The History of the System: The Beefsteak Years (1918–1929)

Until the year 1926, there existed at the University of Florida one secret political party, organized and composed practically of representatives from certain fraternities. This party, named by its own choice the Beefsteak Club, met in smoke filled rooms behind closed doors, and handed out upon a platter the spoils of university elections.¹

Introduction: A Historiographical Problem

The Bradshaw Papers are the most well-known exposure of “the System,” the political machine that has dominated politics at the University of Florida for a century. Its dense ninety-two pages painstakingly describes the intricacies of the System’s political structure. Greek houses divide themselves into three factions, or blocs: political, social, and third. The leaders of each bloc and representatives from large multicultural organizations meet in bloc meetings to negotiate the spoils of student government. The powerful positions in student government are all decided at these meetings, plundering the tuition dollars of the student body. Meanwhile, the wealthy alumni network of Florida Blue Key provides resources, connections, and generation of experience to aspiring members of the System.

Although the Bradshaw Papers remain an integral reading for those seeking to understand the System, it retains limitations. One glaring limitation is its scope. As a political science dissertation, the Bradshaw Papers focuses on the complex alliance and patronage structure of the System but only briefly touches on its history. Even after reading his paper, the System retains a dream-like image, emerging from time immemorial to grasp the University of Florida in its hands.

The historiography of the System is plagued with this amnesia. The most popular articles on the System mention the same few figures and events: the victory of Dan Lobeck, the intimidation against Debbie Wassserman, and the lawsuit of Charles Grapski. Yet the origins of the System remain shrouded. In contrast, political machines at other universities are meticulously documented. The Machine at the University of Alabama has documentaries, countless news articles, and even a podcast series detailing its history, structure, and mechanisms of power.

This year, 2023, is the hundred year anniversary of Florida Blue Key. To put it another way, the System has weathered every major event of the last hundred years: Prohibition, the Great Depression, World War II, the Red Scare, the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, desegregation, the rise of neoliberalism, the women’s liberation movement, the war on terror, and COVID-19. The tenacity and robustness of the System, when placed into its historical context, is nothing short of astonishing. The dense history of this political machine remains buried in the archives of newspapers, yearbooks, student government party bulletins, and oral histories. This series by the uf_politics seriousposting team, The History of the System, seeks to uncover its century-long domination and address the gap within the historiography.

The Beginnings of UF Student Self-Government

1905–1917

In 1905, the students of the newly established University of the State of Florida — numbering around one hundred — gathered in the university chapel to elect their class officers. Students nominated candidates from the floor and raised their hands to signal approval. The class officer was a symbolic position, but some students wanted real self-government. They eventually held a vote on whether to create a constitution to govern themselves. After some deliberation, they voted the proposal down, deciding that they were too young to rule over each other.²

By the summer of 1915, the University of Florida began to dabble once again with student self-government. In the prior years, the debate over self-government raged in the The Florida Alligator with headlines of “SELF-GOVERNMENT SHOULD BE INAUGURATED” decorating the front page.³ The movement snowballed as prominent student organizations, including the Agriculture Club, passed supportive resolutions. Partisans for student government justified their position by gesturing towards the successful student governments of other universities: “Certainly we are as capable of governing ourselves as the men in Texas and Wisconsin. If we are not we will never become so by letting the faculty decide every move we shall make and having no word in our government.”⁴

By the summer of 1914, the summer student body voted unanimously to approve the student government. Its first implementation in the summer of 1915, however, was relatively insignificant. Student government consisted of a council of nine student representatives, governing infractions against the university’s honor system. This council would work under a self-passed resolution:

We, the students of the University Summer School, pledge ourselves to conduct ourselves at all times as ladies and gentlemen and to recognize and respect the rights of our fellow students.⁵

The student self-government council, presiding over the university’s population of roughly four hundred students, saw relatively few cases but its conduct was nevertheless praised as a success in The Florida Alligator.⁶ By June 1916, the student body adopted a more permanent student-governed honor system. The honor system would involve an executive committee of five voting members, elected from each class. The president of the senior class would be the committee’s chairman. The committee’s duty was to govern breaches of the university’s honor system, a fairly benign responsibility.

