that any member of any of those fraternities would be expelled if he were discovered to hold likewise affiliation with T.N.E. The formal reasons alleged for this drastic ruling on the part of the fraternities was that T.N.E. being itself a national secret Greek letter order, the initiate was deliberately violating his oath to his regular fraternity that, in accepting membership in it, he never would join another.

The second or professed reason for fraternity condemnation of Theta Nu Epsilon was on the grounds that the society encouraged drunkenness, dissipation, immorality, and was abortive to legitimate college discipline owing to the peculiarly mysterious manner of its operation. The veracity of their charges against T.N.E. and its alleged chicanery will be considered a little later on in connection with the quite unusual history of that organization.

The student rathskeller was as devoutly characteristic of the era as were peg-top trousers, turtle-neck sweaters, “dinky” skull caps, or astoundingly uncut mops of long hair on football players. Practically all students. were addicted to the use of intoxicants, and many of the favorite college drinking resorts became as synonymous with the prestige of the college as any of its buildings or most venerated traditions. Such, to mention only a few of the most famous were Mory’s and a little later on, Heublein’s at New Haven; Dick Rahar’s and the Draper Grill at Northampton (for Amherst men, not the Smith girls); the old Chaffee House tap room at Middletown, where Wesleyan’s sons were wont to make the welkin ring; the Dutch Kitchen at Ithaca, where Cornell upperclassmen had an immense oval table, rimmed with the knife-carven initials of the leading frequenters from class after class of hilarious celebrants.

Almost every college town boasted one or more such rathskellers or drinking places restricted exclusively to student patronage. Freshmen ordinarily were barred from admission, and deliberate intrusion by town residents would instantly have provoked violent efforts to expel them. Organized drinking bouts were staged in such places with regularity and abounding enthusiasm. These commonly were known in undergraduate vernacular as “beer busts,” “sprees,” “beer fests,” “jags,” and “keg parties.” A whole vocabulary of student slang originated around cab affairs and conditions arising from them.

Fashions change with the period and what would today be considered heavy drinking was not so regarded in 1750. The popular student beverages in our colonial colleges were simply those of the adult gentry in after-campus life—sherry, Muscatelle, Madeira, Jamaica rum and bitters, port and, to a lesser extent, brandy. Hot spiced punch also was a favorite concoction. That was the era of the polite wineglass and of drinking parties which customarily resolved themselves into capacity contests which generally lasted the night through until the last man lay sprawled under the table. A drinker in those days was creditably known as a “three bottle,” a “five bottle,” or a “six bottle man.” To have a weak head or stomach for heavy and prolonged potations was to incur the opprobrium of “milksop” and to be found lacking in one of the recognized qualifications of gentility.

Rye and bourbon whisky were the popular exhilarants of the middle nineteenth century period in the North, although in Southern colleges a greater variety of suave mixed drinks like mint juleps, New Orleans fizzes and the like were vogue. Gin was regarded as exclusively a “nigger” preference, although some time later on the sloe gin mixture came into widespread popularity with women at unconventional parties.

Beginning with the ’nineties and continuing on until the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment, beer was the prevalently popular student drink. This in the main was light beer, like Bock or Pilzener, although the heavier and headier dark beers, such as Muenchener and Nuremburger ran a fairly close second. These were partaken of in stone seidels or steins, and there developed as traditional a custom of “stirring” the mugs about upon the tables before drinking; or never forgetting to close down the lid again after a gulp; or penalties for the man who did not entirely comply with the cry of “Bottoms up!” as ever characterized the bier-fest of a burschencorps in any German university.

At the same time the Eastern college student continued the popularity of whiskey, although generally in the form of highballs, rye being the New England and New York preference, bourbon west of New York state. Gin also at this time first came to be acknowledged as a gentleman’s drink, although always in the form of rickies or something of the sort. It was considered very bad form for any student to drink his whisky straight, or to be known to carry a flask or bottle upon his person.

