Editing Delta Upsilon (section)

===Founding and early history===
[[File:Williams College - West College.JPG|thumb|left|Delta Upsilon's mother chapter was founded in 1834 in the West College building (pictured) at Williams College.]]

Delta Upsilon was founded in 1834, when thirty freshman, sophomore, and junior students at [[Williams College]] met in the Freshman Recitation Room at the West College building to form what was then called "the Social Fraternity".<ref name="six">{{cite book |last=Baird |first=William |date=1905|title=Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities |url=https://archive.org/stream/bairdsmanualame00unkngoog#page/n0/mode/2up |publisher=Alcolm |pages=165–168 |access-date=15 December 2014 |edition=6th }}</ref><ref name="Williams" /><ref name="hund" /> The move was in response to the establishment of [[Kappa Alpha Society]] and [[Sigma Phi]] at the college and, unlike those fraternities, the Social Fraternity was avowedly anti-secret. Its founding came at the tail-end of [[Anti-Masonic Party|the anti-Masonic hysteria]] that had recently swept the United States, though the idea that it was part of the popular backlash to [[Freemasonry]] has generally been rejected (a mysterious fire in 1841 destroyed the records of the first meeting of the Social Fraternity, erasing much of the organization's early history).<ref name="newed">{{cite book |last=Robson |first=John |date=1968 |title=Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities |publisher=George Banta Company |page=281 |edition=18th }}</ref>

Growth of the Social Fraternity (whose members were informally called the "Oudens") was exponential. By 1838 two-thirds of all students at Williams belonged to the society which engaged in militant agitation against the other two fraternities. One particularly violent incident occurred in 1839 when Oudens assaulted the Kappa Alpha house, driving its occupants to the top of Consumption Hill. More refined conflict took the form of pamphlets and debate. An 1855 debate proposed by Kappa Alpha against the Oudens was called-off after the Social Fraternity appointed [[James Garfield]], an Ouden well known for his rhetorical skills, to represent them.<ref name="Williams">{{cite book |last=Spring |first=Leverett  |date=1917 |title=A History of Williams College |url=https://archive.org/details/ahistorywilliam00sprigoog |publisher=Houghton Mifflin  |pages=[https://archive.org/details/ahistorywilliam00sprigoog/page/n328 286]–287 }}</ref>

In November 1847 Williams' Social Fraternity met with similar societies that had recently been formed at [[Union College]], [[Hamilton College (New York)|Hamilton College]], and [[Amherst College]] and formed the "Anti-Secret Confederation". A second meeting of the Anti-Secret Confederation (A.S.C.) in 1852 saw fraternities from [[Wesleyan University]], [[Case Western Reserve University]], [[Colby College]], and the [[University of Vermont]] join.<ref name="six" />

At the 1862 convention, the fraternity's mother chapter, Williams, declared the purposes of the fraternity had been corrupted and, over the objections of the other chapters, withdrew. Two years later it dissolved itself. A chapter would eventually be restored. However, Williams being the first chapter and, therefore, self-chartering, this would come in the form of a new chapter and not the revival of the original. It was permanently erased when Williams College banned all fraternities in 1962.<ref name="Williams" /><ref name="hund"/>
[[File:Kōjirō Matsukata at Rutgers.jpg|thumb|[[Kōjirō Matsukata]] (bottom right), the son of [[Matsukata Masayoshi|Prince Matsukata]], was initiated into Delta Upsilon at [[Rutgers University]] in 1885.]]
The March 1864 convention of the A.S.C. saw the organization formally change its name to Delta Upsilon, standardize insignia and ritual throughout all its member chapters, and establish a centralized administrative structure.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.deltau.org/nosecrets/history/fromtroubledtimesnewstrengths|title=From Troubled Times, New Strengths|website=deltau.org|publisher=Delta Upsilon fraternity|access-date=17 December 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141215205438/http://www.deltau.org/nosecrets/history/fromtroubledtimesnewstrengths|archive-date=15 December 2014|url-status=dead|df=dmy-all}}</ref>