Despite its humble beginnings as an executor of the honor system, UF’s student government would be rocked by the end of World War I.⁷

The Early Beefsteak Club

1918–1920

In 1918, following World War I, a group of veterans colluded to seize control of UF campus politics. Royal P. Terry, their unofficial leader, organized them into a political machine to overwhelm the old line fraternities and take over student government from students who did not fight in the war.⁸ The organization that emerged from their conspiracy, the Beefsteak Club, would be the beginning of what is known as “The System” today.

Prior to the formation of the Beefsteak Club, various fraternities battled for control of student government. Elmer Hinckley, a member of the Beefsteak Club, claimed that Alpha Tau Omega (ATO) monopolized campus politics before the formation of their combine.⁹ The beefsteakers emphasized ATO’s domination of campus politics, writing in a party newspaper that “In 1915, when the student body government was inaugurated, one fraternity [ATO] immediately stepped into the control of the elected offices, and through them, practically the entire field of student activity.”¹⁰

The veracity of the Beefsteakers’ claim to resisting ATO’s monopoly on power, however, cannot be confirmed by the historical record. Cross-referencing names of student body presidents to fraternity affiliation does not reveal the singular domination of ATO but rather paints a picture of a number of fraternities struggling for control of campus politics.¹¹

Regardless of the state of campus politics prior to the Beefsteak Club, after its formation it would irrevocably shape student government. Formed as a secret society in 1918, the combine struggled for power in its first three years.¹² However, as its influence grew, beefsteakers played a crucial role behind the scenes expanding student government’s power.

Near the end of the 1919–1920 school year, the student body approved a budget for student activities. The budget, bitterly opposed by some students, levied an entrance fee of $20 on each student to fund activities such as sports, literary societies, the student newspaper, and the yearbook. A committee composed of B. E. Bushnell, R. P. Terry, and J. Velma Keene drew a new constitution of a student body association to manage the funds, totalling around $14,000, collected from students.¹³ Terry and Keene, crucially, were members of the Beefsteak Club.

An Era of Beefsteak Domination

1921–1925

Soon after the dramatic expansion of student government’s power, the Beefsteak Club swept the elections of 1921. To ensure its continued domination, the group would engage in egregious corruption, election fraud, and conspiracy.

Two days before election night, beefsteak leaders decided the number of votes each candidate would receive. Then, the night before elections, beefsteak election officials gathered to tally the votes. They shut off the lights and, in complete darkness, replaced real votes with fake votes they marked the night before. When the lights returned, the results miraculously matched the agreed upon numbers. Victorious, the election fraudsters celebrated with a downtown beefsteak dinner, hence the name “Beefsteak Club.”¹⁴

The two main fraternities that controlled the Beefsteak Club were Kappa Sigma and Pi Kappa Alpha. Kappa Sigma was an explicit project by Royal P. Terry to perpetuate beefsteak control of campus politics.¹⁵ Pi Kappa Alpha was the fraternity closest to Kappa Sigma and a fellow charter member of the Beefsteak Club. These two fraternities divided the offices of student government, The Alligator, and The Seminole among themselves while providing a few crumbs to other fraternities and non-fraternity men.¹⁶

However, the participation of other fraternities in the Beefsteak Club remains evident from the historical record. Despite its status as a secret society, the Beefsteak Club published a list of members in the 1922 edition of the UF yearbook, The Seminole.¹⁷ The page lacks any description barring a mystifying phrase: “What did the Young Bull say to the Old Bull?”