Practically every college or class affair was made the occasion for the en masse use of intoxicants by the male portion of the student body. But practically all of what drinking was done by students was in company with fairly large groups of their fellows as a sort of safety valve for naturally ebullient spirits. It was nearly impossible for even the astonishing quantities of beer, or the time-proofed liquor they imbibed, to affect them the way that present day synthetic gin and raw, adulterated whisky does the drinker.

In those days concerted drinking around a big rathskeller table—never in mixed company—was provocative only of rollicking songs, good-natured mirth and fast fellowship.

A drinking party was a spree, an outburst, a stimulation to comradely outpourings of song and subsequent pranks upon the more or less antagonistic townsfolk. It represented no actual alcoholic craving, but was as peculiarly an undergraduate affectation as the insistence upon weirdly distinctive headgear and apparel, or the hocus-pocus of Greek letter society “mysticism.”

Such being traditionally the mark of undergraduate good fellowship, it was natural that student drinking clubs should flourish. The outstanding and exceptional example of them all was, and still, although largely sub-rosa, continues to be Theta Nu Epsilon, most familiar in student parlance as T.N.E. This was the first and one of the only two sophomore societies to expand nationally, and which, despite the most vigorous prosecution by both faculty and many of the regular fraternities, thrived until it unquestionably became both the very most secret and powerful order of its kind in American collegiate life.

Theta Nu Epsilon was founded at Wesleyan University, Connecticut, in 1870. Its badge is a gold skull, full frontal view, vignetted, with one red and one green jewel in the eye sockets, and the Greek letters of its name across the forehead. Below the skull appear two crossed keys. The society colors are grass green and black. The emblem, which for long was permitted to appear in the college yearbooks, together with a roster of those openly running chapters which T.N.E. admitted, showed the badge of the society above a grinning circle of eight devils in the midst of leaping flame with a hissing serpent to the left side and cabalistic symbols below that upon a scroll. Prior to 1898 a different yearbook device than this was used.

Theta Nu Epsilon originally was founded by the ringleaders of the sophomore class of 1872 at Wesleyan University to curb better the freshmen and in order to delegate hazing to a definite body of men, who would be so organized as to execute all plans swiftly and with greater secrecy than was possible under general campus hazing by the second year class at large. It originally was intended for the especial and drastic chastisement of particularly offensive or combative freshmen, and the complete concealment in which active members’ names were kept was calculated to act as an additional intimidation of overly defiant first year men, who, because of it, could not determine the identity of their individual persecutors.

It was at first tacitly understood that Theta Nu Epsilon was privileged in case of need to call upon the entire remainder of the sophomore class for assistance in effecting its hazing ideas. The practice was, after first general campus hazing horseplay was ended, for T.N.E. to post at night time mysteriously menacing placards about the campus, signed only with the Greek initials of the society, grimly warning freshmen that the eye of Theta Nu Epsilon was constantly upon their every action, and that prompt and violent chastisement would be meted out for any infraction of traditional upperclass prohibitions for freshmen. Individual offenders, upon detection, would subsequently be warned and intimidated by being sent blood-curdling letters, signed by the three initials of the society, or the emblem of the Skull and Crossed Keys would be significantly chalked upon doors of their rooms. In case the freshman offender thereafter continued recalcitrant, he would be unexpectedly seized while walking alone some dark night and very vigorously admintered a “taste of hell.” (Editorial note: This appears to be true in the author’s imagination only.)

Only sophomores were permitted active membership in Theta Nu Epsilon. They were known as “Devilings” and in the college yearbook’s roster their real identities always were masked under fantastic conglomerations of letters and symbols. The right names of inactive junior and senior members were printed in the yearbook, the former being designated as “Fiends,” the seniors as “Arch Demons,” and the alumni as “Diavoli.”

Selection of new initiates always was made unbeknown to the remainder of the general college body, so that literally no one except members of T.N.E. really knew exactly who were active in the riotous unruliness it continually perpetrated. The active delegation originally was restricted to ten men, that number in later years being increased from sixteen to twenty. The invariable initiation fee was ten dollars.

