Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 10, 1992 TAG: 9202100121
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JUDY SCHWAB
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
GERMAN CLUB ENTERS ERA OF SURVIVAL
For 100 years, Virginia Tech students have been dancing with the German Club - although not as often as they used to.But what is the German Club, anyway?
It has nothing to do with a foreign land or language - as do French, Spanish and Latin clubs. It has nothing to do with running around in little leather pants and knee socks with feathers in their hats, either.
It is something else.
It is something that has been able to withstand the extreme changes of the last 100 years when young women - under the keen eyes of their chaperones - had to be imported for German Club dances.
Times have changed. This week, the current 50-50 mix of men and women at Tech will be observing Condom Week - a student health services effort to inform students about sexually transmitted diseases.
Had the German Club been founded in later times, it might have been called the Charleston Club, or the Fox Trot Club or the Twist Club.
The German in the German Club refers to "a complicated dance for many couples in which partners are changed often," according to a dictionary.
That was a popular dance when the German Club was started in 1887 at what is now Virginia Tech. The Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College, the state's new land-grant institution, had welcomed its first student 15 years earlier.
German and cotillion clubs were popular in the late 19th century, not only at colleges but in towns - and particularly at all-male schools where females showed up only for socially correct events.
Tech's Cotillion Club, started in 1913, folded in the late '60s; the German Club was down to three dances a year, and is now down to one dance weekend a year.
John Darnell, a senior and coordinator for the Midwinters, started on the job last June and was amazed last Friday that it was already February as he conducted the final hours of work on the ballroom decorations.
Through the years, as the need for entertainment through dancing diminished, club members became more service-oriented.
The 1970s brought national fraternities to Tech looking for members. The Cotillion Club went Greek, becoming Pi Kappa Alpha. The German Club was under pressure to do the same.
Club leaders didn't take the bait.
The current club president, Brian Dunch, 21, told a reporter the club has 81 members. Henry Dekker, 70, chairman of the German Club Alumni Foundation, said they were lazy.
Club rules say it can have up to 125 members, Dekker pointed out. He implied the young men just weren't beating the bushes hard enough.
One reason the club isn't up to capacity is the tough entry standards. Only 18 of the last 35 men up for membership made it.
The German Club - then and now exclusively male - received its charter from the university in 1892, so this year is observing its centennial.
The centennial celebration this fall will "shut down Blacksburg," said John Clarke, a member of the German Club Alumni Foundation, Class of 1958.
Meanwhile, Clarke and other alumni are working on the direction of the club for the next hundred years.
Is it possible they will open their doors to women?
"We're looking into that," Dekker said.