Alum gives $20 mil to Union Coll. to demote GLOs

[hoosier]

Union College asked to trade greeks for $20M
By Hermes Staff

The Albany (NY) Times-Union reported last month a record $20 million endowment to Union College -- made solely in effort to limit greek life at the school's campus in Schenectady.

John Wold, 86, a Union trustee emeritus who made his fortune in Wyoming oil and minerals, made the donation.

The gift was more than double the previous record-high gift to Union -- $9 million in 1996 -- and is a show of support in favor of Union's controversial plan to reduce the dominance of fraternity and sorority life on campus.

The college said $2 million will be used to create Wold House, one of seven on-campus houses designed to replace a half-dozen prominent fraternities and sororities. The idea is to create a social atmosphere that does not rely on membership in greek organizations.

[Kevin]

There's still exclusive membership! By its nature any organization is exclusive! So essentially for 20M they are just changing the name on the door.

Brilliant.

[wptw]

Hoosier, I think the article you posted and the title of this thread are misleading. You can get the news right from the horse's mouth at the Union website...

http://www.union.edu/N/DS/s.php?s=3146

Wold is absolutely not doing this to demote GLOs. He is an ADPhi himself and definitely pro-greek. Here's an excerpt:

"Wold also was a member of Alpha Delta Phi fraternity at the College, and he says, 'I have been a longtime admirer of what the fraternity/sorority program has meant at Union in the past and what promise it has for the future, if it is properly administered. The House System preserves the option for those who want fraternities and sororities while providing new residential and social opportunities for all students.'"

Funny how the media can distort things.

wptw

[DeltAlum]

Originally posted by wptw
"Wold also was a member of Alpha Delta Phi fraternity at the College, and he says, 'I have been a longtime admirer of what the fraternity/sorority program has meant at Union in the past and what promise it has for the future, if it is properly administered. The House System preserves the option for those who want fraternities and sororities while providing new residential and social opportunities for all students.'"

wptw,

I'm not sure I agree with your take on the article, because I'm not sure just what it means.

I think it is possible to interpret it to mean the the "House" system will replace the Greek System -- preserving the option of a Greek like lifestyle -- but within the new system. The line, "if it is properly administered." is a little troublesome to me. I appears that Mr. Wold may take issue with Greek Life at Union as it stands presently.

I don't have a clear impression of what Mr. Wold and the college have in mind here. Kind of ambiguous in my opinion.

Obviously, I hope I'm being an alarmist here, but I can see how either conclusion could be reached.

[wptw]

DeltaAlum,

Fair enough. I interpret his comments to mean he's sort of placating Union College. There is definitely a movement afoot there to scale back or at least to better regulate the greek system. The college seems to feel if students have other housing choices, they might not so quickly choose a fraternity as a place to live.

This Wold house idea will likely quiet down the anti-greek faction, at least for now, while still preserving the existing fraternities and sororities. And from his comments, I think this is exactly what he intended.

His comment "if properly administered" just seems a further nod to the anti-greek faction. Perhaps just a way for Wold, a benefactor who also happens to be a prominent greek, to make himself appear more moderate.

But I agree, this could be interpreted differently and I would be very interested to hear more about it (from Wold I mean, not from some newspaper editor).

Union is one of the "Meccas" of greek history. It would really be a shame to see the system snuffed out there. So for that reason, I really hope my interpretation is correct!

wptw

[DeltAlum]

Originally posted by wptw
Union is one of the "Meccas" of greek history. It would really be a shame to see the system snuffed out there. So for that reason, I really hope my interpretation is correct!

wptw et al,

I hope your interpretation is correct, too. For those who might wonder about the "Mecca" comment, I offer below a quote from "The History of Delta Tau Delta" from www.delts.org.

"1825 Kappa Alpha Society is founded at Union College in New York. Two years later, Sigma Phi and Delta Phi are founded at Union; later, Psi Upsilon, Chi Psi, and Theta Delta Chi are also founded at Union, giving it the title "Mother of Fraternities."

Perhaps the main reason Union College was the birthplace of so many fraternities is that Eliphalet Nott, President of Union, was forwardthinking enough to actually encourage such organizations. He understood the value of fraternities to enhance young men's academic performances, provide them with a common goal, and support them with a system of values to achieve that goal. Nott's contribution to the Fraternity System is yet another example of excellence, foreshadowing the benefits of the values we embrace today."

