An Undergraduate Student at Indiana University (1963-1967)

I grew up in a socially conservative town in Indiana.  By the time I arrived at Indiana University, I was a serious student and firm believer in following the rules. Fraternity life would challenge these assumptions. My focus on academic performance was challenged by the shock of college level study expectation and my interest in campus student activities would foster my leadership skills in the fraternity and develop my collaboration skills with the university community and later life.  

My freshman roommate was a senior whose lifestyle and values were very different from my own. The situation became increasingly uncomfortable and contributed to my decision to spend most evenings studying in the library, playing baseball, and becoming involved in campus activities. Looking back, I should have simply requested a room change, but I tended to endure difficult situations rather than confront them directly.

I was initiated and became a member of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity at Indiana University in the fall of 1964.  My brother had been a member, and I followed in his footsteps with fraternity life.

IU in the 1960s was defined by experimentation, controversy, by challenging conventional lifestyles and institutions.  Did we do stupid stuff back then in the fraternity?  Were we idealistic and unrealistic?  Absolutely.  We could pull the most embarrassing pranks on each other or just embarrass ourselves and know we would come together afterward and be stupid, forgiving, and friends.  We could chase impossible goals but learn important life lessons like friendship is more important than conformity.

Soon after I moved into the fraternity house as a sophomore in the fall of 1964, I learned about the boulder run.  The boulder run was a fraternity tradition, initiated by a member after the 1 a.m. curfew for having dates back to their sororities or dorms.  The member would yell ‘boulder run”, strip and wait for any participants to do likewise, yelling out challenges to courage, manhood, and adventure.  Takers stripped and lined up at the door.  Someone would open the door and the participants would run naked down fraternity row, circle a campus boulder, and head back.  On one occasion I remember a member calling the next-door sorority house mother, and his girlfriend there, and telling them to look out their windows. The whole sorority lit up as my naked fraternity brothers ran by.  We could see and hear the girls laughing and pointing and some of the guys indecisive about where to put their hands.  What a moment!   We heard the next day the house mother was totally grossed by the experience and forbid open window shades after 1 a.m. This incident is never forgiven by the runners at reunions, although related always to laughs and gross comments about anatomy.

Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity, Indiana University, 1965

As the spring of 1965 arrived, I agreed to do fraternity public relations and organized with a sorority a picnic for orphans, as opposed to the normal Geek game event. There was a photograph and heartfelt story about the event in the local newspaper.  Shortly after the event, the fraternity president asked me to meet in his room.  He and two juniors asked me if I would be willing to run for fraternity president, the election being in a month.  I declined as I felt too young and I wanted to focus on academics as opposed to the time-demanding president position.  They finally convinced me saying they didn’t trust any junior with the job, that the fraternity needed me, and that they would handle the election.  I got elected. 

President, Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity, Indiana University, 1966  

(Pete Smith, Second Row From Top, On Left of Middle Group)

Soon after the election, one of the fraternity leaders encouraged me to apply for a position on the university president's student advisory group called the Board of Aeons. It was the most prestigious student campus organization, selected by the president's staff to research and address key issue facing the campus and in collaboration advise the university president. I was a jock, had the fraternity's highest grade point average during the fall semester of 1964, and he felt I was qualified as he was a member of the Board. After going through interviews, I was selected a member. Through discussions in Aeons, the fraternity system, and the broader university community, I began to question traditions I had previously accepted without much thought. These questions would later lead me to become involved in efforts to challenge racial discrimination within the fraternity system.

Indiana University Board of Aeons 1965-66

(Pete Smith, Bottom Row, Second From Left)

Indiana University Board of Aeons 1966-67

(Pete Smith, Second Row From Bottom, On Right)

I was elected the president of the IU Interfraternity Council in the spring of 1966 after actively promoting an organization change from a social good time group to one actively seeking change in the student experience of pledging and other campus culture matters. I write about one of these issues in my story My Race Experience. George Martin, Aeons President, was on the publication's editorial staff, and we remain friends to this day.

