Alpha Rho Upsilon

Alpha Rho Upsilon (ΑΡΥ; usually pronounced ARU) 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.

Founding and history

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.