True Gentlemen

by John Hechinger

  “All the apologies in the world”: Robert Wilonsky, “Highland Park’s Levi Pettit Apologizes for Role in Racist SAE Video, Says It Was ‘Disgusting,’” Dallas Morning News, March 24, 2015, at www.dallasnews.com/news/news/2015/03/24/levi-pettit-the-highland-park-hs-grad-seen-on-racist-sae-video-to-publicly-apologize-wednesday.

  “I admit it likely was fueled by alcohol”: Bill Chappell, “Two Oklahoma Students Seen in Racist Fraternity Video Apologize,” NPR, March 11, 2015, at www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/03/11/392279208/apologies-emerge-from-two-oklahoma-students-in-racist-sae-video.

  “It’s sad that it’s 2015 and stuff like this”: Sterling Shepard on Twitter, at http://twitter.com/sterl_shep3/status/574734237733023744.

  “shaking our hand, giving us hugs”: Maxwell Strachan, “Oklahoma Linebacker Eric Striker Shares ‘His Thoughts on Fraternity’s Racist Chant,’” Huffington Post, March 12, 2015, at www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/10/eric-striker-oklahoma-football-racism_n_6838804.html.

  University of Oklahoma’s Student Affairs Office surveyed: March 2017 interview with Clark Stroud, dean of students. At traditionally white fraternities, 2.56 percent of members were African American; 10.14 percent, American Indian; 4.42 percent, Asian American; and 7.78 percent, Latino. An additional fraternity with only four students had no black members.

  “hedonistic fantasy”: Will James blog post, “There Will Never Be Another Black S-A-E,” at http://betweenthenotes.me/2015/03/09/there-will-never-be-another-black-s-a-e.

  “I wouldn’t even hesitate for a split second”: CNN video, March 11, 2015, at www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2015/03/11/cnn-tonight-jonathan-davis-ou-sooners-racist-song-sae-fraternitywilliam-bruce-james.cnn.

  More than a dozen universities: Rachel L. Swarns, “Georgetown University Plans Steps to Atone for Slave Past,” New York Times, September 1, 2016.

  Chapter 6: Discriminating Gentlemen

  I based the account of the 1951 Sigma Alpha Epsilon convention in Chicago on a transcript in the library of Sigma Alpha Epsilon’s headquarters in the Levere Memorial Temple, Evanston, Illinois: “Ninety-Fifth Anniversary National Convention, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Supplementary Proceedings,” Chicago, Illinois, September 2–5, 1951.

  swayed to the Latin rhythms: Don Gable, “Ninety-Fifth Anniversary Convention: Chicago Makes Historical Strides,” SAE Record, November 1951, p. 118.

  “SAE’s governing laws”: At the library, I reviewed copies of SAE laws dating back to the 1900s.

  lead financier of the fraternity’s headquarters: Joseph W. Walt, The Era of Levere: A History of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity, 1910–1930 (Evanston, IL: Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity, 1972), p. 561.

  research on the Tuskegee syphilis experiment: Donald H. Rockwell, Annie Roof Yobs, and M. Brittain Moore Jr., “The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis, the Thirtieth Year of Observation,” Archives of Internal Medicine 114 (6) (1964): 792–798.

  “Who made it a bad word”: Interfraternity Conference Minutes, National Interfraternity Conference, 1947, University of Michigan, digitized October 12, 2007, p. 124.

  “The world was different then”: March 2017 telephone interview with G. Holmes Braddock. I also spoke with Samuel G. DeSimone, the Pennsylvania judge who was on the panel proposing the law change. “I don’t remember any of that,” he told me. The other members at the convention have since died.

  a descendant of French Protestants: William C. Levere, “The Life of DeVotie,” SAE Record 26 (3) (September 1906): 247–251.

  Staunch believers in slavery: Ibid.

  “To the young white men of the South”: William C. Levere, The History of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity, vol. 1 (Chicago: R. R. Donnelley and Sons, 1911), p. 108.

  “the best colleges and universities”: Ibid., vol. 2, p. 197.

  outsiders began to form their own organizations: Craig LaRon Torbenson and Gregory Parks, eds., Brothers and Sisters: Diversity in College Fraternities and Sororities (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2009), p. 39.

  wrote a novel set at his alma mater: William Collin Levere, Twixt Greek and Barb: A Story of University Life (Evanston, IL: William S. Lord, 1900), pp. 97–112.

  Yale, and Princeton changed their admissions requirements: Jerome Karabel, The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale and Princeton (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006), pp. 115, 133, 367.

  “alien and unwashed element”: Ibid., p. 112.

  Princeton admitted its first African American: Ibid., p. 379.

  a 1936 Ohio State University catalog: Ohio State University Archives.

  doubling of college enrollment: Roger L. Geiger, ed., The History of Higher Education Annual 2002 (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2002), p. 95.

  incorporated racially tinged themes: Anthony James, “College Social Fraternities, Manhood, and the Defense of Southern Traditionalism, 1945–1960,” in White Masculinity in the Recent South, ed. Trent Watts (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009).

  performed in blackface: Charles Tucker, ed., The History of Oklahoma Kappa of Sigma Alpha Epsilon (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1959), p. 263: Carroll L. Lurding Library of College Fraternity and Sorority Materials, 1834–2014, Lilly Library Manuscript Collections, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, box 17.

  a 1949–1950 SAE scrapbook: University of Oklahoma, Western History Collection.

  Amherst College in Massachusetts decided: Nicholas L. Syrett, The Company He Keeps: A History of White College Fraternities (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), pp. 248–250.

  “He was the first black man”: Daniel Sheehan, The People’s Advocate: The Life and Legal History of America’s Most Fearless Public Interest Lawyer (Berkeley: Counterpoint Press, 2013), chap. 5.

  Sigma Alpha Epsilon held its June 1969 convention: SAE Record (February 1969): 5, Levere Library.

  Steve Walker, a consultant to the national SAE office: Transcript, 1969 convention, Levere Library.

  One piece of news would have especially interested alumni: Thomas M. Rigdon, letter to Eminent Supreme Recorder, April 23, 1970, Levere Library.

  a collection of oral histories: Clarence G. Williams, ed., Technology and the Dream: Reflections on the Black Experience at MIT, 1941–1999 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003), p. 377.

  became an emergency-room physician: Tasneem Nashrulla, BuzzFeed News. The article, which alerted me to his account and Sheehan’s, included an interview with Salih.

  Chapter 7: Old Row

  I reported at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa from October 20 to October 23, 2015, visiting the SAE chapter, interviewing students, and researching SAE’s early history at the University of Alabama’s W. S. Hoole Special Collections Library.

  onetime “segregation academy”: Gavin Wright, Sharing the Prize: The Economics of the Civil Rights Revolution in the American South (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013), p. 168. John McWilliams, associate head of the school at Montgomery Academy, told me the school enrolled its first black student in 1972 and African Americans make up 7 percent of the student body. “One of our core values is we believe in sustaining a diverse school and community,” he said.

  Goodwyn escorted his girlfriend: “Southern Debutante Cotillion Holds Its Annual Ball,” Montgomery Advertiser, July 26, 2014.

  A former Alpha Omicron Pi sister: Interview with Yardena Wolf, who was a member of the sorority.

  fees can be competitive: For on-campus room-and-board fees, see www.ua.edu/about/quickfacts. For average fees for members of the Interfraternity Council, see http://alabamaifc.com/financial-information.html. It’s hard to make an exact comparison because fraternities also charge initiation fees.

  the “Machine”: The machine has long been an open secret at the University of Alabama. The Crimson White, the student newspaper, has done impressive reporting on its workings. See also Philip Weiss, “The Most Powerful Fraternity in America,” Esquire, April 1992, pp. 102–106. A website,
called WelcomeToTheMachine, keeps an archive on decades of reporting, at www.welcometothemachine.info/index.php.

  known on campus for his seersucker suits: “Getting to Know the Man Behind the Bowtie: SGA President, Hamilton Bloom,” Odyssey, April 20, 2014, at www.theodysseyonline.com/gettingto-know-the-man-behind-the-bowtie-sga-president-hamilton-bloom.

  An Alabama political science professor: Interview with Norman Baldwin, professor at the University of Alabama.

  For a study published in 2012: Rashawn Ray and Jason A. Rosow, “The Two Different Worlds of Black and White Fraternity Men,” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 41 (2012): 66–94. As is the practice in sociology studies, the authors decline to disclose the identity of the university, but it is clearly Indiana University based on their description, the institutions involved in funding, their location as scholars at the time, and a subject quoted who gives the street name of one row of fraternities.

  a rare glimpse of Greek demography: Under a public-records request, the university provided only a chart, so I could make only broad estimates. Two small fraternities, including a new Lutheran sorority, had no minority members, and a large Jewish fraternity appeared to have less than 1 percent minority membership.

