Frats Faded After World War

Any Crimson Key guide will tell you that all the Harvard casualties of World War I-even those who fought for the Axis powers-are commemorated in Memorial Church.

But that isn't quite right.

Mem Church, in fact, doesn't commemorate a now-forgotten casualty of what President Woodrow Wilson called the War to End All Wars: Harvard's fraternities.

The membership of Harvard's frats declined because of the instability caused by the war. Most never recovered.

Take, for example, one casualty of World War I: Theta Delta Chi.

The local chapter of that national fraternity was officially founded in 1857. But even in October 1856, plans for a new frat were already underway.

William C. Gannett, Class of 1860, received a letter that month from one of the organizers which revealed that a "secret society" was already in the works.

The letter instructs Gannett, who had expressed interest in joining, to meet in front of the church on the corner of Mt. Auburn and Holyoke.

Lest poor Gannett not take the letter seriously, it is signed pointedly: "Believe me, my dear Gannett, your friend and wellwisher."

The early years of the frat were not easy. Just as Theta Delta Chi became reality in 1857, the faculty abolished fraternities at Harvard because they were considered a nuisance.

Forced again into secrecy, Theta Delta Chi survived until professors lifted the ban in the last year of the Civil War. In reversing themselves, faculty members at the time noted that the ban had done little to eliminate frats.

By 1900, Theta Delta Chi had grown enough to move out of its rooms on Broadway St. The frat built a new clubhouse at 54 Dunster St, which today houses the Office of Career Services.

The fraternity prospered until 1916 when it abandoned the strict requirements of being a national chapter to become an independent club, the Iota.

The club fell apart after the war began and never returned.

"Harvard has no place for national fraternities and I am sure that those which have become extinct have never been missed by the college," Theta Delta Chi brother Paul M. Rice '15 wrote years later.

The only record of the club that survives in Harvard's archives is a note by Wolcott Fuller '21.

"Although I and a few others in my class were taken into this club when we were in college, nothing ever happened as there was no clubhouse," Fuller wrote. "And apparently the club faded out while I was in college."