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Sigma Alpha Epsilon

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ΣΑΕ - Sigma Alpha Epsilon *Secret Meaning: Sons of Adam and Eve
Image:SAE.jpg
Motto Phi Alpha
Colors Royal Purple and Old Gold
Flower Violet
Founded March 9, 1856 at University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa
Fraternity type Social
Scope International
Headquarters 1856 Sheridan Road
Evanston, Illinois, USA
Chapters 300+
Members 8,200 currently
280,000 lifetime
Nicknames SAE's, SigAlphs, E's, Alphs, E-Dogs
Homepage http://www.sae.net

Sigma Alpha Epsilon (ΣΑΕ) is a college fraternity. Founded in 1856, it has initiated more men since its founding than any other fraternity with more than 280,000 initiated members. At present, SAE (as it is nicknamed) has more than 8,200 undergraduates at more than 300 chapters in 48 states. It was the first fraternity to establish a national headquarters (Levere Memorial Temple, 1929), a national Leadership School (1935), a national Men's Health Issues Committee (1980), and a career-development program tailored for the community ("The Leading Edge" in 1990).

Currently, the Fraternity offers a comprehensive member-education program called The True Gentleman Initiative. The Fraternity communicates through The Record, a quarterly publication that has been published continuously since 1880. New members receive a copy of The Phoenix, the manual of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, for educational development.

Contents

[edit] History

Sigma Alpha Epsilon was founded March 9, 1856, at the University of Alabama located in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Its founders were Noble Leslie DeVotie, John Barratt Rudulph, Nathan Elams Cockrell, John Webb Kerr, Wade Hiram Foster, Samuel Marion Dennis, Abner Edwin Patton and Thomas Chappell Cook. Their leader was DeVotie, who had written the ritual, devised the grip, and chosen the name. Rudulph designed the badge. Of all existing fraternities today, Sigma Alpha Epsilon is the only one founded in the ante-bellum South.

Founded in a time of intense sectional feeling, Sigma Alpha Epsilon confined its growth to the southern states. By the end of 1857, the fraternity numbered seven chapters. Its first national convention met in the summer of 1858 at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, with four of its eight chapters in attendance. By the time of the outbreak of the US Civil War in 1861, fifteen chapters had been established.

The fraternity had fewer than 400 members when the Civil War began. Of those, 369 went to war for the Confederacy, and seven fought with the Union forces. Seventy members of the fraternity lost their lives in the War, including Noble DeVotie, who is officially the first man on either side to give his life in military service.

After the Civil War, only one chapter at tiny Columbian College in Washington, D.C., survived, but it died soon thereafter.

When a few of the young veterans returned to the Georgia Military Institute and found their college burned to the ground, they decided to enter the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia. Founding a chapter there at the end of 1865 led to the fraternity's revival. Soon, other chapters came back to life and, in 1867, the first post-war convention was held at Nashville, Tennessee, where a half-dozen revived chapters planned the fraternity's future growth.

In the 1870s and early 1880s, more than a score of new chapters were formed. Older chapters died as fast as new ones were established. By 1886, the fraternity had chartered 49 chapters, but few were active. The first northern chapter had been established at Pennsylvania College (now Gettysburg College), in 1883, and a second was placed at Mount Union College in Ohio two years later.

In the autumn of, a 16-year-old Harry Bunting entered Southwestern Presbyterian University in Clarksville, Tennessee. He was initiated into the Tennessee Zeta Chapter, which had previously initiated two of his brothers. In just eight years, under the guidance of Harry Bunting and his younger brother, George, they provoked Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapters to increase their membership. They wrote encouraging articles in the fraternity's quarterly journal, The Record, promoting better chapter standards. Above all, they gave new life to old chapters in the South (including the mother chapter at Alabama) and founded new ones in the North and West. In an explosion of growth, the Buntings were responsible for founding nearly 50 chapters of Sigma Alpha Epsilon. Other chapters during this time were also founded, mostly by local undergraduates, at Dickinson College, Ohio State University, Harvard University, and Bucknell University, among others. When Harry Bunting founded the Northwestern University chapter in 1894, he initiated as a charter member William Collin "Billy" Levere. Bunting passed the torch of leadership to Levere, and for the next three decades, Levere's high spirits brought the fraternity to maturity.

When Levere died on February 22, 1927, the fraternity's Supreme Council decided to name the new national headquarters building The Levere Memorial Temple. Construction of the Temple, an immense German Gothic structure located near Lake Michigan and across from the Northwestern University campus, was started in 1929, and the building was dedicated in the winter of 1930.

