DKE brothers would play baseball in the New Haven police athletic league, he said, and perform volunteer work to help low-income children in New Haven. And as you know, when people at Yale use that word to describe our fellow classmates, you know that person is special.”ĭavid Easlick, who was executive director of DKE’s national organization while Kavanaugh was an undergraduate, said that in the mid-1980s Yale’s DKE chapter stood out for its community spirit. “I also remember people referring to him as a ‘genius’ back then. “I only remember thinking of him as a truly wonderful guy back then, just a great person to be around,” Gallo said of Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh would have been required to be tapped for the fraternity by an upperclassman, probably a student athlete who also belonged to Stiles, Gallo said. Still, at that point in its history, DKE’s Yale chapter was popular enough that students could not freely enter the rush process, according to Steve Gallo ’88, who became president of DKE during his senior year at Yale.

Jennifer Wuerker ’87 and Jacqueline Horne ’87, who were both in Stiles with Kavanaugh, said that Greek life was off their radar in college, and that they did not know anyone involved in fraternities. It was not until 1988 that Sigma Nu became Yale’s third fraternity chapter.įive female alumni from the class of 1987 said they weren’t aware of any particular reputation associated with DKE in the 80s. While Kavanaugh was an undergraduate, there were only two fraternities on campus, DKE and Zeta Psi. Indeed, Greek life was generally a “sidebar” in the 1980s, said Kevin Smith ’87, because of the small number of such organizations at Yale. It was not until 1987 that the legal drinking age in the United States was raised to 21, making it easier back then for parties to take place on campus, Brennan also noted.

Martin Brennan ’87, a classmate of Kavanaugh’s in Ezra Stiles College, said fraternities did not play much of a role in campus life during his time at Yale, adding that he has heard more about DKE since he graduated than he did while he was on campus. “DKE was pretty tame back in Kavanaugh’s time,” Chauncey said. Bush ’48, also belonged to DKE - famously defended the fraternity’s practice of branding pledges with a red-hot coat hanger, in interviews with the News and the New York Times.īut the fraternity had quieted down by the time Kavanaugh arrived on campus, said Sam Chauncey, a longtime University administrator.

In 1967, Bush - whose father, former U.S. Bush ’68 was a member - had been turned over to Yale and transformed into the Rose Alumni House, a Yale-owned building on York Street. The fraternity house that hosted DKE hijinks in the 1960s - when former U.S. Until 1988, the fraternity did not have its own house and had to hold meetings in the residential colleges. Yale’s Title IX officials began an investigation into DKE’s sexual climate in February, less than three years after the fraternity’s return to campus following a five-year ban handed down as punishment after the group’s pledges were caught on video chanting “no means yes, yes means anal” in front of the Women’s Center.īut the DKE that Kavanaugh belonged to in the 1980s was not the same organization that has generated negative headlines over the last decade, according to alumni and former Yale and DKE administrators. In the week since Brett Kavanaugh ’87 LAW ’90 was nominated to the Supreme Court, many Yale undergraduates have fixated on one eyebrow-raising aspect of his tenure at the University: his membership in Delta Kappa Epsilon, a fraternity that has come under fire over the last year amid allegations of sexual misconduct against multiple members.

Kavanaugh skull and bones