The Blue Key Honor Society was founded at the University of Florida in 1924. The Oregon State chapter was established in 1934 to recognize male students with a strong academic background and a who demonstrated "superior leadership and unselfish commitment to others". Women became eligible for membership in 1977; prior to that time, Mortar Board was the comparable organization at Oregon State for women students.
The Donald Wilson MacKenzie Blue Key Memorial Award was established in memory of MacKenzie, a 1953 graduate of Oregon State in forestry who died soon after graduation, in the summer of 1953, in a logging accident near Brightwood, Oregon. The scholarship was made annually to a male Oregon State College student who best exhibited the characteristics for which Don MacKenzie was known.
The Blue Key Fraternity Records document the membership and activities of this honor society for Oregon State University students. The collection includes administrative records for the organization, project files, publications, and photographs. The administrative records include constitutions, meeting minutes, financial reports, policies and procedures, correspondence, membership lists, and materials pertaining to regional and national conventions. The administrative records document changes in the mid-late 1970s allowing membership of women. Ephemeral items include certificates, clippings, and patches.
The project files pertain to a variety of activities and programs of the organization including leadership clinics and workshops, creeds in living groups, a cheating study, school spirit, social functions in living organizations, a peer advising program, service projects, and the chapter's position statements on campus matters. The records also include a scrapbook documenting to the Donald Wilson MacKenzie Award and materials pertaining to the Dubach Award.
The publications include materials published by the national Blue Key organization including codes and policies and promotional materials as well as local chapter brochures.
The photographs include a photograph album of MacKenzie Award winners as well as images of groups of chapter members, members honored in a ceremony, and a book sale in the Memorial Union quadrangle.
Collection is open for research.
Blue Key Fraternity Records, Oregon State University Archives, Corvallis, Oregon.
This collection is not fully processed; this guide is preliminary.
The materials were transferred to the Archives in two accessions in 1982 and 2008.
Additional materials pertaining to Blue Key are available in the