The meaning of the phrase is elucidated by Arthur Black, a beefsteaker who explained the motto in an interview:

This is a rather crude statement, but they would ask, “What is the motto of the Beefsteak Club?” We would answer, “The bulls.” They would say, “All right, the bull walks out into the pasture, and there are a bunch of cows, which ones are we going to take? We said, “We will take them all.” So, we took all of the offices. They would say to the bull, “Which ones will you take?” We said, “Take them all.” So we took all of the offices.¹⁸

Of the six names listed in The Seminole, four were members of Kappa Alpha. The participation of other fraternities in the Beefsteak Club is also evident from the fraternity affiliation of Student Body Presidents in the years of beefsteak control (1921–1926), which included Theta Chi, Sigma Phi Epsilon, and Delta Tau Delta.¹⁹

The Beefsteak Club maintained strict discipline among the fraternities it controlled. In fraternity houses, beefsteak leaders posted a list of the approved candidates with instructions that pledges vote for them under the penalty of appearing before the rat court.²⁰ Rats, as freshmen were called, were under the strict rule of campus traditions enforced by a vigilance committee. Unofficially, rat court was a means by which to force pledges to vote for the correct, beefsteak-endorsed candidates.

Each week, The Florida Alligator published a list of freshmen to appear before rat court, ordering them to bring a paddle board two and a half feet long, four inches wide, and one half inch thick.²¹ Freshmen who did not comply with their fraternity’s voting orders were physically punished with the paddle. The practice of forcing freshmen to vote for the correct party became known as “block voting,” and it ensured the Beefsteak Club won every election in its period of unchecked domination.

With its control of campus politics solidified, the Beefsteak Club embezzled student funds with impunity. Rumors spread that editors and business managers made lavish financial gains from their positions.²² Beverly Mann, chairman of the Beefsteak Club and business manager of The Seminole flaunted his wealth with an extravagant house and a sports car.²³ One of his scams involved increasing the price of student pictures by ten cents and requiring all students to have a new picture taken. He went on to pocket the extra cash.²⁴

By the spring of 1925, “sweeping agitation” emerged for another reorganization of student government. Reformers argued for the old constitution’s inadequacy, designed for a student body of less than five hundred. The student body voted for Milton Yeats, the beefsteak Student Body President, to lead and appoint a committee that would draft a new constitution.²⁵ With only a few modifications, the drafted constitution was accepted.²⁶ This new constitution outlined the officers of the student body, the powers of the executive council, and the subsidiary organizations under the executive council. The constitution described the governmental powers of the council as follows:

The power of government authority is vested in the executive council composed of fifteen representatives chosen by the student body at large. These delegated powers of the council may be enumerated in the following manner: to appropriate money; to appropriate moneys from the special fund; to grant, amend, or ratify amendments to charters of subsidiary [organizations]; to remove by two-thirds vote of its members any student body officer; to adopt freshman rules and provide for their enforcement; to require a report at any time from any organization under the student body budget.²⁷

In the span of a decade, from 1915 to 1925, student government’s powers had expanded dramatically. Beginning with its humble role as an enforcer of the honor code, the new constitution formalized its powers of financial appropriation, control over subsidiary organizations (including the school newspaper, yearbook, and directory), and disciplinary function over freshmen. At each step of student government’s expansion, the Beefsteak Club played a shadowy role behind the scenes: stacking constitutional committees, committing electoral fraud, physically coercing freshmen, enforcing block voting, and embezzling student funds.

Nevertheless, in dialectical fashion, political corruption produces its own opposition. The first independents, the originators of the indies, emerged under the banner of the Hamburger Club.

The Hamburger Club: The First Indies

1926

By February 1926, thirty prominent students — half of which were non-fraternity men — formed to fight “the organization.”²⁸ The Beefsteak Club derided this opposition with the name “the unorganized organization.”²⁹ Eventually, they would settle on a wittier nickname: The Hamburger Club.³⁰ At first, the hamburgers’ existence was equally as shadowy as the beefsteakers. A columnist in The Florida Alligator wrote:

We feel greatly honored. Yesterday a mysterious looking individual came up to us and said that we had been voted a bid to the new political club, the Hamburgers, but so far we have not accepted, due to the fact that we have decided to hold out and see if we will get a bid from the older and more successful group.³¹

Olin Watts, a well-respected and admired campus figure, was one leader of the Hamburger Club.³² Watts explained that the hamburgers were: “a party of individuals, working as individuals for individuals, tolerating no block or group voting impetus.”³³ Significantly, he was also vice president of the student body.

