Word: chapters
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Beta Kappa Societies all over the country organized into a National Council of United Chapters so that they could combine their "talents." At this time the long defunct Maryland chapter went on the active list again...
Today in 1949, Phi Beta Kappa elects about 100 men to its ranks from each class. When the Alpha Chapter of Massachusetts began at the University of Cambridge in 1781 it had six members and none of the six claimed any particular fame as scholars. Phi Beta Kappa was, as a matter of fact, the first of the social Greek letter organizations which thrive on most college campuses in the United States today...
William and Mary's chapter didn't last long, though. It dissolved with the approach of Cornwallis' British troops after four years and 67 meetings. But one Elisha Parmele, a Harvard graduate, received characters for branch chapters at Yale and Harvard before the original Phi Bota Kappa went into extinction...
Like the mother chapter, the Harvard branch was basically a social organization. Early records describing the iniation ceremony contain much high flown language such as, "here you are to become the brother of unalionable brothers . . . everything transacted within this room is transacted sub ross, and detested is he that discloses...
...hocus pocus of Phi Beta Kappa meetings began to fade away in the 1830's largely as a result the work of the Harvard chapter's Edward Everett, Joseph Story, and John Quincy Adams. The Harvard chapter's change in policy probably saved Phi Beta Kappa from becoming nothing more than the oldest collegiate social organization in the United States...