A comparison of this record of fraternity establishment with similar figures from other universities will show that Michigan was one of the first of the larger institutions in which the fraternity system took deep root. Student life at Michigan has always been colored by it, and the mass of students, from the first, has been divided into fraternity and non-fraternity elements; an unofficially recognized distinction which has had far-reaching effects in all student affairs, particularly class-elections, student athletics, journalism, and general society membership. The "independent" suffers no particular social disability, save as he misses the pleasant club life of the fraternity. Often, if he is a man of marked ability, he finds his independence a distinct advantage in college affairs, for non-fraternity men have always been in sufficient majority to see that the choice positions go to the "independent" representatives. Within the fraternities, too, there has always existed a division between the older and the more recent organization which was, for a long time, almost as marked as the division between fraternity and non-fraternity men. This came through the rivalry that arose between two groups of fraternities. The first, known as the "Palladium," took its name from an annual, first published in 1859, which came to represent the interests of nine fraternities in college up to 1876, while a second group was made up of the fraternities established after that date. The break came through the establishment of an "anti-secret" fraternity, Delta Upsilon, which the older fraternities refused to recognize though it later assumed a passive rôle, and became merely non-secret. This organization, however, with the addition of the new fraternities as they were established, formed an opposition to the older societies who stubbornly maintained their control of the _Palladium_. This continued until 1891 when the _Palladium_ finally absorbed the _Castalian_, the annual of the independents, and _Res Gestae_, the law annual, and became at last a representative University publication.
Although in 1897 the name was changed to the present _Michiganensian_, the spirit of the old "Palladium," as an inner ring of fraternities, still existed, particularly in the administration of the annual Junior Hop, which had been a definitely organized student event at least as far back as 1877, and had been preceded by a similar ball given by the Seniors since 1868. The older fraternities long maintained an exclusive control of the Junior Hop. But in 1896 the out-fraternities and the independents protested to the Regents, who sustained their contention, that the Hop, given in the University buildings, should include representatives from the entire Junior class. The Palladium fraternities refused to participate, and that year two "Hops" were given, one by eight fraternities in Toledo, D.K.E. not being represented, and one in the Gymnasium by the more recent fraternities and the independents. The question arose again the next year but was eventually settled by a plan of organization admitting representation upon the committee from all fraternities and the independents in rotation.