The Eclectic Society of Phi Nu Theta (ΦΝΘ) began in 1838 as a college fraternity at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, making it one of the oldest fraternities in the United States. In 1970 the alumni and active members split. The building was sold to the university and the Eclectic organization continued in the form of a co-ed cooperative living space, sharing the building with Wesleyan's dance organization, Movement House. The succeeding co-op dropped the use of Greek letters.
History
The Eclectic society of Phi Nu Theta was founded by:
The five founders met by appointment on September 13, 1838 to elect and initiate themselves. (Chandler Robbins was also elected that night but was initiated a week later.) The early Wesleyan societies adopted English, rather than Greek names. Eclectic quickly adopted a motto, the Greek initials of which are Phi Nu Theta, and the society operated under both names.
The society has always claimed an 1837 foundation for itself, for reasons understood by the members, although no advocate of the society has refuted the accepted date of the founding meeting, which is held to have taken place in late 1838. Eclectic was Wesleyan's second fraternity, after the Mystical 7.
In the 1850s, a Beta chapter existed for ten years at Ohio Wesleyan University and a Gamma chapter enjoyed a month's existence at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, but both succumbed to the perturbations accompanying the Civil War or to anti-fraternity sentiment among faculty members. There were long discussions about a chapter at Genesee College which proved unfruitful. Thereafter, the only chapter was the Alpha chapter at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.
As other Greek-letter societies came to Wesleyan, Eclectic did adopt a Greek motto, and has since been known as either Nu Theta or Eclectic (with one or the other dominating different eras).
The society might not have survived the stresses of the Civil War without the tireless dedication of William North Rice, 1865, who was a professor at the university for 51 years and also from time to time acting president of the university. He was universally regarded as the guiding spirit of the society through the 1920s.
In 1863, the Eclectic society's meeting place was said to have been vandalized and robbed by rival fraternity Chi Psi, which was shut down the same year.[1]
From about 1856 to 1865 the Eclectic Society were partners in the Alpha Eating Club with the Mystical 7.[2] After 1865, Eclectics controlled the club exclusively, and the Alpha Eating Club survived until 1975.
The alumni organization of Eclectic was incorporated by the Connecticut legislature as the Socratic Literary Society in 1870.
The first permanent home for the society was constructed in 1882 on a site behind the Allbriton Center where Cross Street runs. It had no residential accommodations for undergraduates, and was used for meetings, dining facilities, and society offices. The society in 1906 hired Henry Bacon, formerly of the architectural firm McKim, Mead and White to design a Doric Greek revival structure at 200 High Street. The new house was an exemplary design for group living. Many people view the Eclectic house as a design precursor to Bacon's later Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. (They are both designed in a strong Doric style, but lack the typical pediment.) The Alpha Eating Club was housed in the lower stories of the southern wing of the house. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2013.
The Eclectic Society building, 200 High Street, Middletown, Connecticut, built 1908. (2012 photo)
In 1912, at the seventy-fifth reunion of the society, Stephen Henry Olin reported in an address to the society that after a detailed analysis of the academic standing of each college fraternity chapter at every major university in America back to the 1820s, Phi Nu Theta then had the highest academic ranking of any chapter of any fraternity in the country.
Many buildings on Wesleyan University's campus are named after prominent Eclectic members, such as Crowell Concert Hall, Olin Memorial Library (Stephen Henry Olin, '65 and his father), Hall and Atwater Labs, the Zilkha Gallery (Ezra Khedouri Zilka, '46 and his wife), and the Van Vleck Observatory, (Astronomy Professor John Monroe Van Vleck).
A history of the society was published in 2007 by the Wesleyan University Press, called A History of The Eclectic Society of Phi Nu Theta, 1837–1970.[3] The author, William B.B. Moody, is a member and an alumnus of the class of 1959.
One society or two?
In 1970, the undergraduates broke ranks with their alumni, the primary issue then concerning recreational drug use. There is a serious and ongoing question as to whether the succeeding organization was a continuation of the old or not. See 1991 Argus letters[permanent dead link] After a wrenching crisis at the annual meeting of alumni in 1970, the alumni severed ties with the undergraduate institution and dissolved the Socratic Literary Society alumni organization. At the same time, the undergraduates abandoned both the initiation ceremony and the constitution, women were elected to membership, and the name "Phi Nu Theta" was disavowed as too much like a Greek-letter fraternity. The alumni closed the Alpha Dining Club, the permanent staff (housekeeper and chef) was dismissed, and the house was sold to the university. For some, the new organization was entirely different, and any connection to the older organization was utterly severed; to others, the new organization continued the principles and community position of the old. In recent years, the students living in Eclectic attempted to rebuild connections to the older alumni with events during Homecoming and Family Weekend and Commencement & Reunion Weekend.
Because of the prestige of the older organization, the prominent position played by the succeeding organization in student life, and other factors, the Wesleyan University administration has never pushed the issue of whether the old Eclectic and the new Eclectic were two organizations or one, and for 50 years the relationship has remained ambiguous.
Eclectic Society since 1970
The existing society has operated without a constitution for extended periods, and adopted a Quaker -style consensus decision-making system. The consensus system was formalized under a set of by-laws authored by member Paul Menair in the mid-1980s.
The script for the film PCU was written by Wesleyan students Adam Leff and Zak Penn (not members but regulars at the house), and was derived from life and characters in that house at the time. The early scenes at the house in PCU refer to the older, formerly prestigious organization.
On January 19, 2010, Eric Conger's play The Eclectic Society premiered at the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia. The play centers on a fraternity at an unnamed New England college in the early 1960s, as they collide with race, class, and gender issues, while a new world prepares to unfold under the JFK administration.
