On Monday, August 29, 1994, the Associated Press ran a story which read in part: "The students meet surreptitiously - at a restaurant off campus, or for a drive in the countryside. The arrangements, says one participant, never are made on a campus phone. They are outlaws. If they are found out, they face suspension." [1] A radical terrorist organization? A neo-Nazi group? The KKK? No! - they’re none of these - they’re college fraternity brothers. The campus? - Middlebury College in Vermont. The fraternity? - Delta Kappa Epsilon (the "Dekes").

Increasingly single sex organizations - specifically, male organizations (female organizations no where encounter the same kind of official resistance); and most especially, organizations which are predominantly white (black and Hispanic organizations are often granted special dispensations) - are being prohibited from college campuses throughout the country. In New England alone, five of the areas most elite private universities have banned fraternities outright; in the case of the Dekes at Middlebury, they are not even allowed to have or use an off-campus house - a policy which in "ordinary times" would no doubt be considered illegal - an unconstitutional restriction on a citizen’s First Amendment rights to freely assemble and associate. [2]

It all began in 1989, when a study of student life at Middlebury - a study dominated by minorities, gay and lesbian activists, and feminists - concluded that the all-male fraternities were incompatible with college life; at the urging of the study committee, college trustees voted to ban the fraternity system - a system which for generations had dominated campus life at Middlebury.

What all this has accomplished, however - both at Middlebury and throughout the country - is to animate an "underground fraternity system," a system which many white, male students find both exciting and titillating. And it’s more than this: in seeking to ban all-white, all-male fraternities (and, in some cases, white sororities) what multiculturalists and feminists have unwittingly done is arose in white males (and even white females) a new awareness of their own "Christian-based, European heritage" - the very "monster" feminists and other multiculturalists were attempting to suppress in the first place by their restrictions.

Feminists, gay activists, and minorities are finding out what conservatives found out ten, twenty, and thirty years ago in attempting to suppress liberal activity (i.e., flag burning, anti-war activity, etc.) - that is, that more often than not, all such restrictions accomplish is to make the "offensive" activity that much more "stimulating."

There are now five "underground" white fraternities operating surreptitiously on the Middlebury campus - as well as one white sorority. One student explains, "In a school where you know you can be expelled, you have to be very dedicated." Moreover, recruiting new members is easy: instead of a much publicized "rush" to attract new members, underground fraternities covertly "investigate" new prospects and then "tap" them secretly - a process many times more exciting and attractive to impressionable young people than the old fraternity rush. At Middlebury, the Dekes say they are learning "clandestine survival" - a phrase echoed throughout the fraternity system.

Liberals - in thinking that they can legislate a new "politically correct" multiculturalism may be greatly overestimating their own strength, and in the process, underestimating the perseverance and "staying power" of the older, white, European-based, Christian culture. At a football game last fall, a plane flew over Middlebury’s stadium towing a banner, "The Dekes Live." The crowd stood and cheered! The "Old Culture" lives too, and there are many more people than liberals know about that are cheering for it as well.

1. "At Vermont College, Fraternity Is Banned But Unbowed," in the San Francisco Chronicle, August 29, 1994, pg. A-8.
2. So Draconian is the ban on fraternity activity at Middlebury that male students are prohibited from participating in any fraternity activity whatsoever, even off campus activity on their own time. Don Wyatt, Middlebury’s vice president for undergraduate activities has remarked that anyone caught violating the ban would be suspended: "It would be swift and severe," Wyatt says.