Discontent among the beefsteakers was brewing. The Florida Alligator, the student newspaper and a coveted position distributed to loyal beefsteakers, also began to break away. Angus Laird, a Kappa Sigma and the editor-in-chief, ran stories in support of open elections: “Politics are more in the open this year than ever before, and this is approaching a condition that should have been prevalent here for years.”³⁴ Fuller Warren, the future governor of Florida, also sympathized with the Hamburger Club, stating:

We might as well admit that we have an organization…but it is a clean organization. It is not run on the block ticket plan, but on the individual effort plan. The [opposition] has controlled politics at the University for the last five years. They have done well, as a rule, but they have gathered excessive power that should be checked. Capable men not in their organization did not have a chance until the Hamburgers were organized. Two parties on the campus will make for fairer and cleaner politics.³⁵

The excitement around the hamburgers grew as the beefsteakers faced their first organized political opposition. Turnout in the elections of 1926 reached a record-breaking 1,108 votes ³⁶— 63.1% of the total student population of 1,756.³⁷ Despite the numbers, the beefsteakers clinched victory. The beefsteak candidate for Student Body President, Henson Markham, defeated the hamburger candidate by 49 votes.³⁸

The crushing election loss led many hamburger leaders to abandon hope of political reform and the party verged on disintegration.³⁹ Defectors from the Beefsteak Club also faced retribution. As punishment for publishing stories sympathetic to the hamburgers and critical of block voting, Angus Laird quietly lost his chairmanship in the Beefsteak Club.⁴⁰

Nevertheless, the Hamburger Club’s 1926 campaign opened Pandora’s box. As the Hamburgers would write in a future party newspaper:

The [hamburgers] had been organized two months and its organization could not successfully combat the old block vote of the opposition. In defeat the new party felt that victory had been in a sense theirs’; for they had forced from behind closed doors the opposition, proving to the campus the manner in which politics had been conducted in previous years.⁴¹

The political machine that ran the UF’s student government unopposed for half a decade had a bloody nose. All it needed was another strike.

The Complete Annihilation of the Mighty (?) Beefsteak Club

1927

In 1927, opposition to the Beefsteak Club regrouped to once again threaten its hegemonic control over student government. The remnants of the Hamburger Club reorganized under a new generation of anti-beefsteak crusaders. Meanwhile, the Beefsteak Club suffered a dramatic split in January of 1927; many reform-oriented beefsteakers grew disenchanted by their intransigent leadership.⁴² Two leaders of the Hamburger Club approached Angus Laird, one such disenchanted beefsteaker, to lead their anti-beefsteak party. He agreed to be vice chairman with Robert Parker, a Theta Chi, as chairman.⁴³

This new coalition of hamburger remnants and beefsteak defectors emerged as a new party: the Democratic Club. The Democratic Club selected two delegates from each fraternity and ten to twelve independents to draw up a constitution and by-laws.⁴⁴ One reform the Democrats concocted was district voting. At the time, elections for fifty-one student body officer positions were held at large.⁴⁵ At-large elections, they argued, meant many voters did not personally know the candidates, leading to block voting and vote trading as a natural consequence.

As a remedy, the Democrats proposed geographical primary elections of delegates to a nominating convention. This convention, held in public, would nominate candidates for student government office instead of determining such positions in secret meetings. The Democratic Club’s hoped that district primary elections would abolish bloc voting by ensuring freshmen would know the men for whom they would be voting.⁴⁶

The Democratic Club, unlike the previous year, were organized. They published a party newspaper detailing the Beefsteak Club’s practice of bloc voting and vote trading. They also publicized the defection of Angus Laird and adopted platform points for greater financial accountability and fairer elections.⁴⁷

The bitterness of the election heated up in the “Forum” section of the Florida Alligator. In the letters submitted to the editor, beefsteakers and hamburgers traded verbal blows. In one column, Angus Laird threatened to expose the Beefsteak Club’s corrupt practices: “I do not favor making a scandal sheet of the Alligator, or I would do so now.”⁴⁸ The following week, beefsteakers rhetorically struck back at Laird, describing the Democratic Club as a rebrand of the Hamburger Club: “But wait, strip off the lamb’s clothing, and lo! [T]here is the leering countenance of the hamburger wolf!”⁴⁹