I have been most impressed with wptw's comments on several threads regarding understanding our history and roots.

Thanks for the reminders.

Edited to add: Earlier the History of DTD talks about the founding of Phi Beta Kappa at The College of William and Mary, and later admonishes us that we can find many parrallels between our (Delt) founding in 1858 and these other organizations. I believe it is important to have an understanding of the history of the Greek movement, in addition to that of our particular organization. And, this understanding should be more than simply snipits we memorize for pledge tests or initiation. (Sorry about the possible hazing implications in the last sentence) So, again, I thank wptw for the chastisment (that may be a brand new word), and the charge to find out more about our common heritage.

[g41965]

Universities have been setting up common houses/taking away living and dining functions from Greek Letter organizations since the 1920's to reduce the influence of GLO's. Harvard and Yale made all members live in University Housing and be on meal plans specifically to reduce GLO's. Get out a Baird's Manual and look at all the Fraternities that died at these two schools in the 1930's.
Williams took away houses in 1965, in 1968 they killed the Greek's. Amherst, Bowdon and Middlebury have followed suit.It is particularly worrisome that this trend of unhousing/killing Greek's is moving out of New England to New York IE Hamilton, Union and Alfred Colleges,Pennsylvania-Waynesburg, Ohio-Denison.
Another trend that worries me is Fraternities at elite schools in the south are beginning to go local IE Phi Delta Theta at UVA and U of The South and Kappa Sig and SAE at Duke. If you look very carefully at the collapse of the Greek system in New England in the 1950s to 1970s one of the first signs of decline was the tendancy of chapters to go local.
My International, DU, lost very good chapters at Amherst, Dartmouth ,Bowdoin, Wesleyan and Brown within a decade to the local trend, all these now local chapters eventually died or were killed by the host institutions. Every other old line national was hurt in the same way. I hope the same thing is not in its beginning stages at selective southern universities.
The move to unhose/ closely regulate the Greeks at Union is nothing more than a trojan horse for abolition of GLO's.

[Munchkin03]

A lot of those fraternities were asked to leave their campuses if they refused to get rid of their discriminatory clauses (this was 1950). I am currently writing my senior honors thesis on the post war architectural programme of my university (one which was named in the previous post), and that was the reason a good number of them left...even some of the few that were still on campus. Many went local in order to stay on campus because their national organizations would not drop the discriminatory clause.

I won't say my campus "killed" Greek life--from talking to alumni and reading newspapers (both student, Greek, alumni, and local) from that time, a lot of bad things were going on. Pledges were dying in drunken falls, rival fraternities were having icepick fights--who wouldn't blame an administration (many of whom were Greek men) for putting a stop to it?

So, in short, you can't blame it ALL on the campus. Let's not forget that we do create our own PR, for better or for worse.

[KillarneyRose]

You know, the only "C" I got in college was in that damn Calculus class I took freshman year. I wonder if I gave $20 million to the University of Pittsburgh they'd abolish the mathematics department?

[kddani]

Originally posted by KillarneyRose
You know, the only "C" I got in college was in that damn Calculus class I took freshman year. I wonder if I gave $20 million to the University of Pittsburgh they'd abolish the mathematics department?

I can think of a couple other things to add to that list at Pitt....

If i ever get rich, first thing i'll do is buy a new elevator for the dorm the sororities are housed in. I think it's the original from when they were built in the 1920's. Then i'll donate to my chapter and panhel.

Then maybe the law school.....

[honeychile]

Originally posted by kddani


I can think of a couple other things to add to that list at Pitt....

If i ever get rich, first thing i'll do is buy a new elevator for the dorm the sororities are housed in. I think it's the original from when they were built in the 1920's. Then i'll donate to my chapter and panhel.

Then maybe the law school.....

LOL!!! Being on the 10th floor, we used to say that, when it came time for us to die, we wanted all the time we spent waiting for that @#$%^&* elevator back!


honeychile

[lenoxxx]

A few thoughts on the housing/going local issue.

At my college in Pennsylvania there are now only 6 on campus fraternities, the rest are "off campus" which there are now 8 off campus, all are considered local or underground to some degree.

Several of our own alumni have begun questioning the value of the college institution to help the chapter anymore at this point. Besides being where the students come to college at- they are more of an administration nightmare to deal with with little or no benefit to staying close with except to keep out charter from our national office in Indianapolis.

