An inquiry into what "azure blue" really was, soon revealed the fact that it was generally defined as the clear blue color of the sky or of the sea reflecting it, and was further described as that of the semi-precious stone lapis lazuli. Cobalt and prussian blue were also given as synonyms. With this clear definition in mind, the committee was able to fix the colors, and Michigan now has a clear deep blue and the yellow of Indian corn, with the exact shades officially fixed by samples preserved among the University's records.
Clubs and societies, organized for almost every conceivable purpose, lay and academic, have always played an important rôle in undergraduate affairs and have formed the most characteristic avenue for self-expression outside the class room. Many, if not most, of these organizations have had only a brief existence. Others, in one form or another, have continued through long periods, and have often exercised a strong, though not always an obvious, influence in the whole fabric of university life. Within the last twenty-five years, too, athletics have come to have a predominant interest, but this aspect of student life at Michigan will be discussed in a separate chapter. Aside from the organizations which have accompanied this overwhelming preoccupation of the masculine student, probably the most conspicuous evidence of the gregarious tendencies of the undergraduate have been the fraternities, and following the introduction of co-education, the sororities, as they soon came to be called. After the great struggle between the Faculty and the fraternities which culminated in 1850, the fraternities came to have an acknowledged place in undergraduate affairs. New chapters soon followed after the first three had made their place secure and within thirty years or so several of the older societies had grown sufficiently in prestige, and particularly in alumni support, to begin the practice of owning their own fraternity houses that has now become the rule. The first thought, nowadays, of any newly established fraternity is to find ways and means for building or buying a chapter house.
At first, nearly two-thirds of the students were fraternity members; but the extraordinary growth of the University soon reduced the proportion of fraternity men. This came partly as a result of the relative slowness of the national bodies to establish new chapters in competition with the societies already on the ground, and partly because of the reluctance of the fraternities themselves to increase the size of their chapters or to take in students from the purely professional schools. For these reasons the percentage of fraternity men was reduced to about one-third the total number of students, a proportion which remained fairly constant for many years. The rise of fraternities in the professional schools and the comparatively recent establishment of many new fraternities, however, has brought the percentage up somewhat, though the growth in general attendance during the same period has prevented any marked increase in the relative numbers of fraternity members over the "independents."