The week before the election, the “Gator Gossip” column in the Florida Alligator described the sentiment of the time:

The approaching election is the topic of the day. At present campus opinion has it that the Democratic party has the slight [edge] but an election is never won until [the vote] is cast and counted. This year’s election promises to be the most interesting for some years.⁵⁰

Friday, April 8th, 1927. The election took place the night before, but multiple delays occurred due to political subterfuge. Someone had cut the lights, forcing election officials to count the ballots by candlelight. The lights were repaired four hours later at 3:30 AM. By 7 AM, the results had been tallied. The Democratic Party swept.⁵¹

The scale of the Beefsteak Club’s loss was staggering. Voter turnout broke last year’s record-breaking numbers at around 1,350 votes. The Democratic candidates, Bud Mizell for Student Body President, David Lanier as Vice President, and Bob Hughes for Secretary-Treasurer, all won by “overwhelming margins.” Only three beefsteak candidates were elected.⁵²

Euphoria swept the hamburgers, vindicated of their two-year struggle against the Beefsteak political machine. They held a victory frolic to celebrate “the complete annihilation of the mighty (?) Beefsteak Club.” Angus Laird, of course, was the toast master.

The Beefsteak Club, deprived of the spoils of student government for the first time in half a decade, had more tricks up its sleeve. Learning from the successful tactics of the Hamburger Club, they would be ready next year.

The First Counterinsurgency

1928–1929

The following year, the Beefsteak Club adopted the successful practices of the hamburgers: pull defectors, rebrand, and perpetuate a self-serving narrative of anti-corruption. They took a new name, “The Liberal Party,” and published their own party newspaper, The Liberal Bulletin.

The Liberal Bulletin described the Liberal Party as a new entity: “Several fraternities which had become dissatisfied with the Hamburger methods, withdrew and with former members of the Beefsteak Club, formed an entirely new organization known as the Liberal Party.”⁵³ They also adopted a narrative of anti-corruption. Rather than being a political machine that operated through voter coercion, embezzlement, and electoral fraud, the “entirely new” Liberal Party painted themselves as historical opponents of student government corruption:

About the year 1918, a group of men who realized the dangers of an autocratic government, formed an organization for the purpose of placing the control of the student body officers in the hands of those to whom it rightfully belonged,- — the students themselves. This organization adopted the name of the Beefsteak Club…by their fair dealings they had inspired in the students confidence in the organization and the “best man for the job” policy it had adopted.⁵⁴

Alpha Tau Omega became the Beefsteak Club’s scapegoat. The party newspaper alleged the hamburgers were an ATO plot to re-establish the dictatorship that the beefsteakers had broken up when they first won in 1921.⁵⁵

Meanwhile, the Democrats’ new electoral system involving a nominating convention was off to a rocky start. The first student body electoral convention, held to nominate candidates from each party in an open forum, met with a move for a twenty-two hour and fifteen minute recess. The lack of regulations regarding the convention’s date and time meant many students were not notified of the convention, and the recess request was meant to delay the nominating convention to the next day. After debating the move to recess, the body passed it. The first session of the nominating convention lasted a mere forty minutes.⁵⁶

On the second day of the convention, the beefsteak Liberal Party had a majority of the attendees. Because the convention had not established rules regarding its own body, the Liberals theoretically had the power to simply nominate their own candidates and sweep the election by barring their opposition. Instead, the Liberals opted for the high road; allowing the Democrats to nominate their candidates without any stalling procedures.⁵⁷

With the tense nomination process finished, the elections were on. The Florida Alligator called the 1928 election campaign “the most heated election in the history of University of Florida politics.”⁵⁸ The turnout, which had broken records for two years in a row, was smashed for a third time: 1,600. The high volume of ballots meant election officials were counting from Thursday 5:30 PM when the polls closed to 4:00 AM Friday morning. As the ballots were counted, each party received live updates on the numbers. At one point, the Liberal and Democratic candidates for Student Body President tied at 536 to 536.

