page_title: Delta Upsilon
section_title: Abandoning "anti-secrecy"
hierarchical_section_title: Delta Upsilon / History / Abandoning "anti-secrecy"
caption_attribution_description: English: I took photo with Canon camera of Charles Evans Hughes at National Portrait Gallery, artist Philip Alexius de László. Public domain.
context_page_description: Delta Upsilon, commonly known as DU, is a collegiate men's fraternity founded on November 4, 1834 at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It is the sixth-oldest, all-male, college Greek-letter organization founded in North America. It is popularly and informally known as "DU" or "Delta U" and its members are called "DUs". Although historically found on the campuses of small New England private universities, Delta Upsilon currently has 76 chapters/colonies across the United States and Canada. A number of its buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
  In 2013, Business Insider named Delta Upsilon one of the "17 Fraternities with Top Wall Street Alumni". Notable members include President of the United States James A. Garfield, president of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos, Canadian prime minister Lester B. Pearson, Linus Pauling, Joseph P. Kennedy, Lou Holtz, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Charles Evans Hughes, Les Aspin, and others. Forty-two brothers of the fraternity have sat in the United States Congress, three in the Parliament of Canada, one in the Imperial House of Peers of Japan, and six on the Queen's Privy Council for Canada.
context_section_description: In 1879, Delta Upsilon formally disavowed its policy of anti-secrecy, instead adopting a program of what it described as "non-secrecy". According to Delta Upsilon, the reason for this change was because it had been absolutely victorious in its battle against secrecy, "the character of the secret societies so altered, that hostility toward them decreased".
  This explanation has been more skeptically received by some, with one period observer caustically noting that Delta Upsilon "reveals very little more of what it does than the latter [secret fraternities]". Others commented that chapter meetings were closed to all but initiated members and the fraternity was now practicing selective pledging and initiation, in contrast to its earliest days at Williams. Therefore, it was proffered, the description of the fraternity as a "private" society rather than a "non-secret" one might be more accurate. The Harvard Crimson, meanwhile, poetically attributed the official change of position as due to "the sheer exhaustion of those that heretofore have maintained a vigorous tilt at the windmill for exercise's sake, on finding that the windmill stands the attack much better than they". Writing in 2013, Benjamin Wurgraft of the New School for Social Research commented that Delta Upsilon's changes made it "nothing more than another fraternity—a rival for pledges rather than a force for unity".
caption: Chief Justice of the United States Charles Evans Hughes served as president of Delta Upsilon and oversaw its incorporation.
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