“We meet within the identify of Osiris.”
With these phrases, solemnly intoned, members of the MIT Osiris Society started their clandestine conferences for practically 70 years.
Created in 1903 as a “senior society” and modeled on each the fraternities of Cornell and the mythology of historical Egypt, Osiris gave MIT’s senior management a chance to talk frankly and off the document with a gaggle of handpicked pupil leaders. Its existence was acknowledged, and names of its members appeared in MIT yearbooks, however the deliberative objective of the society remained secret for many years.
Quite than being based mostly on inductees’ wealth or their household’s political energy—frequent standards for senior societies at different faculties—membership was designated “for these undergraduates who’ve proven of their day by day life an especial love and devotion to the Institute,” reads the once-secret historical past of Osiris that now resides in MIT’s archives.
This historical past was written by Edward Pennell Brooks, Class of 1917, as a speech he gave at a number of Osiris initiations within the early Nineteen Fifties, however its factual content material is attributed to Alfred Edgar Burton, MIT’s first dean of scholars. If the group’s objective weren’t stored secret, Burton warned, MIT’s leaders wouldn’t be capable to have such frank and open discussions with the scholars.
“It was a really fascinating group—the phrase I might use is ‘personal’ relatively than ‘secret,’” says William J. Hecht ’61, SM ’76, who was inducted into Osiris in 1961 and went on to function govt vp and chief govt of the MIT Alumni Affiliation for 25 years. “If one thing controversial had been to come back up—a school gripe about one thing—it was a manner that the administration or the college might air it in entrance of a small group (we had been round a dozen) of ‘pupil leaders’ and be candid about what’s what.”
Osiris was began by Arthur Jeremiah Candy, Class of 1904, who transferred to MIT after having a run-in with the fraternities at Cornell. Candy wished to create a society with out the luggage of the Greek system, so he settled on Egyptian mythology, selecting the god credited with educating the traditional know-how of agriculture to people. Candy then assembled a formidable group of pupil leaders. “When as soon as launched, nonetheless, there turned a necessity of discovering out what it was to do,” Brooks wrote.
MIT ARCHIVES
In stepped Dean Burton, who recommended that Osiris might assist President Henry Smith Pritchett higher perceive MIT’s pupil physique. Pritchett actually wanted assist: Shortly after he was inaugurated in 1900, the annual “cane rush” competitors between freshmen and sophomores had resulted in a pupil dying. Pritchett then angered many college students along with his near-successful try to merge MIT with Harvard.
“Pritchett grasped this as an opportunity, so I’ve been advised, to reestablish good relations with leaders of undergraduate life,” the historical past reads.
Pritchett and Burton thus turned the primary honorary members of Osiris.
In years that adopted, names of inductees appeared often in The Tech, which referred to Osiris as certainly one of many senior societies. Given the rising variety of MIT honorary societies, it was a great cowl story.
Ten MIT presidents and quite a few deans and vice presidents would develop into honorary members of Osiris; full members included pupil authorities leaders and lots of editors of The Tech, most notably James Rhyne Killian ’26, who turned MIT’s tenth president (see “Editor of The Tech turns into president of MIT,” MIT Alumni Information, July/August 2024).
Secrecy was so paramount that even utilizing the identify Osiris was discouraged.
Burton warned in 1907 that Osiris confronted three massive risks. First, “the pure tendency for the conferences to lapse into merely social gathering of congenial spirits.” Second, the likelihood that the society would develop into well-known amongst undergraduates, who would search to achieve membership as a pupil honor. Third, the way in which proximity to energy may restrict the frankness of the discussions. The answer, Burton wrote, was cautious steerage of alumni and honorary members to maintain Osiris targeted on its mission—and to maintain its objective a secret.
Secrecy was so paramount that even utilizing the identify Osiris was discouraged. In a number of letters that Paul E. Grey ’54, SM ’55, ScD ’60, then dean of the College of Engineering, wrote to Osiris member Gregory Jackson ’70 in March 1971, Grey refers to Osiris by the quantity 270. (Grey had been inducted as an honorary member in 1965 and would develop into MIT’s 14th president in 1980.) The quantity referred to 270 Beacon Avenue, the handle of the College Membership, the place many Osiris members had been inducted till the membership moved to 40 Trinity Place in 1926. Later, Osiris initiations moved to the Membership of Odd Volumes at 77 Mt. Vernon Avenue, a non-public membership for bibliophiles of which Killian was a member.
