Eric Yuhas ’88, former president of the University’s chapter of Alpha Delta Phi (Alpha Delt), did not graduate from or attend Wesleyan. A student at the University of Connecticut, Yuhas’s Wesleyan girlfriend was a member of Alpha Delt, allowing him to join the University’s chapter and later become its president.
“[My] initiation into Alpha Delt illustrated one of its enduring quirks: its willingness to include people, at the rate of one-to-three at any given time, who are not, in fact, Wesleyan students,” Yuhas said.
While Alpha Delt may currently be known for its adventurous food at Star and Crescent, as well as its regular Porn and Milkshakes event, in the late 1940s and 1950s the organization was a fraternity with a storied, tumultuous history.
In 1856, twenty-four years after Samuel Eells first established Alpha Delt at Hamilton College, the Wesleyan chapter was founded in hopes of creating a new, higher society organization with a literary and intellectual focus. The fraternity thrived, producing alumni whose names now dot the campus: John E. Andrus, class of 1862, and George W. Davison, class of 1892.
In the 1970s, however, fraternities began to fall out of favor at Wesleyan.
“The notion of a secretive group of men meeting together didn’t fit with the views and attitudes spreading across college campuses,” explains the Alpha Delt website.
In a bid to reinvent themselves, several Alpha Delt chapters across the country, including Wesleyan’s, became co-educational.
Female members, however, were only allowed to be “associate members.” Former Alpha Delt member Donald Spencer ’77 explained that this meant women could participate in some activities but were forbidden to hold office or partake in fraternity rituals.
“The second-class-citizen status of Alpha Delt’s female members did not go over well at the co-ed chapters at all, which made the international Alpha Delt conventions hotbeds of conflict,” Spencer said.
Finally, in 1992, the co-ed chapters formally split from the fraternity to form the Alpha Delta Phi Society.
Despite the significant changes in Alpha Delt’s history, the tenor of the house and its activities has remained largely the same in the past 60 years—with some exceptions stemming from major University changes (such as the shift to co-ed acceptance) and general alterations in American politics over the years.
Bill Wasch ’52 explained that, during his time at the University, the fraternities had much more of a presence, both as social and residential places.
“Most social life was centered in the fraternities, to which 90 percent of the school belonged, and there were usually three-to-four house parties to which women from nearby women’s colleges were invited,” Wasch said. “Alpha Delt fit well into Wesleyan overall, except that, because of a large number of veterans, much heavy drinking took place there and [the house] was placed on social probation in my junior year.”
Wasch did note, however, that some aspects of Alpha Delt haven’t changed at all.
“The intellectual life of the house, however, with its late evening discussions on many contemporary issues, has not changed significantly,” he said.
D’or Seifer ’10, current vice president of the group, echoed Wasch’s sentiment.
“I think that Alpha Delt is still a place where, even at parties and on an everyday basis, you can just have a really fun or intellectual conversation,” Seifer said. “You can lay low in places like the grotto, just carrying on a conversation with someone that wouldn’t necessarily come up in other places.”
The house has also maintained the literary focus that is true even to its roots as a fraternity chapter. It contributed to the community in line with what Spencer calls the house’s “literary” mandate, holding speakers, poetry readings and film series.
Wasch explained that, at dinner, the house would have occasional faculty guests and speakers, a tradition that is carried on to this day. Currently, the house continues to hold educational lectures and events about several different areas of knowledge, which are sponsored by the Adelphic Educational Fund.
Bob McKelvey ’59 explained that the house also made invaluable contributions to the University by rescuing the school’s literary magazine when it went under in the 1970s, bringing in the Wesleyan Writers Conference, and hosting such literary luminaries as Saul Bellow and Robert Frost, among many other things.
As seen in Yuhas’s admittance to the group—despite his lack of true affiliation with the University—Alpha Delt has had a long-standing commitment to diversity and acceptance. Even in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Alpha Delt membership was impressively diverse, boasting writers and athletes and students who, in general, came from a range of geographic and economic backgrounds.
Even now, Seifer noted, the house is a warm, friendly and diverse space, and the 40 to 50 Alpha Delt members have over 30 different majors, as well as a wide range of extracurricular interests.
“Whatever your interest is, its okay,” Seifer said. “People are interested in what you’re into, no matter what it is.”
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