Alpha Rho Upsilon
| Alpha Rho Upsilon | |
|---|---|
| ΑΡΥ | |
 |
|
| Founded | January 1, 1946 Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine |
| Type | Social |
| Scope | United States |
| Motto | "Tolerance and Diversity" |
| Symbol | crest with a pair of shaking hands and lamp of enlightenment |
| Chapters | 1 (no longer active) |
| Headquarters |
238 Maine St. Brunswick, Maine USA |
Alpha Rho Upsilon (ΑΡΥ in Greek, ARU in Latin/English; pronounced A-roo) was a fraternity at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, from 1946 until it was disbanded in 1990. Until then it occupied a late Victorian wood-frame house at 238 Maine Street.
An offshoot of the Thorndike Club, a dining club formed in 1937 for non-fraternity students at the college, ARU was founded in 1946 by a group of Bowdoin students, who included World War II veterans, in reaction to the exclusion of Jewish and African American students from the other campus fraternities at the time. The letters ARU stood for "All Races United," and they lived up to their name by, for example, sponsoring a Japanese student in 1951. History Professor Ernst Christian Helmreich was the faculty adviser to the Thorndike Club from 1937–1946. German Professor Fritz Carl August Koelln was the fraternity's long-time faculty adviser. Recognizing the discriminatory practices of the fraternity system of that era against African American and Jewish students, Professors Helmreich and Koelln played significant roles in the formation of ARU as a fraternity that welcomed students of all religions and ethnic backgrounds into its fellowship. That the Thorndike Club and, hence, ARU came into existence is a testament to the sadness of the family of man divided on the basis of skin color, ethnicity or religious belief. The meaning of ARU was never lost by its Brothers.
ARU initially resided in Moore Hall, one of Bowdoin's dormitories, then moved to a former faculty housing hall at 264 Maine Street before purchasing their 238 Maine Street home from the Sigma Nu fraternity.
An architectural hybrid of Colonial Revival and the Shingle Style featuring Palladian windows, gambrels, peaked dormers and a balconied front porch with Ionic columns, the ARU house was built between 1894 and 1900 as the residence of George Taylor and Edith Davis Files. An 1889 Bowdoin graduate, George Files was a German professor at the college until his death in 1919 upon returning from France, where he had helped the YMCA with the war effort. In 1921, Mrs. Files endowed the George Taylor Files Professorship in Modern Languages at Bowdoin and sold their house to Sigma Nu, who in turn sold it to ARU in 1951 upon relocating to the college's present Hartley Cone Baxter House. The "new wing" was added in the rear in 196? [NEED DATE] with six double rooms and two bathrooms.
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