The Zeta Psi Fraternity Incorporated (ΖΨ) was founded June 1, 1847 as a social college fraternity. The organization now comprises about fifty active chapters and twenty-five inactive chapters, encompassing roughly fifty thousand brothers, and is a founding member of the North-American Interfraternity Conference. It has historically been selective about the campuses at which it has established chapters,[1] focusing on forging new territory and maintaining a presence at prestigious institutions: it was the first Fraternity on the West Coast at the University of California at Berkeley June 10, 1870,[2] the first Fraternity in Canada at the University of Toronto,[3] March 27, 1879, and the only fraternity to have chapters simultaneously at all eight Ivy League schools with the chartering of the Eta Chapter at Yale University in 1889 (though this claim lasted only a few years, owing to faculty opposition to the Princeton University Chapter).[4] The fraternity became intercontinental on May 3, 2008 with the chartering of Iota Omicron at the University of Oxford.
Zeta Psi’s international headquarters is located in Pearl River, New York. Its current president is Andrew Nunez, who was elected in 2012.
History[]
Then students at New York University, the three men formed the core of the first chapter, Phi. But William Dayton was stricken with poor health, and departed New York shortly afterwards for more temperate climes. He retired to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where the warm weather and liberal policies were expected to improve his humors, intending to begin a chapter there.[5] But the move was inauspicious: Dayton died within the year, and the University of North Carolina was without a chapter of Zeta Psi for over a decade.
The Phi chapter at NYU persisted in his absence, and graduated its first member the next year with George S Woodhull (Φ '48). The second chapter was established as Zeta at Williams College in Massachusetts. The Delta chapter was founded at Rutgers University later that year,[5] and was the most continuously active chapter of the fraternity until it became inactive in 2009.
Three chapters followed in 1850: Omicron (now Omicron Epsilon) at Princeton University, Sigma at the University of Pennsylvania, and Chi at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. The first two are still active, as was the Chi Chapter until 1988. In the early 1980s Colby College prohibited Fraternities on campus, despite the long and storied tradition they had enjoyed there. By 1988, ejected from campus and banned from any formal rush, the chapter quietly expired after over 130 years of existence. Problems beset other early chapters as well. The first Alpha chapter was founded in 1852 at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. But immediate resistance from the administration slowly wore upon the brothers there, and that chapter became inactive in 1872, permitting its letter to be used for the later chapter founded at Columbia.[6]
1860 to 1864: The Civil War[]
Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States in 1860, and South Carolina seceded from the Union, followed shortly thereafter by her fellow Southern states. Expansion of the Fraternity halted as campuses rallied for war and sent companies of their collegemen to battle.
At the outbreak of war, the Upsilon chapter at UNC— only chartered three years before—found itself the only chapter of Zeta Psi among all the Southern states, sundered from the North by the sudden lines of enmity. But even as they mustered for war and marched south, the Grand Chapter of Zeta Psi, specially assembled in early July 1862, adopted the resolution of Brother William Cooke (Φ '58) prescribing unity:
- RESOLVED, That while we may differ in political sentiment with those of our Brothers who are courageously battling for principles which they deem right, no disaster shall separate them from the union of Tau Kappa Phi.
And the brothers of Upsilon replied by letter in like fashion:
- WHEREAS, The present distracted state of our country renders it inexpedient to hold our convention in this State during this year;
- RESOLVED, That the Sigma Alpha be instructed to write to all Chapters, assuring them that though our Federal Union has been dissolved, still the Circle of Zeta Psi Fraternity shall never be broken;
- RESOLVED, That the bonds of Tau Kappa Phi which bind us to our Brothers in the North are as strong as they ever were.
Nor was the brotherhood among Zetes limited to mere words; the moving tale of Brother Henry Schwerin (Θ '63) illustrates the embodiment of love even in the most trying of circumstance. Schwerin lay gravely wounded after the bloody Battle of Chattanooga; pinned on the breast of his Union uniform was the badge of Zeta Psi. A passing Confederate soldier, also a Zete, spied the badge and carried the invalid to medical care and safety, ignoring even the imperatives of war for the sake of his brother. The worthy badge later passed into the hands of his brother, Max Schwerin (Θ '70), who would one day serve as international president. After his death, it was donated by his sister to the Fraternity's archives and remains among its treasures. Brother John Day Smith (Ε '72) witnessed the incident on the Chattanooga field, and later related it to Brother Francis Lawton (Ε '69), who would author the poem “The Badge of Zeta Psi,” later set to original music and preserved to this day. The reference to “Chattanooga's bloody field” is not idle hyperbole, but the recollection of a rare triumph among such sorrows.
