It's sort of interesting to me in that for some fraternities and sororities, it was *clearly* intended that the early issues were never intended to be read by those who were not already initiated into the organization or perhaps only shared with other fraternities and sororities where information would only be available to those who had their own initiations and no interest in further publicizing such information. (It's fascinating to see that the Magazine editors review and comment on the magazines from other GLOs)
The idea that an incoming freshman (or for that matter a 44 year old who never joined a social fraternity
) would have access to the fraternity magazines going all the way back to founding I don't think ever crossed their mind.
For my own fraternity (Alpha Phi Omega), While I don't have access to all of the magazines from the first five years, I don't think that is true since I think we were sending copies to certain members of the National Boy Scout leadership. Only "private" information shared is that the founder considered another name and decided against it because it was too obvious.