Theta Nu Epsilon never owned chapter houses, or attempted to hold but one national convention, which was at Baltimore about 1911, where it was able to transact no serious official business after once someone, early in the first session, suggested adjournment “for a little drink.” For some years, however, the society did issue a private periodical, called The Sophomore. (Editorial note: Elsewhere on this site conventions are shown on a regular basis since the 1880’s.)

The ultrasecrecy with which Theta Nu Epsilon operated enabled it to perpetrate all sorts of excesses and violence with the utmost impunity, defying both the authority of the college administration and frequently the will of the upperclass student body as well. Its especial mystery and almost uncontrollable influence quickly caught at the imaginations of students in other colleges and, for many years, numerous other purely local sophomore societies, having no genuine affiliation whatever with Theta Nu Epsilon, deliberately appropriated the name and insignia of the original Wesleyan order. Many of these illegitimate bodies later were rounded up and formally admitted to membership in the real society.

Six years after the establishment of the Alpha chapter at Wesleyan, the society began to branch out with chapters all over the East, Middle West, and West. Faculty opposition and the threat to expel immediately any student discovered to be a member of the order in the meantime periodically caused the suppression, withdrawal, or sub-rosa continuance of many previously installed chapters, and it is a fact that Theta Nu Epsilon never has made public its complete list of chapters, owing to the large number of them continuing to operate strictly under cover. In 1912 published records gave the living membership of the society as twenty-two thousand and three, with forty-lour active chapters and eighteen alumni chapters. Up until the abolishment of the Alpha chapter at Wesleyan by the faculty in 1912, the national executive management of the society was in its hands. Thereafter, it is understood, the national control became vested in an alumni committee, regulated to a certain extent by voting privileges adherent to active chapters. (Editorial note: There was no faculty threat of immediate expulsion anywhere, the society operated relatively publicly, the Alpha was not abolished in 1912, governance was not by informal committee — see the page on the history of the society.)

The almost unlimited power accruing to the society be reason of its self-protective anonymity of membership soon went to the heads of its youthful initiates. They became arrogant, domineering and reckless to the point of the wildest extravagances. Feeling themselves empowered as an extra-legal control body of the college, they were amenable to no usual discipline, “Good fellowship,” “sporty” proclivities, liberal spending, and an unusual capacity for holding hard liquor became the largely determining qualifications for membership. To be known as a T.N.E. was to be synonymously recognized as a “tank” and a “sport;” as “fast.” It became common superstition among non-initiates that no T.N.E. ever allowed a girl to wear his pin except in tacit commemoration of her moral frailty. (Editorial note: Ahem . . . ) The Greek letters of the society’s name were popularly alleged to signify “Thirst Never Endeth.”

Theta Nu Epsilon deliberately encouraged the general student body in the delusion that it was merely an association of idle, dissipating rake-hells, whose interests lay entirely in strong drink and whimsical deviltries. It assiduously fostered that general opinion as a smoke-screen to what rapidly developed as its fundamental policy, the purely selfish seizure of each and every lucrative or “honor office” that undergraduate life afforded. It, in other words. went out for graft upon a brazenly wholesale scale and so great was its sinister influence that it for nearly half a century constituted the dominating political power in every college where it operated either an “open” or submerged chapter. There is a very close parallel between the precise manner with which Theta Nu Epsilon effected this and the way in which the Ku Klux Klan recently managed to get so vicious a strangle hold upon the national politics of the country at large. The whole conception, step by step was identical.

Thomas Arkle Clark, veteran dean of men at the University of Illinois, denounced the society vehemently and publicly in 1913, characterizing it as “fostering, organizing and protecting over a period of many years an illegal graft ring at Illinois;” of being “nationally, an inexcusably detrimental society . . . generally known as directly encouraging habitual drunkenness, gambling, cheating in classroom examinations and hazing...by reason of the low moral and political standards for which Theta Nu Epsilon stands.” (Editorial note: Clark later became a member of Theta Nu Epsilon.)