  “elitist social hierarchy”: “Vision for the Ideal Fraternity and Sorority Community,” Indiana University, September 2016, at http://studentaffairs.indiana.edu/doc/sll/greek-vision/vifsc-strategic-plan-final-for-provost.pdf.

  “admirably suited to give large houses”: “The Indiana Plan of Assistance to Fraternal Organizations at Indiana University,” March 1962, Fraternity House Plans Committee, University Archives, Indiana University Libraries.

  45 percent of those elected: Kallen Dimitroff, “Greek Students Are Overrepresented in UT’s Student Government,” Daily Texan, September 23, 2013.

  “a dynasty out of a democracy”: Suchi Sundaram, “This Year, Make Student Government Representative of All UT Students, Not Just the Greek Community,” Daily Texan, February 11, 2014.

  “People like people who are like themselves”: Max Abelson and Zeke Faux, “Secret Handshakes Greet Frat Brothers on Wall Street,” Bloomberg News, December 23, 2013, at www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-12-23/secret-handshakes-greet-frat-brothers-on-wall-street.

  more likely to get higher-paying jobs: David Marmaros and Bruce Sacerdote, “Peer and Social Networks in Job Search,” European Economic Review 46 (May 2002): 870–879.

  received an e-mail: Abelson and Faux, “Secret Handshakes.”

  12 percent of undergraduates: This figure and others in the paragraph are from the University of Alabama website, at www.ua.edu.

  have spent more than $200 million: Jay Reeves, “’Bama Greeks in $202M Building Boom,” Associated Press, November 9, 2013.

  “apologists for apartheid”: Ben Gose, “U. of Alabama Studies Why Its Fraternities and Sororities Remain Segregated by Race,” Chronicle of Higher Education, December 5, 1997.

  “It is appropriate”: Stephen Nathaniel Dethrage, “Witt Defends Traditional Greek System,” Crimson White, September 15, 2011.

  The Crimson White ran a story: For the recounting of these events I relied on the student newspaper’s extensive reporting.

  internal university documents: I am including only members of the Interfraternity Council, which represents historically white fraternities.

  “Even in the age of Obama”: Lawrence Ross, Blackballed: The Black and White Politics of Race on America’s Campuses (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015), p. 13.

  “never gave up his quest to ‘keep ’Bama White’”: E. Culpepper Clark, The Schoolhouse Door: Segregation’s Last Stand at the University of Alabama (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 140.

  men in white sheets: Chuck Whiting, “Crosses Burned After Election,” Crimson White, February 10, 1976.

  Chapter 8: The Phoenix

  I attended SAE’s biennial convention, held in Newport Beach, California, from June 18 to June 20, 2015. I based this account on observation and interviews, as well as a review of a transcript.

  he once suggested: Cohen told undergraduates at a seminar held in his cabin aboard the leadership cruise in August 2015.

  He once brandished: Cohen made these comments at a regional leadership conference held at the University of La Verne in California in March 2014. It was his first public appearance after announcing the fraternity ban.

  Its claims plunged 90 percent: Phi Delta Theta statistics.

  “If your founders were in this room”: Transcript of SAE’s 2013 convention at the Hotel InterContinental in Chicago, Levere Library.

  He was sixteen and a high school junior: Part of this chapter is based on material that originally appeared in an earlier article: John Hechinger and David Glovin, “Fraternity Chief Feared for Son as Hazings Spurred JPMorgan Snub,” Bloomberg News, March 27, 2014, at www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-03-27/fraternity-chief-feared-for-son-as-hazings-spurred-jpmorgan-snub.

  “the deadliest fraternity”: John Hechinger and David Glovin, “Deadliest Frat’s Icy ‘Torture’ of Pledges Evokes Tarantino Films,” Bloomberg News, December 30, 2013.

  A drunk SAE member… a drunk freshman: David Glovin and John Hechinger, “Fatalities in Michigan Spotlight Deadliest Fraternities,” Bloomberg News, January 31, 2014. See also Laurence Hammack, “Drunken Driver in Crash That Killed W&L Classmate to Serve Three Years,” Roanoke Times, January 15, 2015.

  Scarborough had nominated: Transcript of the 2009 SAE convention at the New Orleans Marriott, Levere Library.

  Chapter 9: The Lions

  For this chapter, I traveled twice to Ohio State University in Columbus. I interviewed SAE members and attended the Monday night chapter meeting on November 2, 2015. I also watched the dedication of the lions on April 30, 2016.

