Topic summary
College fraternities
Extracted from the Wikipedia article College fraternities and sororities.
Social fraternities
In the 19th century, college fraternities represented the intersection between dining clubs, literary societies, and secret initiatory orders such as Freemasonry. Their early growth was widely opposed by university administrators, though the increasing influence of fraternity alumni, as well as several high-profile court cases, succeeded in largely muting opposition by the 1880s. The first fraternity meeting hall or lodge seems to have been that of the Alpha Epsilon chapter of Chi Psi at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1845, leading to a tradition in that fraternity to name its buildings "lodges". As fraternity membership was punishable by expulsion at many colleges at this time, the house was located deep in the woods.