Eventually, the beefsteak Liberal candidate for president, Clay Lewis, won the presidency by a close margin of 838–798. The overall result was a mixed bag for both parties. The hamburger Democrats won the vice president and secretary-treasurer positions. Yet, in total, the Democrats won twenty-two seats, the Liberals won twenty-two seats, and one race resulted in a tie.⁵⁹ No clear winner emerged from the election. In such a state of deadlock, the only question was which party would blink first.

The answer would be swift: the hamburger Democratic Club. Traitors in their party flipped to the Liberals after being promised the presidency of the freshman class.⁶⁰

The failure to secure a majority and defectors flipping to the Liberal Party caused significant problems for the Democratic Party the following year. With its momentum stunted significantly, the Florida Alligator described the elections of 1929 as “one of the dullest in the history of Florida student politics.”⁶¹ The Liberal Party swept and won forty-three of the forty-six contested seats.⁶² The Liberal candidate for Student Body President, Bill Duckwell, won by a majority of two to one in a turnout of 1,570 students.⁶³

After their overwhelming defeat in the 1929 elections, the Democratic Party withdrew from politics, allowing the beefsteak Liberal Party to return to their unchecked domination. The beefsteak counterinsurgency was complete.

The collapse of the Hamburger Club is the natural end to this story. The Beefsteak Club, although temporarily defeated, launched its counterinsurgency with a familiar arsenal of weapons: defections, rebrands, and political scheming. The nascent electoral conspiracy of a few fraternities had grown into a young political machine, capable of subsuming its immature opposition. By 1928, the Independent Bulletin employed the first recorded use of “system” to refer to Greek political machine that runs UF campus:

Such insubordination to the “system,” however, was not to be tolerated…⁶⁴

From Beefsteak to Parm: Grifting for Over A Century

Almost a century out from the obscure student government battles between the Beefsteak Club and Hamburger Club, the parallels to today’s corruption in UF student government are remarkable. Voter coercion of Greek life, financial mismanagement and fraud, block voting, and stealing elections remain potent factors in UF student government. The use of food to celebrate voter coercion and electoral fraud — beefsteak in the 1920s and chicken parmesan in the 2020s — is another amusing coincidence.

The arsenal of weapons the System wields today (rebranding, bribing defectors, coercing voters) were first employed in the Beefsteak-Hamburger conflict one hundred years ago. The consistency of these practices shows a staggering lack of creativity among those operating political machinery at the University of Florida. However, it also shows the efficacy of such tactics; the System wouldn’t employ such methods if they didn’t work.

An astonishing trend that emerged in the course of our research, however, is that the System did not hijack UF student government’s otherwise democratic process. The System created UF student government. Each instance student government’s powers expanded, the Beefsteak Club played a shadowy role in the background. In 1920, beefsteakers controlled the committee that decided to collect the activity and service fee, giving financial power to student government for the first time. Beefsteakers also wrote the 1925 student government constitution, consolidating its financial and penal power as well as its control over subsidiary organizations. At each step of this process, beefsteakers enriched themselves, grifting off the tuition funds of regular students.

Nevertheless, the story of the Beefsteak-Hamburger conflict presents numerous complications. First is the fact that the characters in this narrative — from both sides — were white men and usually racist white men. The University of Florida at this time did not accept women or people of color, denying them the right to an unsegregated and equal education. The 1920s was also the height of the Klu Klux Klan in Florida, and men of both Beefsteak and Hamburger persuasion were drawn to its ideology of white supremacy. Both sides of this struggle — supposedly about political integrity — accepted the subordinate social and political role of women and people of color.