“I joined Osiris in my junior yr at a gathering of the whole group at a proper dinner on the Membership of Odd Volumes in Boston,” recollects Tom Burns ’62, SM ’63. “On the time, we had been requested to be someplace in Boston in a tuxedo [and] had been blindfolded and pushed round for some time by a senior member of the Society, ending up on the Membership to be confronted by a big group of college and pupil members.” (A written description of initiations within the Nineteen Sixties says that tuxedo-clad initiates usually had been advised to carry out a stunt—comparable to flying paper airplanes in entrance of a ticket counter at Logan—whereas ready to get picked up.) Whereas two annual conferences had been held on the membership, Burns says school members usually hosted the common dinner conferences, many in Killian’s penthouse condominium at 100 Memorial Drive. Pupil members had been accountable for choosing the subjects and main the discussions, he says, and picked the following yr’s inductees.
After all, inviting many successive editors of the MIT pupil newspaper to hitch a society with such a secret objective was inherently dangerous. Certain sufficient, on February 18, 1955, The Tech ran a front-page article with the headline “Pupil Leaders Meet With Administration and School In Secret Society, Osiris.” The article was unsigned, as had been all information articles on the time, however Stephen N. Cohen ’56, then editor of The Tech, seems on the Osiris membership rolls. (Tellingly, the following three editors—John A. Friedman ’57, Leland E. Holloway Jr. ’58, and Stewart Wade Wilson ’59—don’t.) Every week later, Eldon H. Reiley ’55, president of MIT’s Undergraduate Affiliation, president of the Institute Committee, and a member of Osiris, revealed an 11-paragraph assertion in The Tech saying, amongst different issues, that “Osiris is an off-the-cuff group of college and college students who meet every now and then over dinner and talk about points pertaining to the welfare and betterment of MIT. The group has no energy in itself.”
Reiley wrote the reality: Nowhere within the archives or in interviews with surviving members is there a touch that the coed members of Osiris determined something apart from the names of the following yr’s recruits.
Howard Wesley Johnson was inducted as an honorary member in 1965, shortly earlier than turning into MIT’s twelfth president in 1966. Johnson clearly took his Osiris duties significantly: Its conferences had been entered into his appointment ebook, and when he missed the initiation in 1968, he wrote “to the lads of OSIRIS,” apologizing that “enterprise in protection of M.I.T. calls for that I be absent.”
Johnson’s letter hints on the forces that in the end put an finish to the group: Osiris was a relic of the previous—for instance, it had no feminine members till 1969—and MIT was underneath assault within the current.
“I used to be added in 1969 once I was vp of the Graduate Pupil Council,” recollects Marvin Sirbu Jr. ’66, ’67, SM ’68, EE ’70, ScD ’73. “I bear in mind how outstanding it was that college students and college/directors met and talked informally in the way in which that they did at Osiris conferences.”
TECHNIQUE 1904
At the moment Howard Johnson’s presidency is remembered for his deft dealing with of pupil unrest, together with three days in November 1969 when greater than a thousand individuals protested the Institute’s relationship with the US Division of Protection. The documentary November Actions contains movie from conferences of a joint committee of college and college students that helped defuse the state of affairs. Whereas lots of the college students had been members of Osiris, they had been current as a result of they had been elected pupil leaders, not as a result of they belonged to the key society. However Sirbu means that the Osiris conferences could clarify why these within the room felt so comfy with one another.
Handwritten minutes from two conferences within the spring of 1971 reveal that subjects mentioned included marijuana, civility in Osiris conferences, and the doable reemergence of McCarthyism on campus. An article in The Tech reported that subjects comparable to analysis coverage and housing had been additionally typical. However Osiris was in decline. That March, Grey had noticed that 34 individuals had
RSVPed “sure” for the March 16 assembly, however solely 27 had proven up—and that “actives” (pupil members) had been outnumbered by “over thirties” by about three to 1.
A couple of weeks earlier than Provost Jerome Wiesner turned MIT’s president in July 1971, a letter signed by Killian and Johnson went out to members asking for monetary donations, signaling the tip of the Institute’s monetary assist for Osiris.
“On the finish of my junior yr, I used to be apprised by Dan Nyhart, then MIT’s dean for pupil affairs, that Osiris was in arrears to the Institute and wanted to pay its debt,” recollects Lee Giguere ’73, who joined in 1972 with fellow Tech editor Alex Makowski ’72.
“In these days—the early Seventies—the ambiance was fairly radical,” he says, and accessing a “personal channel to the powers that be” ran counter to his understanding of his function as a reporter. Though he remembers compiling an inventory of recent initiates, there aren’t any data exhibiting that these college students had been ever invited to hitch.
However the precise date of Osiris’s demise stays unclear. Burns recollects a dialog with Frederick Fassett, former dean of residence, in regards to the topic within the early Seventies. “He merely mentioned that it had outlived its worth, partly because of adjustments skilled within the Nineteen Sixties,” he says. “I by no means acquired any formal discover of its finish.”
