A national campaign to combat discrimination in fraternity membership was launched tonight by a group of college educators and community leaders, who organized the National Committee on Fraternities in Education at a dinner in the Yale Club. Prof. Alfred McClung Lee, chairman of the Department of Sociology at Brooklyn College, was elected president of the new group.
“We believe that discrimination in fraternity memberships can and should be overcome, so that campus groups may perform their rightful role as valuable adjuncts to college education, ” the new group’s board of directors declared in a joint statement announcing the Committee’s formation. The board also adopted a five-point program as a basis for the organization’s work, which calls for:
1. Keeping informed of developments in fraternity and sorority policies and programs.
2. Undertaking appropriate research and study, including further examination of the damage to educational objectives and personality development already indicated by preliminary evidence.
3. Making information and consultation services available to fraternities, sororities, colleges, student organizations, and the general public.
4. Stimulating conferences among alumni, undergraduate fraternity leaders, and college administrators and trustees to promote understanding of the problem and corrective action, campus by campus.
5. Encouraging colleges, national organizations and alumni to recognize the importance of permitting young people to select their own companions, free from outside pressures.
Officers chosen by the board of directors included Prof. Noel P. Gist, chairman of the Department of Sociology of the University of Missouri. Prof. Erling Hunt of Teachers College, Columbia University. Dr. Robert C. Weaver, executive director, John Hay Whitney Foundation, and Prof. Alfred S. Romer, curator of Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, all vice-presidents; Dr. Edwin H. Wilson, executive director of the American Humanist Association, secretary; and Dr. Samuel Atkin of New York, treasurer.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
