Coe alum recalls fraternity’s battle for equity

Greek life was not part of Tim Mauldin's higher education plan when he arrived on Cedar Rapids' Coe College campus in 1965.

But Mauldin's plans changed through his interest in social issues sweeping the nation at the time - the Civil Rights Act had passed a year earlier, Martin Luther King Jr. had just organized historic demonstrations in Selma, and the president was signing the Voting Rights Act into law.

As a Coe freshman, Mauldin joined the local Lambda Chi Alpha chapter and its fight 'end one more aspect of racism in America” by 'rushing” its first black student - despite pushback from the national headquarters.

'I had no plans to ‘go Greek,'” Mauldin, now 68, recently wrote in a letter to the editor. 'But events at Coe that academic year led many of us to think about civil rights, college, and brotherhood.”

Those issues remain relevant today - 50 years later - as racial tensions flare across the country, including in Greek communities on college campuses, Mauldin said. In Norman, Okla., where Mauldin now lives, Oklahoma University President David Boren earlier this month cut ties with the local Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter after video emerged of members participating in racist chants.

'Events this past week at OU are a reminder that the quest for civil rights in higher education is not over,” Mauldin wrote. 'It is a work in progress. OU President Boren acted wisely and decisively. So did Coe College students and Coe's administration 50 years ago.”

As a freshmen in 1965, Mauldin said word spread quickly on campus about the fight Coe's Lambda Chi was facing with its national leaders. The local chapter had just voted to pledge its first black member, and Mauldin said the national headquarters sent back this message: 'We have a gentleman's agreement with our chapters in the South that our chapters will not pledge Negroes.”

But the local chapter wouldn't give in, and the national organization launched a review of its bookkeeping 'to find other reasons to disenfranchise the Coe chapter,” according to Mauldin.

'They were going to find a way,” Mauldin told The Gazette. 'But the chapter got the support of the administration on campus. And I think that probably tipped the scale.”

Coe students - including Mauldin - rallied behind the cause, as did Coe's 'top brass,” including then-President Joseph McCabe. The national headquarters backed down, Coe's Lambda Chi chapter wasn't disenfranchised, and integration within the house began.

A spokesman for the national Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity on Monday said he can't confirm what the organization communicated to Coe in 1965 but quoted a recent statement by Board Chairman Fletcher McElreath reiterating that one of its mottos 'signifies that we are an inclusive organization who welcomes young men of any ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or nationality.”

Coe College, although it doesn't track diversity within its Greek system, enrolled 119 first-time students of color in the fall - representing more than 28 percent of its class of 2018, according to spokesman Rod Pritchard.

Overall, Coe's diversity continues to improve, he said, accounting for 26 percent of the total student body.

Mauldin said his experience at Coe in the 1960s made the Civil Rights Movement real for him.

'It certainly made it clear that it was not some set of events in the national news,” he said.

Before Mauldin graduated from Coe in 1969, at least two more black students joined the Lambda Chi chapter, including future Rhodes Scholar Darryl Banks.

Banks, who enrolled at Coe in 1968 after visiting the campus as a high school student in Kentucky, told The Gazette he too had little interest in Greek life when he started his college career. But members of Lambda Chi, including Mauldin, recruited him, and Banks said the group's civic and social awareness was appealing.

'It was a group of young men who were quite accepting and very much inclusive,” Banks said.

He hadn't been aware of the battle with Lambda Chi's national leadership before he arrived, but Banks credited Coe's administration at the time for standing firm.

'These were individuals who really had positioned Coe under the national radar as a progressive school,” Banks said. 'It was very much in order for them to go to bat for students in 1964 against a national organization that had very reactionary policies.”

When Banks started at Coe, Martin Luther King Jr. had been killed six months earlier and racial unrest was evident nationwide.

'For a college to stand its ground was extremely significant and really something it deserves a lot of credit for,” he said.

And although the country has come a long way, Banks said, this month's events at the University of Oklahoma are not surprising.

'We are wrestling,” he said. 'With the election of the president, we thought we were in a post-racial American. But that's not the case.”

Mauldin said he particularly is concerned by the persistence of racism in higher education.

'It's troubling when it persists in the minds of young leaders and educated people,” he said.