And amid this sorrow and heroism where so many brothers of Zeta Psi perished, so too were even whole chapters swallowed by the War. The Eta (Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, chartered 1861), Psi Epsilon (Dartmouth), Upsilon (UNC), Epsilon (Brown), and Theta (Union) chapters had vanished by the end of the conflict, decimated by fallen brothers or disheartened campuses returning from the shadow of death. The Theta and Eta chapters would never survive the staggering losses they suffered, though the others ultimately recovered and reactivated. And the Gamma chapter—chartered 1861 at the Georgia Military Institute, the only new chapter during the War—was annihilated utterly by General Sherman's march, and existed thus only for those few years of tumult. But out of the shadow of war came regrowth and a time for Zeta Psi to expand once more.
1864 to 1914: Breaking new ground[]
The nation was still young indeed even after the end of the Civil War: California had only recently become a State, committing to the side of the victorious Union and contributing its men though the conflict took place mainly across the continent, thousands of miles away. It was then only fitting that to California the Fraternities should next have moved. And as in many initiatives, Zeta Psi was first: in 1870 it established the Iota chapter at the University of California, Berkeley and became the first Fraternity on the West Coast (Though the Iota chapter would not be joined until 1892 by the next addition, the Mu chapter at Stanford University).[7]
Nor was Zeta Psi content even to remain a national Fraternity, but also pressed northward into Canada. The brothers of the Xi chapter at the University of Michigan in 1879 constituted the Theta Xi chapter at the University of Toronto, to make Zeta Psi the first international Fraternity. Since then, Zeta Psi has actively bolstered its Canadian presence, commissioning a director solely for Canadian chapter development and amassing a long list of successful chapters there.
The end of the nineteenth century was fecund ground for Zeta Psi. It took root at no fewer than fourteen colleges in those latter days: Omega was founded at University of Chicago in 1864; Pi at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1865; Lambda, Bowdoin College, 1867; Beta, University of Virginia, 1868; Psi, Cornell University, 1868; Iota, UC Berkeley, 1870; Gamma, first at the US Naval Academy in 1874, and then at Syracuse College in 1875 after the government proscribed Fraternities at its military academies; Theta Xi, University of Toronto, 1879; Alpha, Columbia University, 1879; Alpha Psi, McGill University, 1883; Nu, Case Western Reserve, 1884; Eta, Yale, 1889; Mu, Stanford, 1892; Alpha Beta, University of Minnesota, 1899 (The establishment of the Eta chapter at Yale made Zeta Psi the only fraternity to establish chapters at all eight Ivy-League schools).[7]
Even as the physical reach of Zeta Psi made great bounds, so too did the principles underlying its brotherhood. By the turn of the century, the need for some more centralized structure pressed as chapter after chapter was added to the Circle and their correspondence became too much to handle so chaotically. In 1909, an international publication concerning the affairs of Zetes was first published by Brother William Comstock (Ξ '99) and distributed among the several chapters: The Circle of Zeta Psi. The periodical, which is still published to this day, contained in that first issue the exhortation which has come to be known as ”The Vision of Bill Comstock” for its prescience and wisdom:
- We feel that the Fraternity, now that its individual chapters and memberships have grown so strong, is wasting its greatest possibility of strength and growth through the lack of a systematic central organization.
In short, Brother Comstock criticized the degree of individualism among the chapters of Zeta Psi, demanding unity among such disparate brothers. He prescribed that every member should receive the fledgling Circle of Zeta Psi, and thus be apprised of the far-flung doings of the fraternity; that a general secretary be commissioned to travel among the chapters and treat with them; and that a foundation be established for the pecuniary support of the general Fraternity. And all three of his mandates have been amply fulfilled: The Circle is still published and distributed to the brothers of Zeta Psi (and can be read online here); now the General Secretary is assisted in his rounds by chapter consultants, whose function remains the same; and the Zeta Psi Educational Foundation was to be instituted within Brother Comstock's lifetime, though still in the future. Before Zeta Psi could turn to such collegiate concerns, war again threatened, this time abroad.
