Library of Congress Myth

[kmullini]

Submitted by Eric L. Rousey, elrous0@pop.uky.edu
sac.uky.edu/~elrous0/eric.htm
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This is an interesting story that I never knew about. I found it on
http://mcrae.ca/greek/docuhome.htm

Under Duncan's Greek Documentation Pages.

I just copied and pasted part of the article.

Introduction to the Myth -- The Awful Truth

"Almost every Greek out there has heard a variation of this one. I myself heard it from my fraternity big brother. All of the secret fraternity rituals are available in the Library of Congress, he told me, "...except for KA's. J. Edgar Hoover took ours out." Maybe you heard a slightly different version. Maybe you heard that the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) "collected" fraternity rituals in the 50's as part of it's anti-communist, anti-secrecy investigations. Or maybe you heard that Joseph McCarthy himself made fraternities turn their rituals over. Or maybe you heard that this took place in investigations during World War One. Or maybe you heard that this was done for copyright protection purposes.

Anyway, you probably heard that your ritual is the only one not in the collection. Well, here's the sad news: The Library of Congress does not have secret college fraternity rituals in it's collection!

[insert shocking music here]

The Library of Congress has denied this repeatedly to no avail. It keeps popping up with the tenacity of the "sick little boy wants postcards" legend.

Nor, sadly, is any variation of this urban legend true. The HUAC investigations did not "collect" fraternity rituals. HUAC harassment was restricted almost exclusively to leftist organizations, and fraternities are generally considered very conservative organizations (not to mention that most of the HUAC members were fraternity men themselves and politicians who weren't about to take the political backlash from such an unwarranted seizure of conservative organizations' esoteric documents). Nor did J. Edgar Hoover remove KA's ritual from the collection. Nor did Harry Truman remove LCA's. Nor did Ronald Regan remove TKE's, and so on... Virtually every fraternity has heard a variation of this myth (with THEIR ritual being the one rescued by so-and-so). Many sororities apprently have heard variations as well, though the myth seems to be more prevalent among male fraternities.

There HAVE been at least two incidents where fraternities turned over rituals or esoteric information to a central body or person. In 1924, the National Interfraternity Conference's Committee on Fraternity Ideals sent out a confidential questionnaire to member fraternities asking specific questions about their rituals. And, for his 1979 Ph.D. dissertation, Bobby McMinn sent out requests to 67 fraternities for copies of their rituals, agreeing to provide anonymity for participating fraternities. McMinn got 22 rituals in response and used them as source material for an interesting content analysis."