Another complication is the projection of contemporary categories into the distant past. For example, was the Hamburger Club a true precursor to the independent movement? Or was it a factional split among fraternities for control of student government? In his memoir, William Carleton, a beefsteaker, characterizes early UF student politics as the latter:

There were two student parties. The division was not one of fraternities against independents. Instead, one league of fraternities was the nucleus of one party, another league the nucleus of the other party. The caucus of each party included representatives from its member fraternities and in addition delegates from the independents… [independent] leaders had to be shrewd ‘pros’ who became wielders of the balance of power and often the most prestigious ‘politicos’ on the campus. That the spoils of office loomed large was indicated by the very names the two parties bore–Hamburgers versus Beefsteakers.⁶⁵

The blurred lines between categories like “System” and “independent” deserve critical interrogation. The usefulness of such categories when applied to the distant past is questionable. The confounding factor is that the current iteration of the System — characterized by its rigid bloc structure, uniform Greek support, and inclusion of multicultural organizations — only emerged relatively recently in 2005 following the victory of Jamal Sowell. While the System of the 2020s shares many characteristics with the Beefsteak Club of the 1920s, characterizing them both as “System” fails to communicate the differences between them.

The final complication is the assumption of teleology — that the System of today inevitably emerges from the Beefsteak Club of a century ago. When we left the story, the Hamburger Club collapsed from the internal and external pressure of the Beefsteak Club. Nevertheless, the struggle of the beefsteakers for control over student government was not over. In fact, this struggle intensified as student leaders at UF and throughout the country bitterly split on one question: loyalty to which leadership honorary society?

The next installment of our “History of the System” series will be “Florida Blue Key’s War on Two Fronts: ODK and National Blue Key (1923–1933).”

Appendix A: UF Student Body Presidents and Fraternity Affiliation 1915–1928

Year, Student Body President, Fraternity Affiliation
1915–1916, Spessard L. Holland, Alpha Tau Omega
1916–1917, P. F. Collins, Sigma Chi
1917–1918, M. F. Brown, Pi Kappa Alpha
1918–1919, E. L. Beggs, Sr., Unknown
1919–1920, B. E. Bushnell, Pi Kappa Alpha
1920–1921, H. G. Ford, Alpha Tau Omega
1921–1922, W. J. Bivens , Theta Chi
1922–1923, J. A. Winfield, Kappa Sigma
1923–1924, R. L. Earnest, Pi Kappa Alpha
1924–1925, M.L. Yeats, Sigma Phi Epsilon
1925–1926, E. R. McGill , Delta Tau Delta
1926–1927, Henson Markham, Sigma Alpha Epsilon
1927–1928, B. F. Mizell, Unknown

End Notes

[1] “History of Politics on Florida Campus,” The Democratic Journal 2, no. 3 (1928): 1.

[2] The Florida Alligator, October 22, 1938, https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00028291/01064/, 10.

[3] The Florida Alligator, January 15, 1914, https://ufdc.ufl.edu/uf00028291/00518, 1.

[4] The Florida Alligator, March 12, 1914, https://ufdc.ufl.edu/uf00028291/00526, 3–4.

[5] The Florida Alligator, June 30, 1915, https://ufdc.ufl.edu/uf00028291/00573, 1.

[6] The Florida Alligator, August 7, 1915, https://ufdc.ufl.edu/uf00028291/00584, 2.

[7] The Florida Alligator, June 2, 1916, https://ufdc.ufl.edu/uf00028291/00607, 1, 4.

[8] Angus Laird, Like I Saw It: The University Years (Tallahassee, FL: St. Andrews Press, 1981): 21.

[9] Elmer Hinckley, “Interview with Elmer D. Hinckley, July 25, 1972,” interview by Samuel Proctor, Samuel Proctor Oral History Program. Transcript, 17. July 25, 1972. https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00005899/00001/images.

[10] “History,” The Liberal Bulletin 1, no. 2 (1928): 1.

[11] See Appendix A: UF Student Body Presidents and Fraternity Affiliation 1915–1928.

[12] “History,” The Liberal Bulletin, 1.

[13] University of Florida, The Seminole (Gainesville, Florida: 1921), 89, University of Florida Archives. https://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00022765/00012/images.

[14] Laird, Like I Saw It, 21–25.

[15] Ibid., 22.

[16] Ibid., 25.

