Alpha Delta Phi Society

Samuel Eells and four others founded the literary society Alpha Delta Phi at Hamilton College in 1832.[5][2] The fraternity quickly expanded to other colleges across the United States and in Canada.[5][2]

In 1968, the California chapter at the University of California, Berkeley began initiating women in violation of the fraternity's constitution.[6] Soon, the Chicago chapter at Northwestern University also started admitting females.[6] At the Alpha Delta Phi national convention in 1972, the California chapter proposed an amendment to the constitution, eliminating the all-male restriction and allowing women to become full members.[6] The debate was contentious, with most chapters opposed to the change. As a result, the proposed amendment was tabled.[6]

Brother Robert Price was tasked with finding a solution to the conflict.[6] More Alpha Delta Phi chapters became coed, including Brunonian chapter at Brown University and the Middletown chapter at Wesleyan University in 1973.[7][8] That same year, Price came up with the Brown Compromise that allowed women to join as "local" members but not as national fraternity initiates.[3]

The Bowdoin chapter at Bowdoin College went coed in 1976, followed by the Columbia chapter at Columbia University and the Amherst chapter at Amherst College.[9][6] However, the California and Chicago chapters returned to male-only status.[6]

In March 1975, the Brunonian chapter elected the first female president in the fraternity's history.[8] This resulted in a great deal of media coverage and hostility from the fraternity and its alumni. Alpha Delta Phi sent a letter stating its plans to suspend the Brunonian chapter at the next national meeting.[8] In 1978, the coed chapters held a Co-Ed Caucus in Middletown to develop strategies.[6] They developed the home rule policy and introduced it at the 1978 national conference.[6] However, the proposed home rule policy was defeated; it would have given each chapter the right to decide whether or not to initiate women fully.[6]

At the 1981 convention, the Trinity Compromise was adopted, allowing those "non-constitutionally qualified for membership" to be inducted as full members of a chapter and participate in the initiation ceremony as long as they did not hold an elected office or vote on new members.[6] Although women could now be full members of individual chapters, they could only be associate members of the national fraternity.[6] The coed chapters immediately began circumventing the resolution, allowing women to serve as officers by creating new offices or submitting male names to the national fraternity. Some chapters submitted female entries to the fraternity's literary contest under male members' names.[7]

In 1985, female members from the Middletown chapter were denied entry to a business session at the national convention.[6] Not only were the women not allowed to stay for the business meeting but there was also pushing and shoving when they tried to participate in ceremonies at the annual banquet.[6] The next year at the annual convention, the Washington chapter and the Berkeley chapter presented a resolution to revoke the charter of any chapter that initiated women after August 1990.[6]

In 1988, half of the Middletown chapter members were female.[7] By the next year, the option of splitting Alpha Delta Phi had supporters. In 1989, the Brunonian chapter passed a resolution to cut ties with the national fraternity if it did not stop its discrimination of women by the fall of 1990.[6] In November, the Stanford University chapter became the first fraternity on its campus to go coed, initiating fifteen women.[10]

At the 1990 national convention, the adoption of the Berkeley-Washington resolution was delayed in favor of a new proposal to create two separate, but connected, organizations.[6] According to this proposal, Alpha Delta Phi would remain an all-male fraternity and the new Alpha Delta Phi Society would consist of the coed chapters and any interested all-male chapters. This proposal convinced the Brunonian chapter to delay its disassociation by another year.[6]

In 1991, the Bowdoin chapter offered its local female members full fraternity status to comply with the college's new equality guidelines.[9] Although the chapter had been coed for fifteen years, its compliance with the college's guidelines put it at odds with the national fraternity that had yet to create an official solution for its coed chapters.[9]

In August 1992 at the fraternity's annual convention in Brainerd, Minnesota, the "Agreement Between the Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity and the Alpha Delta Phi Society" was ratified.[11] Under this agreement, the fraternity and the society separated and became independent, legal entities with their own governing bodies.[4] The two organizations would not share membership, except for male members of the society chapters who joined the fraternity before 1992. The groups would share the license for the Greek letters ΑΔΦ and intellectual property, including history and songs.[6] The agreement also limited where new chapters could be established and the society's use of the name Alpha Delta Phi.[6] As a result, some chapters could not use the society name, instead operating as the Adelphi Society.[3]

With the adoption of the agreement, the Brown, Columbia, Stanford, and Wesleyan chapters withdrew from the fraternity.[6] These four chapters established the Alpha Delta Phi Society that granted each of its chapters home rule to determine its gender makeup.[6] The Bowdoin chapter joined at the society's first convention in 1993.[6] The society adopted a constitution in October 1997 at its annual convention, ratifying it in 1998.[11] Its first affiliate was formed in 1994 at Middlebury College.[6] Between 2008 and 2015, affiliate chapters and chapters opened at Harvard University, the University of New Hampshire, the University of Pennsylvania, Binghamton University, George Washington University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Ursinus College.[1][12][13]

In August 2017 at the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity's annual convention in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the fraternity and the society replaced the 1992 agreement.[3] The new agreement brought greater parity and removed geographic restrictions on the use of the name Alpha Delta Phi Society.[3] The language of the agreement was also simplified.[3]

The Society continues to use the badge and crest of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity.