“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,” remembers Tom Burns ’62, SM ’63. “On the time, we have been requested to be someplace in Boston in a tuxedo [and] have 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 school and pupil members.” (A written description of initiations within the Nineteen Sixties says that tuxedo-clad initiates usually have been instructed to carry out a stunt—similar to flying paper airplanes in entrance of a ticket counter at Logan—whereas ready to get picked up.) Whereas two annual conferences have been held on the membership, Burns says college members usually hosted the common dinner conferences, many in Killian’s penthouse condominium at 100 Memorial Drive. Scholar members have been chargeable for deciding on the matters and main the discussions, he says, and picked the following yr’s inductees.
In fact, inviting many successive editors of the MIT pupil newspaper to affix a society with such a secret goal was inherently dangerous. Certain sufficient, on February 18, 1955, The Tech ran a front-page article with the headline “Scholar Leaders Meet With Administration and School In Secret Society, Osiris.” The article was unsigned, as have 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.) Per 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 school and college students who meet now and again 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 scholar 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 changing into MIT’s twelfth president in 1966. Johnson clearly took his Osiris duties significantly: Its conferences have been entered into his appointment ebook, and when he missed the initiation in 1968, he wrote “to the boys 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 finally 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 beneath assault within the current.
“I used to be added in 1969 once I was vp of the Graduate Scholar Council,” remembers Marvin Sirbu Jr. ’66, ’67, SM ’68, EE ’70, ScD ’73. “I keep 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
In the present day 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 folks protested the Institute’s relationship with the US Division of Protection. The documentary November Actions consists of movie from conferences of a joint committee of school and college students that helped defuse the state of affairs. Whereas lots of the college students have been members of Osiris, they have been current as a result of they have been elected pupil leaders, not as a result of they belonged to the key society. However Sirbu means that the Osiris conferences might clarify why these within the room felt so comfy with one another.
Handwritten minutes from two conferences within the spring of 1971 reveal that matters mentioned included marijuana, civility in Osiris conferences, and the doable reemergence of McCarthyism on campus. An article in The Tech reported that matters similar to analysis coverage and housing have been additionally typical. However Osiris was in decline. That March, Grey had noticed that 34 folks had
RSVPed “sure” for the March 16 assembly, however solely 27 had proven up—and that “actives” (pupil members) have been outnumbered by “over thirties” by about three to 1.
