A Courageous Headmaster Takes On the
Closing the door in 1950 opens a bigger one in 1973
by Donald Carpenter Goss ’49 ven as Colonel John Mason Kemper, Andover’s 36-year-old headmaster-to-be, looked out over the friendly, enthusiastic throng gathered on the Great Lawn to celebrate his inauguration in 1948, he knew a battle loomed. And he knew that if he were to take the Academy forward, victory was imperative.
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This year, 2010, marks the 60th anniversary of the resolution of a deeply rooted conflict—a resolution that would affirm the true character of Phillips Academy. The conflict that came to a head in the late 1940s was whether Andover’s seven “Secret Societies” should be allowed to continue on campus or forced to close. Each society, lodged in its own privately owned building, was a college-like fraternity in every sense of the word—except that students did not actually live in the houses. In most cases, these “social units” had secret rituals, fraternity pins, clandestine initiations, hazing, an exclusive and exceedingly loyal alumni organization, and the requisite Greek letters. The first such society, KOA, was organized in 1874. In the decades that followed, headmasters were compelled to deal with their proliferation. Kemper was well aware that his 38
Andover | Winter 2010
predecessor, Dr. Claude Moore Fuess, one of Andover’s most respected headmasters, had tried to abolish the societies in 1943. Even with the trustees firmly behind him, Fuess had been routed, embarrassed, and thoroughly thrashed by the powerful Secret Society lobby. The houses themselves were the societies’ primary lure. A place to escape some of the Academy’s restrictions, they typically included a billiard or ping-pong room, a kitchen stocked with hamburgers, hot dogs, sodas and other comfort foods (which were a tremendous relief from the “Spam with the purple sauce” served at Commons), a spacious living room with a radio playing the likes of the comedic Bob and Ray broadcast, and an expansive lawn for touch football. Restrictions on smoking were not enforced. And then there was the unspoken lure—of prestige, popularity, and image. While the societies adhered to most Academy rules, two were frequently violated. Girls got into the houses far more often than was permitted (but far less often than the brothers would have liked), and hazing, sometimes vicious, was disturbingly common. The first night of initiation was often so violent that pledges were actually