When the Supreme Council met regularly in the early 1930s at the Temple, educator John O. Moseley, the fraternity's national president, lamented that, "We have in the Temple a magnificent school-house. Why can we not have a school?" Accordingly, the economic depression notwithstanding, in the summer of 1935, the fraternity's first Leadership School was held under the direction of Moseley. In he last years of Moseley's life, he served the fraternity as its executive secretary, capping a academic career that had included two college presidencies.

[edit] The True Gentleman

"The True Gentleman" is the creed of Sigma Alpha Epsilon which was first adopted by the fraternity sometime in the 1930s. It was discovered by Judge Walter B. Jones, who first came upon it in an Alabama Baptist quarterly of which he was the editor. He sent a copy of it to John O. Moseley, the leader of the annual Leadership Schools, who was quite taken with it. Moseley began using it at the Schools. For many years, the author of it was thought to be anonymous until the 1970s when the editor of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon pledge manual, The Phoenix, Joseph Walt, discovered that the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis also used it in a manual. The author was denoted there as John Walter Wayland. "The True Gentleman" had actually first appeared in The Baltimore Sun as part of a competition for the best definition of a true gentleman with Wayland's submission being crowned the winner. Below is the actual creed in its entirety:

The True Gentleman is the man whose conduct proceeds from good will and an acute sense of propriety, and whose self-control is equal to all emergencies; who does not make the poor man conscious of his poverty, the obscure man of his obscurity, or any man of his inferiority or deformity; who is himself humbled if necessity compels him to humble another; who does not flatter wealth, cringe before power, or boast of his own possessions or achievements; who speaks with frankness but always with sincerity and sympathy; whose deed follows his word; who thinks of the rights and feelings of others, rather than his own; and who appears well in any company, a man with whom honor is sacred and virtue safe.
—John Walter Wayland (Virginia 1899)

[edit] Government

In its early days, the government of the fraternity was vested in one chapter, designated the Grand Chapter, which was responsible only to the general convention. In 1886, this system was replaced by government by a Supreme Council of six members, later reduced to five, and the creation of regional units called provinces, each presided over by a Province Archon. After 1920, a Board of Trustees was created to manage the fraternity's endowment funds. At first, national conventions were held annually but in 1894 they started to be held biennially. In alternate years, province conventions meet and, at the present time, there are 29 provinces. The Eminent Supreme Archon serves as the chief operating officer of Sigma Alpha Epsilon.

[edit] The Levere Memorial Temple

The fraternity's international headquarters, known as the Fraternity Service Center, is maintained at the Levere Memorial Temple in Evanston, Illinois. Honoring all the members of the fraternity who have served their countries on land or sea or in the air since 1856, it was dedicated on December 28, 1930. The Temple also contains what is considered the most complete library pertaining to Greek-letter fraternities and sororities. The museum on the first floor is devoted to a collection of interesting historical photographs, pictures, and collections from private sources. The walls of the building are hung with oil portraits of distinguished members. The basement contains the Panhellenic Room, on the ceiling of which are the coats-of-arms of 40 college fraternities and 17 sororities, while the niches on the north side contain large murals showing the founding of Phi Beta Kappa in 1776 and that of Sigma Alpha Epsilon in 1856, together with other murals depicting episodes in the history of the fraternity. The most outstanding mural in the Panhellenic Room is the reproduction of Raphael's The School of Athens, painted by Johannes Waller in the 1930s.

The building continues to be used for ceremonies and receptions by the various fraternities and sororities and honor societies at Northwestern University. The impressive chapel of the Temple, with its soaring vaulted ceiling and stained glass windows by Tiffany is used regularly for religious services and is the scene of many weddings of Evanstonians and members of Sigma Alpha Epsilon. In fact, the entire building is open to the public for patriotic, religious, and educational purposes, while the library is also free to scholars seeking material pertaining to the history of any or all college fraternities and college organizations.

[edit] The Record

The fraternity communicates through The Record magazine. It is published quarterly and has been continuously since 1880. This publication has become popular in social groups throughout the country. One issue of The Record, the fall annual report, is provided free of charge to all active members and alumni at a circulation of 180,000. The other three issues are provided for active members and current donors to the Sigma Alpha Epsilon Foundation at a circulation of approximately 30,000.

[edit] Famous alumni

[edit] External links


Fraternity Leadership Association
Delta Kappa Epsilon | Kappa Sigma | Phi Sigma Kappa | Sigma Alpha Epsilon | Sigma Lambda Beta | Sigma Pi
North-American Interfraternity Conference
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