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The oldest student association in Canada, the Alma Mater Society (AMS) has been the central student organization at Queen's since its founding in 1858.

The original goals of the AMS were social and academic as well as political: to promote "the maintenance and defence of students' rights, the interchange of friendly intercourse, the promotion and encouragement of learning, and the furtherance of the general interests of the University."

It grew out of the old Dialectic Society, a debating association founded in 1843, and it officially remained a debating society until late in the century.

In 1873, the AMS founded the Queen’s Journal, one of the oldest student newspapers in Canada, giving voice to issues closer to everyday student life, such as the need for gym facilities and a study week before exams.

In the 1880s, the AMS also took the lead in styling the Queen’s visual identity. Working with sports captains, they decided Queen’s colours were blue, gold, and red (the “tricolor”).

Gradually, however, the AMS took on more and more responsibility for student affairs and student self-government, including non-academic student discipline. This responsibility began informally in the 1880s and in 1898 it was officially delegated to the AMS by the Senate. In the same year, the AMS overhauled its constitution and adopted its modern role of representing the views of students and coordinating and financing other student societies.

The university Senate delegated a large measure of student non-academic jurisdiction to the AMS. The AMS Court emerged to dispense justice to students who had erred in their behaviour and brought discredit on the university. The Court worked on natural justice guidelines, with prosecution and defence being undertaken by students themselves and penalties being devised to suit the case at hand.

In these same years, other mainstays of student government emerged. Annual referenda allowed students to decide what fees they were prepared to pay to sustain their campus life.

When Principal Grant died in 1902, the AMS rallied Queen’s students to donate an astonishing $30,000 in support of the construction of Grant Hall.

The AMS also incubated a student-funded clubs system, whereby monies were voted to groups bringing students together to indulge passions varying from sports to politics.

The evolution of the AMS continued in 1934, when medical students attempted to affiliate with the American Nu Sigma Nu fraternity. In response, the AMS banned anyone belonging to the fraternity from donning the football tricolour. A meeting of the AMS membership voted en masse to reaffirm the banning of all fraternities from the campus, a policy that remains to this day.

Today, the AMS acts as a service, advocacy, and governing body on behalf of all students except those enrolled in graduate, law, education and theology studies (these students belong to the Society of Graduate and Professional Students (SGPS)).

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Find other student government societies and student representatives:

Encyclopedia entries:

• Aesculapian Society (Medicine)
• Arts and Science Undergraduate Society (ASUS)
• Rector
• Society of Graduate and Professional Students (SGPS)

Other society websites:

• Education Graduate Student Society (EGSS)
• Nursing Science Society