From an Owl: Controlling Friendship and Free Speech

Controlling Friendship and Free Speech

By:

Mark D. Bauer, Omega ‘84 (Chicago)

Executive Council Life Member

Professor of Law, Stetson University “I am incredulous.” That was the first sentence of the letter written by the late Henry Poor, Gamma ‘39 (Amherst) to the Amherst College Board of Trustees in late February of 1984. In a callous grab for real estate and power, Amherst “discontinued” its fraternity system at the end of that school year, without ever understanding what a fraternity was.

That’s right. Amherst College, justly recognized for being one of America’s great institutions of higher learning, never really gave much thought to what it was eliminating. And that’s why it didn’t work the first time.

Henry was a loyal Amherst alumnus. He spent his entire life in education, serving as headmaster of Deerfield, and in his later years, as executive director of Psi Upsilon. Every moment was a teaching moment for Henry, which made him the ideal bridge for Psi Upsilon, from an era of privilege to a culture emphasizing inclusiveness. Henry believed that the missions of Amherst and Psi Upsilon were complementary. Outside the classroom, the Fraternity would teach and model leadership, chivalry, service, and philanthropy.

Psi Upsilon and the other fraternities served Amherst well. When Amherst had no money or interest to build dormitories for students, the fraternities stepped in and their alumni built some of the most breathtaking collegiate residence halls North America has ever known. But they hemmed in Amherst’s growth over the following decades. Rich though Amherst was, the college did not have the money to buy out or otherwise replace the fraternity houses, owned by private fraternity alumni corporations.

In the 1960s, when Amherst asked the fraternities to sell these magnificent buildings to the college for $1, Henry was uneasy. Amherst explained that the College would deal with property taxes and other mundane administrative issues, but that the fraternities would be free to continue forever in the houses their alumni had built. Henry was uncomfortable with that decision, but he was an Amherst man first, college right or wrong. Henry’s greatest misgiving was that these deals were sealed by a handshake, but after all, Henry said, “an Amherst man does not go back on his word.” By the early 1970s equal rights for women became enshrined in law and, increasingly, in culture. Almost every college in the United States began to admit women, including Amherst. Psi Upsilon found itself in a unique position because the founders of our fraternity never mentioned gender in our Constitution, and we have never sought to supplant their wisdom. In a few chapters of Psi Upsilon, the undergraduates decided the highest moral, intellectual, and social excellence required initiating women as brothers. In fact, it was the women at the first coed chapter who honored Psi Upsilon’s heritage as a customarily all-male fraternity by insisting that all members be called brothers regardless of gender. When the Gamma chapter undergraduates voted to admit women equally to men, no one was prouder than Henry.

But few institutions, including Amherst College itself, were as forward thinking. Foreshadowing its botched management of fraternities, and in wild juxtaposition to the reasoned analysis and research being conducted elsewhere on campus, formerly all-male colleges like Amherst, Williams, Colby, and Bowdoin thought admitting women was as simple as adding a gender box on the application and converting a few bathrooms. With unequal housing, athletics, and social opportunities for women, these colleges created a gender schism that still dominates conversation on these campuses decades after women first arrived.

Rather than recognize the true villain, campus debate revolved over the unequal housing and social facilities available to non-fraternity members. Since Amherst owned all the houses and didn’t think much of student self-governance, the College first ordered the remaining fraternities to admit women, and then ordered the fraternity system as a whole to find a place for every student seeking membership.