The revisions made to the history now demonstrate unequivocally that the founders of Tau Delta Phi were Jewish and that the Fraternity was started as a Jewish Fraternity that admitted only Jewish men at its inception, but would be the first National Fraternity to admit men of any race, creed, or ethnic origin, doing so well before the advent of other national organizations. Tau Delta Phi also plans on including these changes in the upcoming 3rd Edition of its member education manual, The Polaris: The Administrative Guide of the Tau Delta Phi Fraternity, which will hit public sales this year for the first time in its history, being available for purchase in September at Amazon.com and orderable at libraries and bookstores across the United States.

Tau Delta Phi’s history, on the website since approximately 2004, was taken from the 2004 edition of The Polaris. The history on the website and in the 2004 Polaris was taken from a history written by one of the Founders of Tau Delta Phi, Maxwell Goldman, who was also a past CEO of the organization. The original history for the first four decades of the Fraternity was written in 1950 and published in the Fraternity’s magazine, The Pyramid of Tau Delta Phi. The current Executive Council of Tau Delta Phi for the 2010-2012 term, and the past Executive Councils of the 2008-2010, 2006-2008, and 2004-2006 terms, relied on that history to produce all of the Fraternity’s historical data from 1910-1920. Today the Fraternity’s leaders have taken a bold step by passing a resolution that adds the following statement to the introduction of our history:

Tau Delta Phi was founded in 1910 by a group of Jewish teenagers, as a high school fraternity named Phi Sigma Beta. When these men went on to college they longed to carry on their fraternal ties and bonding of brotherhood. These nine men created Tau Delta Phi because they wanted to form a society that would accept them when almost all fraternities of the time would have denied them membership. They started a Jewish Fraternity and would later in the 1930′s be the first NIC Fraternity to allow the integration of members of all races, creeds, and ethnic origins. They advocated integration 30 years before the advent of civil rights because integration into other fraternities was not open to them as individuals when they were in college, due to their Jewish heritage, and therefore our nine, noble founders didn’t want to see anyone else excluded from Fraternity Life the way they would have been.

It should be noted that the original history on the website and in The Polaris never omitted any facts from the original history provided by Frater Goldman, CK. His history remained intact. The Fraternity has included a scan of the original history as it appeared in the 1952 Edition of The Administrative Guide of the Tau Delta Phi Fraternity. (Cover, Page X, Page 1)

Tau Delta Phi’s Executive Council is happy to recognize the contribution of our Jewish fraters who founded the Fraternity and the overwhelming demonstration of Jewish heritage and culture that has enriched the Tau Delta Phi Fraternity. The Fraternity has striven, for over a century, to be a beacon light against those that would seek to be exclusionary rather than inclusionary of cultural understanding and acceptance.

http://taudelt.net/about-us/our-history/
 

Contact: Shawn M. Dowiak

Phone: 877-828-3358 x 1

Email: sdowiak@taudelt.net