  On the day of its installation: William C. Levere, The History of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity, vol. 2 (Chicago: R. R. Donnelley and Sons, 1911), pp. 159–162.

  best known for throwing beer bottles: Ohio State University press release, November 2001, University Archives, Ohio State University.

  called its behavior “inexcusable”: Nick Proctor, SAE adviser, letter to Bill Hall, interim vice president of student affairs, January 9, 2001, University Archives.

  “Do not be an idiot”: Bowen speech at dedication ceremony for the lions.

  a member told Moore in a text: Moore shared with me the written results of his internal investigation, which are the basis of this account. The accused student did not return messages.

  One student had suffered: Early one morning on the leadership cruise in August 2015, members, requesting anonymity, shared these stories with me.

  the event raised a record $175,000: See www.pghdonutdash.org.

  His SAE brothers helped him raise money: Alexi Sciutto related this story to me during the March 2014 leadership conference at the University of La Verne in California.

  In the 1870s, chapters at the University of Vermont and Wesleyan: “A Brief History of Phi Beta Kappa,” at www.pbk.org/imis15/PBK_Member/About_PBK/PBK_History/PBK_Member/PBK_History.aspx?hkey=44391228-bb7c-4705-bd2e-c785f3c1d876.

  “Why discriminate because of sex?”: “Leadership, Friendship, Service: Pledge Manual 2015–2016,” Alpha Phi Omega, p. 14.

  Phi Tau broke away from Phi Sigma Kappa: Samantha Stern, “Greek Houses Adjust to New Concepts of Gender,” Dartmouth, May 19, 2016.

  Zeta Psi withdrew: Julie Fei-Fan Balzer, “A Woman of Honor,” Brown Alumni Magazine (May/June 1998). See also “Zeta Delta Psi: Our History” at www.zete.org/home.

  earliest and highest-profile campaigns: For the history of Williams and its impact on other New England colleges, I relied on a comprehensive account by former Williams president John W. Chandler, The Rise and Fall of Fraternities at Williams College: Clashing Cultures and the Transformation of a Liberal Arts College (Williams College Museum of Art, 2014).

  “satisfied” or “very satisfied”: Joshua Miller, “A Decade After Frats, College
Houses Evolve,” Bowdoin Orient, October 12, 2007, at http://bowdoinorient.com/bonus/article/2869.

  a lawyer and campus free-speech advocate: Greg Lukianoff, Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate (New York: Encounter Books, 2012), p. 19.

  one president, Robert Carothers, decided: Carothers’s efforts are chronicled in Henry Wechsler and Bernice Wuethrich, Dying to Drink: Confronting Binge Drinking on College Campuses (New York: Rodale: 2002), pp. 228–231.

  A 2009 study: Mark D. Wood et al., “Common Ground: An Investigation of Environmental Management Alcohol Prevention Initiatives in a College Community, Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs 16 (July 2009): 96–105.

  “If in the next three to five years”: Matt Rocheleau, “Dartmouth Bans Hard Alcohol, Forbids Greek Life Pledging,” Boston Globe, January 29, 2015.

  a group of more than one hundred college presidents: John Hechinger, “Bid to Reconsider Drinking Age Taps Unlikely Supporters,” Wall Street Journal, August 21, 2008.

  alcohol consumption has declined: Anne T. McCartt, Laurie A. Hellinga, and Bevan B. Kirley, “The Effects of Minimum Legal Drinking Age Twenty-One Laws on Alcohol-Related Driving in the United States,” Journal of Safety Research 41 (April 2010): 173–181.

  fallen by half… saved more than 26,000 lives: “Benefits of Higher Drinking Age Are Crystal Clear in Study After Study,” Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, Highway Loss Data Institute, December 27, 2008.

  drink more than their peers who aren’t enrolled: “High-Risk Drinking in College: What We Know and What We Need to Learn: Final Report,” Task Force of the National Advisory Council on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institutes of Health, at www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov/media/finalpanel1.pdf.

  Conclusion

  and look to abolish them: “Dean Wormer’s Favorite Editorial,” Bloomberg View, January 7, 2014, at www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-01-07/dean-wormer-s-favorite-editorial.

  consider a proposal: 161st Anniversary Convention, July 6–8, 2017, Boston, “Report to the Fraternity Convention, Permanent Committee on Fraternity Law,” Proposal 13, at http://data.sae.net/docs/LawProposals.pdf.