My focus as a fraternity president and member was academics, not social.  I had tried a beer in high school, but didn’t like the taste so had no interest in alcohol.  I wondered at the time what was the attraction of alcohol.  I found out I was an exception.  The fraternity members liked to party.  The University placed my fraternity on social probation in the spring of 1966 for a beer-drinking party off campus.  When classes started in the fall, the University decided to use my fraternity’s incident as a test case to begin enforcing alcohol prohibition at fraternity houses.  I was President of the Interfraternity Council at the time, idealistic and naive, and actually agreed with the action.  I pushed to have the IFC enforce the prohibition thinking it would be more acceptable and the Dean of Students agreed to let the IFC be inspectors.

I set up rotating two-man teams of Friday and Saturday night IFC fraternity inspectors and after a month we found no alcohol.  I decided to see for myself so the chief IFC court judge and I in our IFC blazers, white shirts, and ties went on a Saturday night alcohol inspection of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity which was having a big party.  I remember feeling important and that I was doing the right thing.  Two pledges met us at the door and invited us into the noisy fraternity house party.  But then something didn’t feel right as everything was too polite.  Suddenly four huge guys (the Betas had a lot of football players) appeared as if they had been waiting for us, picked up my companion kicking and screaming, carried him to the patio, and tossed him into a huge party pool to the yells and applause of the partiers.  I managed to help him out of the pool and we immediately left the house in shock and my companion soaked.

The next Monday I met with the Dean of Students and told him the IFC was out of the alcohol prohibition inspection business.  I learned later that various members of the IFC alerted fraternities beforehand to IFC inspections.  I felt undercut by the IFC organization and disillusioned by the reality of learning most 18-20-year-old young men at that time didn’t care about the alcohol rules, only having a good time.  Duh! I learned that leadership requires understanding people as they are, not as I wish them to be.

About that time my long-time girlfriend and I broke up.  It was emotional and I felt down and alone.  Plus I was graduating in the spring and almost certain to go to Vietnam where guys my age were being killed or wounded in the war.  I began to feel I should just enjoy the moment, the heck with the rules, and adopt a don’t care what happens attitude.  I decided to change my obedient conformist behavior and go for shock and awe. On my first post-breakup date, I bought a six-pack of beer, invited my date to our fraternity living room, and proceeded with my date to drink the six-pack.  It felt like an out-of-body experience as I was openly violating University, IFC, and fraternity alcohol rules, getting drunk and I didn’t care.  One of my fraternity brothers saw me, and then he brought a crowd to observe, all keeping their distance, totally surprised and amazed.  They have never forgotten that moment, nor have I.  The story of that moment is a staple at fraternity reunions, all laughing at the absurdity and shock of the sight.  Whenever I talk my good fraternity brother friend Bill Replogle in Portland, a prominent attorney, we both laugh ourselves silly to this day.  He always asks what was I thinking and I tell him I was just being stupid and he agrees.

Indiana University Bachelor of Arts, With Honors, Diploma, 1967

Looking back, Indiana University gave me much more than an education. It taught me leadership, teamwork, responsibility, independence, and how to work with people whose values differed from my own. The friendships, mistakes, successes, and lessons learned from those four years helped shape the person I became.

My Race Experience (1964-1977)

As I entered Indiana University Law School in the fall of 1969, it felt like the country was coming apart at the seams, the fabric pulling apart. The civil rights movement, and particularly the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968, coincided with an atmosphere of rebellion against authority that just became explosive. Cities were going up in flames, people shooting from windows killing firemen- we’re talking about serious stuff going on. This story is to portray my experience with race relations between blacks and whites in the 1960s leading up to law school and my first job after graduation.

I grew up in university communities moving around with my dad and was exposed to students from all over the world. My parents were a host family for international Asian college students so race was not an issue either in my family or my experience until I went to college.

In the fall of 1963, I began undergraduate study at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, and pledged the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, moving into the chapter house in the fall of 1964.

Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity, Indiana University, 1965.  My Experiences in the Fraternity Played an Important Role in Shaping My Views on Race and Social Change.  

At the time there was one black fraternity, one black sorority, two Jewish fraternities, one or two Jewish sororities, and 50 or so white fraternities and sororities, mine included.

In the spring of 1965, I was elected fraternity president and got very involved with fraternity house operations and rush. Rush meant recruiting freshmen new members and being involved, among other things, in promoting the fraternity and opening the fraternity house on Saturdays for initial introductory visits. The house rush chairman organized and ran the open house activities. One Saturday a black freshman came to our open house and the rush chairman met him after he had signed in and told him he should go down the street to the all-black fraternity. He left immediately. Once I learned what had happened I got his name and telephone number from the rush sign-in sheet, called him, apologized for how he was treated, and invited him to return to our house for a visit- he told me he was no longer interested in our fraternity.