1914 to 1920: The First World War[]
Though already inured to the horrors and trial that War would wreak upon her from the bloody Civil War, war in Europe came suddenly in the 1910s and caught a nation and Fraternity unawares. For some time, the United States did not commit troops to the battle, maintaining an isolationist stance protected. But Canada was a Dominion within Britain's Commonwealth, and when Great Britain entered the war, Canada willingly answered the call.
With the first Canadian chapter only founded at Toronto in 1879, her sister chapters were still young when war came to them. Particularly stricken were the Alpha Psi and Theta Xi chapters at McGill and U Toronto. Even in 1914, they were already sending letters indicating their brothers heading east across the sea to the war. In 1915, more than half the workers at the McGill Base Hospital were Zetes from Alpha Psi. By war's end, the two beleaguered chapters had sent two hundred of the brothers in defense of King and Country, 31 did not return and many others came home wounded in body and spirit.
Perhaps most noted among the rolls of the brave Canadian brethren who went overseas is Lt. Col. Brother Dr. John McCrae (Θ Ξ '94), a serviceman in the Canadian army, who like so many other men did not return at the close of conflict. But Brother McCrae bequeathed to his fraternity more than even his worthy life, but also a poem which has been preserved in great honor as both a historical and literary work: “In Flanders Fields.” The words are a testament to the heroic spirit in man and are treasured still by the brethren of Zeta Psi as the hallowed words of a brother whose time long ago passed. The 19 year old engineering student from McGill, brother Frederick Fisher was the first Canadian to win the Victoria Cross in the war, the highest British award for valour, for his determined stand at the Second Battle of Ypres. Like so many who win this medal, the award was posthumous.
Finally in 1917, America entered the war, and with their country, so too did the many Zetes who called that land their home. At the annual convention of Zeta Psi, the brothers adopted a resolution in support of the war—which the United States Congress had itself only declared a few weeks previously—:
- WHEREAS, The United States of America has been forced into the World War in defense of its national honor and for the protection of international justice and democracy;
- BE IT RESOLVED, That the Zeta Psi Fraternity of North America, at the Seventieth Annual Convention assembled at Raleigh, North Carolina, hereby pledges to the President and Congress of the United States of America its unqualified support of whatever war measures the Government may deem necessary and expedient, and places at the disposal of the Government its national organization, its Chapters, and its individual members, for service in whatever capacities the government may direct.
Nor was the pledge mere idle words nor fatuous boasting. Over one quarter of all brethren of Zeta Psi would serve during the First World War in foreign lands, and many did not return. Zeta Psi also provided the nation its first Assistant Secretary of War, Brother Benedict Crowell (Η '91),[8] noted for his bold reorganization of civilian military control during World War I. Even after the war, Crowell remained politically powerful, and was later instrumental in engineering the repeal of National Prohibition.
Virginia Glee Club members[]
- Main article: Category:Zeta Psi members
Notes[]
- ↑ The Cyclopedia of Fraternities. New York, NY, USA: Hamilton Printing and Publishing Company. 1899. pp. 357.
- ↑ Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities. New York, NY, USA: James T. Brown. 1920. pp. 397–403.
- ↑ Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities. New York, NY, USA: James T. Brown. 1920. pp. 400.
- ↑ Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities. New York, NY, USA: James T. Brown. 1920. pp. 398.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities. New York, NY, USA: James T. Brown. 1920. pp. 397.
- ↑ Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities. New York, NY, USA: James T. Brown. 1920. pp. 397–399.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities. New York, NY, USA: James T. Brown. 1920. pp. 398–400.
- ↑ http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/benedict-crowell.htm Benedict Crowell graduated from Yale (Eta) in 1891 not Case Western Reserve (Nu) in 1892 according to the Arlington National Cemetery website.
External links[]
- Official website
- Zeta Psi Washington, DC Elders Association's official site
- Zeta Psi members in politics
- Minnesota Association of Zeta Psi
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