Origin and early years at CU, early 20's-1937

Historical context: began as social club to as a place of welcome, social activities, and inter-cultural and international understanding. The KKK was active as an anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, and anti-foreign group in Colorado from 1920-1926. By 1924, nation-wide anti-immigrant sentiment forced the virtual cut-off of non-northern European immigration by setting strict quotas from each country. After the new laws were in place, the Colorado KKK withered. The Cosmopolitan Club may have been, in part, a response to this nativist campaign.

Membership: rapidly, American CU students clamored to be members. The club was so popular, the Cosmo Club had to limit its American membership to 40% of the total. American blacks, Japanese Americans, and liberal white students made up a substantial portion of the membership during the 1920s and 1930s.

Activities: the Cosmo Club featured or sponsored speakers on international issues, ethnic and racial problems. They conducted presentations, plays, and held parties on cultural and international themes. Their activities and announcements received constant attention in the Silver & Gold, the student newspaper from 1890-1953. President George Norlin annually invited the Cosmopolitan Club to dinner at the President's House. Members and officers of the club have cited excellent relations with the President, giving them a voice and an informal advisory position on matters of ethnicity, race, international students, and culture.

The Cosmo Club and Minority Rights, 1938-1945

By 1938, international events in China and Europe highlighted the savage anti-semitism and racism inherent in international fascism. In particular, the actions of Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and Fascist Italy forced liberal Americans to confront domestic racism, segregation, and color bars. By 1938, the Cosmopolitan Club, along with the American Student Union, the YWCA, and other groups, began to form committees to look into local racial and ethnic problems. In November 1938, Krystal Nacht and the wholesale looting, disenfranchisement, and terrorization of German Jews by Nazi Germany filled the front pages of the Daily Camera every day. The Cosmo Club and the ASU began holding meetings to address University and Boulder discrimination.

• On February 16, 1938, a joint meeting of ASU and the Cosmo Club featured 3 black speakers from Denver and a Sociology Professor, who spoke on matters of racism, discrimination. After the meeting, 20 blacks and 30 whites and Asians divided into small groups and went into restaurants, cafes, and soda fountains on the Hill, to break down the color bar. It was the first time in years that blacks had been served on the Hill.
• In November, members of ASU and the Cosmo club requested that the faculty consider discrimination. In a December 1938 meeting of the Faculty Senate, a committee was formed to look into discrimination against minorities, both on and off campus. The Faculty Senate Committee on Ethnic Minorities would, with the close cooperation of student groups, outline both the problems and possible solutions to discrimination on campus and in town. They would take a quiet, gradual, private approach with honoraries, campus officers, city officials and business owners, while students groups, activists, and the Silver & Gold loudly promoted immediate goals.

Haven & Consultant: the Cosmo Club continued their close relationship with the President under Robert Stearns, as President Stearns had been a member of the Faculty Senate Committee on Ethnic Minorities. Between 1939-1943, they sponsored numerous forums, speakers, meetings, and activities on race issues, investigated problems, and explored and proposed solutions to the problem of segregated housing and discrimination on the Hill.

• Many of the major players in the anti-discrimination movement on campus were members of Cosmo Club: Ruth Inabu, Harry Groves, Paul Irish, Dolores Hale, Nate Blumberg, William Rentfro, Joseph Stepanek, Nina Stroud, Lucille Hawkins, and James Taguchi. Of course, the YWCA, the debating and political science clubs also contributed activists.
• During WWII, the Japanese American attendance rose from 17 to 78 students. A close check of the Coloradans for the period reveals that Japanese American students disappeared from most of the clubs and honoraries, after having been very active on the pre-war campus. Concurrently, as many as 40% of the total JA attendance became Cosmo Club members. Roughly 35% of the total club membership was Japanese American from 1942-1946. This does not count casual attendance or event participation. Hence, JA students seem to have clustered in the Cosmopolitan Club for the welcome and social exchange absent from the rest of campus life. On the other hand vigorous diplomacy by University officials had minimized Boulder's anti-Japanese response. Limits on university attendance were largely cosmetic and JA students and the faculty of the Japanese Language School suffered no ghettoization in Boulder.
• By 1944, most of the modest goals of the Faculty Senate had been reached: minority students could student-teach in the Boulder Public Schools; informal resistance to black attendance at the Medical School had been addressed; black students would be admitted to the Boulder Sanitarium; on-campus eating facilities had ameliorated some of the effects of Hill restaurant discrimination; Hill establishments had finally dropped their color bar; international cooperative houses outside of the Goss Grove area allowed minority students to live in a multi-ethnic environment. Combined with the residence halls, housing options for minorities had expanded. Unfortunately, the attitudes and habits of racial separation were not so quickly resolved. Some restaurants still barred minorities or gave them less than equal service. Residence hall still clusterd blacks in the same rooms. Barbershops refused service to blacks.

The Campus takes Over, 1946-1965 (projection from early evidence)

Between 1946 and 1965, other campus organizations competed for, or took over, roles which the Cosmo Club had filled before 1946. Rapid growth of the University allowed the specialization of social interests as well as academic disciplines. In matters of ethnic and racial discrimination, education on international and intercultural education, and in the role of ethnic and racial welcome, other clubs or groups began to compete: particular ethnic clubs; academic departments; and the new Conference on World Affairs took over much of function of teaching internationalism. While the custom of the annual dinner with the President continued, the club lost much of its clout and activism and almost disappeared from Silver & Gold coverage. The University had grown so much in size, that one club could no longer exclusively contain all the functions that the Cosmo Club had held prior to 1945.

• The new Ethnic Minorities Commission of the ASUC (UCSU) systematized the student investigations and education on minority problems on and off campus. As their projects absorbed the interest of activists, they subtracted from the Cosmo Club focus and publicity. In addition, faculty sponsors of the EMC were also involved with the Faculty Senate Committee on Minorities and the new Boulder Unity Council. On minority issues, the Cosmo Club, though still interested in matters of discrimination, had begun to be marginalized.
• The growing Cold War and development of the UN brought international affairs to the forefront to a student body of mature veterans. International relations became the major interest of a plethora of student groups. While political science professors had always sponsored several international and political science clubs and honoraries, the activities of these clubs were greatly enhanced and intensified after 1946.
• The Conference on World Affairs, organized and operated by Sociology Professor Howard Higman became the main annual forum for international education and culture on campus. Cosmo Club minutes demonstrate that club participation and consultation was not sought and members attended the CWA as individuals. While the Cosmo Club continued to hold functions and attract members, where they had once been the main organization, they were now only one group among many involved in inter national, intercultural, and antidiscrimination activities. They had moved from the forefront to the margins.

Rediscovery of Activism, 1965-1975 (again based on early evidence)

As the number of international students on campus expoded, nationalities and ethnicities began to form their own student groups. In the politically charged climate after 1965, student groups of all types took increasingly militant stances on political issues: the Vietnam War, the Draft, racism, nationalism, and perceived US imperialism. As in loco parentis was increasingly came under student fire, student groups altered their approach to the administration from cooperation to opposition. Rival groups bickered and postured, groups spoke out against American military operations and campus biases. The Cosmo Club transformed itself into the "Foreign Student Union." It saw itself as a unifying organization for the splintered ethnic and international organizations and posed as a way for these groups to better act against the University administration. They attempted to ameliorate squabbles between angry nationalist organizations.

Return to the Original Mission, 1975-present

Abdication of Politics and Return to Intercultural/Interethnic/International Fellowship (1975-present)