Newspapers quoting him at the time went on to say: “Through its unscrupulous scheming numerous inferior men have been and are being railroaded into the most responsible and honorable undergraduate offices of the university . . . elections have been made a travesty . . money has been misappropriated for entirely selfish and personal gain . . . the entire practice of the society is disreputable and it should be stamped out of every American institution of learning upon which it exists as a proven parasite.”

College faculties, as a whole, also threatened to expel immediately any student discovered to be a member of the order.

These drastic rulings, however, no whit deterred T.N.E. from each succeeding year continuing to get almost any new individual members it saw fit to select. The only effect of the faculty ban was to drive the theretofore openly existing chapters underground, in which concealment most of them continued to flourish quite as formidably and reprehensibly as ever, and actually more difficult of control or detection even than theretofore. Theta Nu Epsilon is, for instance, officially abolished at the University of Illinois, the University of Chicago, the University of Kansas, and Northwestern, but-like Medusa’s head in the classic myth, no sooner is one snaky lock cut on than another miraculously springs out in the same place.

Contrary to faculty opinion; and even to general undergraduate knowledge, the society today continues practically as strong as ever in colleges where it has not been officially recognized for many years past, and three revived chapters were chartered in the current year alone at certain Middle Western state universities where in past years the opposition to it was most rabid. These periodic faculty exposures have occasioned many curious and humorous incidents. One notable hoax of the kind transpired in 1913, when Dean Thomas Arkle Clark unearthed fresh graft scandals at his institution and unrestrainedly denounced the society. His remarks being widely quoted in the newspaper, an alumnus T.N.E. who then happened to be city editor of the old Chicago Inter-Ocean saw front page story material in a spirited retort to Dean Clark from the national order. Well knowing that there then was no national executive body of Theta Nu Epsilon, this man hastily telephoned a friend whom he knew also was T.N.E. from another college. He referred the newspaper man to a third local T.N.E. well known for a hectic imagination, with result that the following morning the Chicago and other city newspapers appeared with three-column, front page accounts of a “tremendous indignation mass meeting of the Chicago Alumni Association of Theta Nu Epsilon at the Hotel La Salle,” at which “more than three hundred frothing fraters from the country’s leading colleges” were alleged to have been in attendance. The account went on to tell of formidable resolutions being adopted, excoriating Dean Clark and announcing that the national organization would immediately institute suit against him for libel.

An impressive list of speakers at this purely fictitious meeting were quoted at great length, among them being that first T.N.E. phoned by the newspaper man, who was named as presiding at the mythical session, but who actually had spent that afternoon on a distant golf links. The name of ex-President William Howard Taft and numerous other distinguished members of Theta Nu Epsilon were rung into the fake story in order to make it the more impressive. The story occasioned great excitement throughout national collegiate circles, Dean Clark being considerably exerted over it and, at the time, believing the big meeting and warning of legal action to have been a fact.

The only other sophomore class secret society to attain national dimensions and prestige was Kappa Beta Phi. This organization was founded about 1915 as an out-and-out drinking society, directly burlesquing Phi Beta Kappa by naming itself with the backward spelling of that solemn body’s initials, and adopting for its insignia a gold watch key in close replica of that of Phi Beta Kappa. It never was intended as more than a parody on the other, nor did it even attempt either the hazing functions or the subterranean political control which were two of Theta Nu Epsilon’s major characteristics.

The humorous idea of its appellation bad ready appeal to the average undergraduate. Faculty recognition of it was mildly disapproving and suspicious. For a decade or so it flourished hilariously, but with the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment is rapidly dying out in all sections of the country. The largely prohibitive prices of liquor, as well as its inferior quality, is a contributing factor to its extinction, although a few chapters still do linger on today.

The typical American undergraduate is decently disinclined to be stealthy with his boyish dissipations, and heavy drinking in large groups has been made so difficult under national prohibition enforcement that a club animated simply by that aim hardly can function nowadays. The private automobile with a companionable girl has largely supplanted the rathskeller and jubilantly singing mobs of male classmates. What student drinking still goes on-and there still is more than enough of it-is avowedly done “for the kick” there is in it, and that is exactly what the “kick” against it is, and should be.