Just as the nation was never quite the same after World War I, neither was Alpha Tau Omega. Taus streamed back onto campuses to find themselves in a different world. There was a feeling of unrest, and students began to question old values. A Wittenberg University dean described students of the day as follows:
"If I catch the drift of the situation, the students are giving less time to preparation for class than they did before the war and are more engrossed in student activities."
The Dean of Men at the University of Illinois made a somewhat sharper point: "They are indifferent, lazy, cynical, and the men in fraternities more so than the men outside." Thomas Arkle Clark, Illinois, never minced words.
Dean Clark, born in 1862 spent the first 23 years of his life on a farm and clerking in a country store. He did not receive his college degree until 1890. He earned his own way through the University of Illinois, yet took full part in campus activities, being editor of the Illini, president of the Literary Society and the Christian Endeavor Society of his church, and graduating with a 97 percent average.
The early 1960s looked wonderful. Colleges enjoyed record enrollments. Chapters pledged men in record numbers. A building boom was on as chapters renovated old houses or built new ones. It seemed the dawn of a golden age of fraternity power and prestige. But the seeds of discontent were present.
The issue of restrictive membership, for example, was coming to occupy most of the time and talents of several National President in succession. It was the source of most criticism outside the Fraternity and most dissension within it. The subject had been deliberately studied at every Congress from 1954 on, with substantial sentiment present for eliminating the restrictive membership clause in the Constitution. But there was also a lingering sentiment for keeping ATO as it had always been. Finally, in 1963, Worthy Grand Chief Sherman Oberly, Muhlenberg, appointed a Special Committee on Membership of seven Province Chiefs and charged them not to merely survey the problem, but to solve it--to develop a proposal that would gain the approval of Congress. The committee met and devoted countless hours to the task.
At the 1964 Grand Bahamas Congress, a successful proposal was submitted, revising both the Preamble to the Constitution and the Constitution and Laws. That giant step, coupled with continuing Committee work, led to amendments at the 1966 Macinac Island Congress whereupon the Fraternity could at last state: "Alpha Tau Omega does not discriminate in its membership requirement against any person on the basis of race, color, creed or national origin; its individual chapters are free to select members without regard to race, color creed or national origin, and without interference on these grounds, directly or indirectly, from any source outside the local undergraduate chapter." Thus, ATO began its second hundred years.
Chapter 4 courtesy of ATO.org