[17] University of Florida, The Seminole (Gainesville, Florida: 1922), 281, University of Florida Archives. https://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00022765/00013/images.

[18] Arthur Black, “Interview with Arthur Black, 07–26–1984,” interview by Sid Johnson, Samuel Proctor Oral History Program. Transcript, 10. July 26, 1984. https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00006319/00001/images.

[19] See Appendix A: UF Student Body Presidents and Fraternity Affiliation 1915–1928.

[20] Laird, Like I Saw It, 30.

[21] The Florida Alligator, November 23, 1925, https://ufdc.ufl.edu/uf00028291/00752, 6.

[22] Laird, Like I Saw It, 23.

[23] Ibid., 36.

[24] Ibid., 39.

[25] The Florida Alligator, May 15, 1926, https://ufdc.ufl.edu/uf00028291/00773, 1.

[26] The Florida Alligator, November 1, 1925, https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00028291/00749/images, 4.

[27] The Florida Alligator, May 15, 1926, https://ufdc.ufl.edu/uf00028291/00773, 2.

[28] “Facts and History of Party Disclosed,” The Democratic Journal 2 no. 3 (1928): 1.

[29] Laird, Like I Saw It, 27.

[30] Ibid., 21.

[31] The Florida Alligator, March 20, 1926, https://ufdc.ufl.edu/uf00028291/00765, 6.

[32] Angus Laird, “Interview with Angus M. Laird, February 1, 1980,” interview by Samuel Proctor, Samuel Proctor Oral History Program. Transcript, 31. February 1, 1980. https://ufdc.ufl.edu/uf00006028/00001.

[33] The Florida Alligator, April 3, 1926, https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00028291/00767/images, 1.

[34] The Florida Alligator, March 27, 1926, https://ufdc.ufl.edu/uf00028291/00766, 6.

[35] The Florida Alligator, April 3, 1926, https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00028291/00767/images, 1.

[36] Ibid., 1.

[37] The Florida Alligator, October 25, 1926, https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00028291/00748/, 2.

[38] The Florida Alligator, April 3, 1926, https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00028291/00767/images, 1.

[39] “Facts and History of Party Disclosed,” The Democratic Journal (1927): 1

[40] Laird, Like I Saw It, 27.

[41] “Facts and History of Party Disclosed,” The Democratic Journal 2 no. 3 (1928): 1–4.

[42] Ibid., 1.

[43] Laird, Like I Saw It, 35.

[44] “Reform Movement of Democratic Party Told,” The Democratic Journal (1927): 1.

[45] Ibid., 1.

[46] Ibid., 3.

[47] “Facts and History of Party Disclosed,” The Democratic Journal (1927): 1.

[48] The Florida Alligator, March 26, 1927, https://ufdc.ufl.edu/uf00028291/00807, 4.

[49] The Florida Alligator, April 2, 1927, https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00028291/00808/, 4.

[50] Ibid., 6.

[51] The Florida Alligator, April 9, 1927, https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00028291/00809/, 1.

[52] Ibid., 1.

[53] “History,” The Liberal Bulletin, 4.

[54] Ibid., 1.

[55] Ibid., 1.

[56] The Florida Alligator, March 24, 1928, https://ufdc.ufl.edu/uf00028291/00844, 1–3.

[57] “Fair Action Applauded,” The Liberal Bulletin, 4.

[58] The Florida Alligator, April 7, 1928, https://ufdc.ufl.edu/uf00028291/00846, 1.

[59] Ibid., 1.

[60] “Synthetic Porridge,” The Independent Bulletin 1, no. 2 (1928): 1.

[61] The Florida Alligator, April 6, 1929, https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00028291/03641/, 1.

[62] “History,” The Independent 1, no. 1 (1930): 1.

[63] The Florida Alligator, April 6, 1929, https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00028291/03641/, 1.

[64] “Peanut Politicians Puzzled,” The Independent Bulletin 1, no. 2 (1928): 1.

[65] William Carleton, Free Lancing Through The Century (Gainesville, FL: Carleton House): 66.