College literary societies

[1] In the period from the late 18th century to the Civil War, collegiate literary societies were an important part of campus social life.

[2] In addition to debates, in the years before the Civil War, college literary societies sponsored addresses by politicians and other dignitaries.

Still, there were also literary society addresses at the beginning of the school year and at other important dates, such as July Fourth.

It was during this time that great plant-eating dinosaurs roamed the Earth, feeding on lush growths of ferns and palm-like cycads and bennettitaleans.

The oceans were full of fish, squid, and coiled ammonites, plus great ichthyosaurs and the long-necked plesiosaurs.

The supercontinent Pangaea began to break up and disperse itself across the Earth's surface, sending a big chunk of land to the very spot where Thomas Jefferson's decomposed old ass lies buried today.

And it is on this same chunk of land, a few miles away, that Mr. Jefferson's University sits, home to the Washington Literary Society and Debating Union.

[1] On the austere college campus of two centuries ago, "the only fairly comfortable and attractive places were the rooms of the literary societies.

These societies were usually in a limited adversarial role; at Columbia University the Peithologian and Philolexian were competitors, and they maintained a friendly and highly charged rivalry at best.

In his famous diary, George Templeton Strong recorded that a Philolexian gathering was disrupted by "those rascally Peithologians"; and firecrackers and stink bombs, tossed into the midst of each other's meetings, were usually the weapons of choice.

This pattern was followed, for example, at Dartmouth, where the faculty imposed rule was "The students of College shall be assigned according to the odd or even places which their names shall hold on an alphabetical list of the members of each successive class..."[6] Having two societies on campus encouraged competition, and a thriving society would have interesting enough meetings to attract full attendance from its membership and perhaps even people from the community.

These are private literary societies, such as Phi Beta Kappa or Yale's Elizabethan Club.

In some cases, literary societies such as Trinity College's Cleo of Alpha Chi became chartered as chapters of national fraternities.

Soon, the existence of these smaller private Greek letter organizations undermined the large Latin literary societies.

The Euphradian Society at the University of South Carolina, established in 1806, was deactivated sometime during the late 1970s; it was reactivated by alumni in 2011.