The next day he wrote a letter, soon published in the campus newspaper, recounting his racial discrimination experience. All hell then broke loose. The Dean of Students called me, grilled me on details, and told me I needed to meet with him ASAP. My national fraternity office called me, telling me to say nothing to the press and little to the university. I was 18 years old, had no training or experience dealing with racial tension and discrimination, and had no idea what to say or do. I felt confused, unprepared, and indecisive and boxed in between the university and the national fraternity initially and later between fraternity alumni and members who had very narrow outlooks in their thinking on the question and others who had more inclusive, anti-discriminatory outlooks. After several weeks of stress and ducking my head, the university and my national office somehow resolved the matter. No one came to me later to offer race-related guidance or training for the future. I had a bone to pick with the system.

In the spring of 1966, I was elected president of the university interfraternity council which governed all campus fraternities. Using this platform I wrote an article in May for a campus-wide publication entitled “Fraternity Discrimination- A University Responsibility.” 

My Article Opposing Fraternity Racial Discrimination at Indiana University, 1966

I argued that the university had allowed fraternity discrimination to flourish for 100 years by not taking a position on this critical issue, especially after W.W.II because of a housing shortage for returning veterans or lack of moral courage or fear of losing big donations or all of these. I said the university needed to clearly and continuously communicate expectations, recruit more academically qualified blacks, and offer resources to reach out and train new fraternity members in the values of integration. In the fall of 1966, I initiated and helped replace the traditional IFC sport-oriented Greek Games with an IFC/university-sponsored seminar on fraternity race relations. Many forces contributed to the changes that followed, but I was pleased to have played a small part in the discussion.  After I graduated, by the end of the 1968 school year, all but one of the fraternity chapters at IU had certified that any membership discriminatory clauses in any national charters of the fraternities had been eliminated or no longer would be honored at IU. 

I graduated from Indiana in 1967 with a degree, with honors, in history and a reserve officer training candidate (ROTC) commission. 

Indiana University Senior Portrait From School Yearbook, 1967

(Pete Smith Next to Last Row On Left)

I went on Army active duty in September, reporting to quartermaster officer basic training at Fort. Lee, Virginia. located in Petersburg. As I pulled into Petersburg, I recall a sign at the local Holiday Inn welcoming the Daughters of the Confederacy which set off some alarms as my New England ancestors had fought for the Union. Most of my officer basic classmates were recent college graduates with ROTC commissions like me. I was assigned to an officer training barracks and befriended a black guy from Michigan State University. After a few weeks of meals on base, he and I decided to go to Petersburg for dinner at a place our captain recommended. It turned out to be an old home turned into a restaurant. My friend and I went there on a Saturday night and were greeted at the door by a black maitre d’ dressed in a red sports coat and tie. When I asked for a table for two, the maitre d’ hesitated, looked nervous, and told us to wait in the entryway. Soon an elderly woman, who was the owner, appeared and stared at us with an icy, bitter look on her face. She told us in a very irritated voice that my friend was the second one (meaning black) that had come to her “house” since he (meaning President Johnson) passed that law (the Civil Rights Act of 1964). My friend looked at me and said let’s leave. I felt provoked and angry and convinced my friend to stay. I then insisted we wanted a table. The customers were all white and I felt the tension in the air as we were seated. The waiters were all black and were dressed in red sports coats and ties and looked very nervous. Our waiter’s hands were visibly shaking as he took our order. We finished our meal and left and the owner glared at us all the way out.

Fast forward to 1973, I went to work for the Monsanto Company law department in St. Louis. At a fall retreat in 1977, our general counsel introduced Clarence Thomas as a new addition to the all-white law department. I was the only attorney to go up to Clarence and talk with him about his background and what to expect. We became friends and I helped him take over my position in 1978 when I got promoted. We stayed in touch for many years afterward. 

Me with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in His Chambers, 2000

Looking back, these experiences taught me that principles are easiest to defend in theory and much harder to defend when they involve real people, real friendships,, and real consequences.  I did not always know the right answer, but I tried to act consistently with my sense of fairness.