THE CRAFTSMEN BECOME ACACIAS

Visiting Delegates From Other States. Install Masonic Fraternity. Roll Consists of Ten Faculty and Twenty Student Members.

On the evening of Saturday, March 20th, “The Craftsmen,” who have existed as a local organization for a year and a half were installed at Iowa State College as a chapter of the Acacia fraternity. The ceremony took place at the Masonic lodge rooms and was conducted by delegates from the Universities of Minnesota, Nebraska and Kansas. After the installation ceremony a banquet was held and toasts were responded to by several faculty members and representatives from each installing chapter.

Acacia was organized as a national fraternity five years ago at the University of Michigan. The movement seemed to touch a responsive chord in the various universities and colleges of the country, and the growth of the organization was phenomenal, there being at the present time eighteen chapters, distributed over the entire country.

The object of the fraternity is the same as that of the Greek letter societies social and fraternal, but membership is limited to those belonging to the Masonic order.

This installation is of especial significance to as a school because this is the first chapter to be established in the state. The Ames chapter starts out favorably with ten faculty members and twenty student members, and a chapter house is maintained at 815 Iowa street.The Craftsman Club is mentioned off and on in the mid and late 1900s in The I.S.C. Student – then-name for the Iowa State Daily – and a couple times in school yearbook, The Bomb.

The I.S.C. Student, “The Craftsmen Become Acacias,” 29 March 1909.

According to the fall 1909 College Directory, the fraternity moved to 2818 West Street in that term and remained there for a couple years. That house, where an apartment now sits, was once home to the Colonnades, which would later become Delta Upsilon.

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Greek Community Re-establishing at Iowa State

Court upholds fraternity ban (1894)
Fraternities (re)approved (1904)

ORIGINAL TWO: Delta Tau Delta (1911) | Pi Beta Phi (1906)

NATIONAL FRATERNITIES: Acacia (1909) | Alpha Tau Omega (1908) | Beta Theta Pi (1905) | Kappa Sigma (1909) | Phi Gamma Delta (1907) | Phi Sigma Kappa (1911) | Sigma Alpha Epsilon (1905) | Sigma Nu (1904) | Theta Xi (1909)

NATIONAL SORORITIES: Alpha Delta Pi (1911)