Faculty Dining Club A papers

Faculty Dining Club “A”, first known as the “Oxonians” and later the “Aristocrats” was founded at the University of Minnesota in 1911 by Henry Bellows and Wallace Notestein and was the first club of its kind on campus. The main purpose of the Club was to bring faculty members together and allow them to get better acquainted with one another.

Dinner meetings were held regularly, and members were asked to give a prepared speech on occasion. The talk usually reflected the speaker’s hobby, field of research or travel. Election meetings were held to vote on new members and membership eventually reached a peak of seventy. Each spring a new secretary was elected to organize meetings and speakers for the next year.

The club exchanged membership lists with several other dining clubs that were later organized on campus. These were Gown-in-Town (organized in 1914), Faculty Dining Club “B”, also known as the “Bolsheviks” (organized in 1918) and the 39ers Dining Club (organized in 1939).

Attendance at meetings was extremely poor during the last years of the Club, due to an apparent lack of interest. It was finally disbanded in 1967.