Alot of it stems from the college's lack of movement to accept or mainstream the massive amount of illegal rush and initiations with freshmen that have been occuring for over a decade now with a moajority of the on campus greeks and all of the off campus greeks (taking first semester freshmen) once that level of honesty and good faith is gone alot of the dealings with the host institution go out the door (at least in an honest fashion)

And most of the housing has been eliminated, except in an off campus developer who has been in mulitple lawsuits with the town, school and even the IRS to keep our privately built greek off campus neighborhood open to Greeks. We receive no interference from this housing arrangement except from the occasional state police patrol.

My attitude from this is that stay at arms length from the college you deal with if you can, because the hand that fed you in the 80's or 90's seems to want to tear you apart now, one of our neighbor chapters of our fraternity at a private college is now living under the heel of the host institution after they bought all the greek housing, and are now subject to random searches. This seems like prison to me.

Anway- get money and get away and independent from the noose of the college control, but maintain some kind of semi positive relationship with them.

Im just leery

Jason

[33girl]

Originally posted by lenoxxx
Alot of it stems from the college's lack of movement to accept or mainstream the massive amount of illegal rush and initiations with freshmen that have been occuring for over a decade now with a moajority of the on campus greeks and all of the off campus greeks (taking first semester freshmen) once that level of honesty and good faith is gone alot of the dealings with the host institution go out the door (at least in an honest fashion)

Jason,

You're at Ship, right? Clarion has always permitted first semester males to pledge and sometime in the mid-90's gave the OK to females as well. I've thought that with the common calendar coming up in 2003 perhaps some commonality of first sem rush, etc could be instituted as well. Food for thought...

anyway, PM me if you want to gab more about that situation.

[Tom Earp]

Once again there is semblence of leadership on GC via DA, WPTW, Lenoxx and Hoosier!

I for one am not of that ilk that degrades! Not refering to the fine men that I just mentioned!

These do righteous SOB Acadamians and Monied persons have Not One Damn Clue of the benefits of GreekDom!

Just who in the hell does some do rightous Money Ogre think he is?

If each of us look into the people who are members of Our Orgs. they will find some very big Shakers of all facets of world Business from All Of our Orgs!
Why should one person have the say for a School!?

It would be a shame if they let one curmudgin decide the life on campus!

I for one get very sick and tired of the Acedemian of some piss ant school sying You Cant!

Alfred U, NY being one who is disbanding All Greeks on Campus!
Then One look at Shorter Collge of Rome Ga, who is looking to go National from Locals!

If one looks back in Your History, I am sure you will find someone who left money to the Org who were well known and wanted to thank the Orgs for giving them the reason to do what they did to get to where they are!

What a damn sad state!

Does anyone have an E-M. I will send one to these inept fools!

Hell, I am more than likely Maturer than they are as they sound like snoopy being stupid!

[damasa]

Originally posted by g41965
Universities have been setting up common houses/taking away living and dining functions from Greek Letter organizations since the 1920's to reduce the influence of GLO's. Harvard and Yale made all members live in University Housing and be on meal plans specifically to reduce GLO's. Get out a Baird's Manual and look at all the Fraternities that died at these two schools in the 1930's.
Williams took away houses in 1965, in 1968 they killed the Greek's. Amherst, Bowdon and Middlebury have followed suit.It is particularly worrisome that this trend of unhousing/killing Greek's is moving out of New England to New York IE Hamilton, Union and Alfred Colleges,Pennsylvania-Waynesburg, Ohio-Denison.
Another trend that worries me is Fraternities at elite schools in the south are beginning to go local IE Phi Delta Theta at UVA and U of The South and Kappa Sig and SAE at Duke. If you look very carefully at the collapse of the Greek system in New England in the 1950s to 1970s one of the first signs of decline was the tendancy of chapters to go local.
My International, DU, lost very good chapters at Amherst, Dartmouth ,Bowdoin, Wesleyan and Brown within a decade to the local trend, all these now local chapters eventually died or were killed by the host institutions. Every other old line national was hurt in the same way. I hope the same thing is not in its beginning stages at selective southern universities.
The move to unhose/ closely regulate the Greeks at Union is nothing more than a trojan horse for abolition of GLO's.

How is going local a trend? You make it seem like ti's a bad thing that a national goes local? It happens ALL the time and I don't consider it a trend. If you think about it, every GLO started from that first chapter, if even for a moment, that one chapter which in itself would have been a local, even if only for that moment.