Pipe Dream is celebrating its 60th year as Binghamton University’s independent student newspaper. It started as the Colonial News in fall 1946, and has been going strong twice a week ever since. So we’re taking a look back into the paper’s archives, at the people and events that have made the news over BU’s past 60 years.

Friday, Oct. 23, 1953:

‘National Frats Ousted By State’

The extensive, but “standard” discrimination by fraternities and sororities, that included “super-secret meetings” and “long, involved initiations and black balling,” and which had usually been displayed by sororities and fraternities in the past, came to a stop through the resolution passed by the State University Board of Trustees.

The resolution stated that all greek letter organizations had to be dissolved by 1958. The Harpur College administration displayed its support of this resolution by providing all college social clubs with the warning that if they were to be found participating in any “racial, religious or social discrimination” then they would be subject to disciplinary action “by either the student government or the administration.”

The statewide resolution hit home when a school’s social organization, The Gavel Club, passed their own resolution, saying that the school organization would not be able to hold “any rushing of prospective members until after midterms.” Nevertheless, it was clear that there were still three uncharted social groups which were operating without the college’s consent.

The excuse that was given by these organizations was simply that they did not know the “college rules and procedures.” Of these three groups, the only one that applied for a charter, ITK (I Tappa Keg), was “rejected on the grounds that their constitution violated some technicalities.”

After their rejection, they altered their constitution and then began to be considered for a new charter. Although this organization had quite a suggestive name, it had a very different central purpose. At the time the article was written, the focus of the group was to promote “a spirit of unity among all Harpur Social Clubs.”