Sigma Alpha Epsilon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
|
| Motto | Phi Alpha |
|---|---|
| Colors | Royal Purple and Old Gold |
| Flower | Violet |
| Founded | March 9, 1856 at University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa |
| Type | Social |
| Scope | National |
| Headquarters | 1856 Sheridan Road Evanston, Illinois, USA |
| Chapters | 250+ |
| Members | 8,200 currently 280,000 lifetime |
| Nicknames | SAEs, Sig Alphs, E's |
| 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 250 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 9th, 1856, at the University of Alabama located in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Its founders were Noble Leslie DeVotie, Nathan Elams Cockrell, John Barratt Rudulph, John Webb Kerr, Samuel Marion Dennis, Wade Hampton Foster, 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. Prior to founding Sigma Alpha Epsilon, all of the founders were affiliated with Phi Gamma Delta but chose to cut ties with that organization for an unknown reason. 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 four members of the fraternity lost their lives in the War, including Noble DeVotie. DeVotie, who served as Chaplain in the Confederate Army is noted as the first Alabama soldier to lose his life in the War between the States. A common rumor spread among undergraduate SAE members is that he perished when he became so inebriated that he fell from a ship docked in harbor.
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, along with the re-establyshment of the chapter at the University of Virginia, 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.
Soon after, a 16-year-old Harry Bunting entered Southwestern Presbyterian University in Clarksville, Tennessee, now known as Rhodes College in Memphis, 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 an academic career that had included two college presidencies.
[edit] The True Gentleman
"The True Gentleman": This is the creed of Sigma Alpha Epsilon which was first adopted by the fraternity sometime in the 1930s. However, it wasn't until the 2001 Fraternity Convention in Orlando, Florida that it was officially adopted "The True Gentleman" as the organization's creed. The definition 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)
With his family's approval, John Walter Wayland was posthumously initiated into SAE during the Fraternity's 66th annual Leadership School in Chicago. The Virginia Omicron chapter at the University of Virginia was selected as Wayland's chapter since he had completed his master's degree at that institution in 1899.
[edit] Government
In its early days, the government of the fraternity was vested in one chapter, designated the Grand Chapter--the first being North Carolina Xi at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 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 executive officer of Sigma Alpha Epsilon while the Eminent Supreme Recorder (Executive Director) serves as the chief operating officer of the organization.
[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 Members
- Ivan Allen Jr. - Mayor of Atlanta
- Harry Agganis - Boston University football All American, Boston Red Sox 1B, "The Golden Greek"
- Troy Aikman - professional football player (Denied by Troy Aikman's publicist, Aikman was a pledge of Cal Delta, but was never initiated)<---however, www.sae.net has information regarding his initiation, national pin number, and brotherhood to SAE...it is also in the Sigma Alpha Epsilon handbook "The Phoenix"
- Robert Ballard - explorer, located the wreck of the RMS Titanic
- Haley Barbour - Governor of Mississippi
- Max Baucus - Montana Senator
- Dierks Bentley - country music singer and musician (Vanderbilt University)
- Tony Boselli - professional football player
- Beau Bridges - Actor
- Lloyd Bridges - Actor
- Mack Brown - football coach, University of Texas
- Bob Bryan - tennis player, Stanford University
- Mike Bryan - tennis player, Stanford University
- Ken Caminiti - professional baseball player
- Pete Carroll - football coach, University of Southern California
- Sandro Corsaro - American Animator and Author
- Jay Davis - Famous musician from Georgia
- Jim DeMint - US Senator from South Carolina
- Paul Dietzel - Football coach, Louisiana State University
- Pete Domenici - New Mexico Senator
- David Drier - US Representative from CA
- Sam Elliott - actor
- Don Evans - former US Commerce Secretary
- Dennis Erickson - NFL coach
- Thomas Ewing - former congressman, R-IL, Millikin University
- William Faulkner - Nobel Prize winner, Literature
- Joe Foss - former SD Governor, Medal of Honor recipient, 1st Commissioner of the AFL, former NRA President
- James Frey - author, "A Million Little Pieces"
- George Gallup - founder of The Gallup Poll
- Terry Gilliam - film director, member of Monty Python
- Robert Goddard - father of modern rocketry, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
- Bob Goen - former co-host of Entertainment Tonight
- Philip Graham - former publisher of the Washington Post and Newsweek, University of Florida
- Ernie Harwell - sportscaster
- Jud Heathcote - Hall of Fame former Michigan State University Basketball Coach
- Johnny Isakson - U.S. Senator from Georgia
- Phil Jackson - professional basketball coach
- Gary Johnson - Former Governor of New Mexico (R)
- Bobby Jones - professional golfer
- Nick Lachey - singer
- L.Q.C. Lamar - statesman, Justice of US Supreme Court
- Matt Long - actor, Western Kentucky University
- John Lynch - Governor of New Hampshire
- Connie Mack III - former Florida US Senator
- "Pistol Pete" Maravich - professional basketball player, Louisiana State University
- Ed McCaffrey - professional football player
- Patrick McEnroe - tennis professional
- William McKinley - Twenty-fifth President of the United States
- Richard Myers - former Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
- Eliot Ness - Prohibition agent
- William Oefelein - NASA Astronaut
- Hank Paulson - U.S. Treasury Secretary and former Chief Executive Officer, Goldman Sachs
- Carson Palmer - Quarterback for Cincinatti Bengals, University of Southern California
- Walker Percy - Author
- William Perez - CEO of Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company
- Larry Pressler - former South Dakota US Senator
- David Pryor - former Arkansas US Senator
- Mark Pryor - U.S. Senator from Arkansas
- Adrian Pujol - Actor
- Ernie Pyle - legendary WWII journalist
- Robert D. Ray - Governor of Iowa
- Richard Riley - former US Secretary of Education
- Pat Robertson - Christian leader, 1988 Presidential Candidate
- Michael Rosenbaum - actor, Lex Luther, Smallville Western Kentucky University
- Jerry Sanders - Mayor of San Diego (former San Diego Chief of Police)
- Fred Savage - actor, Stanford University
- Bo Schembechler - football coach, University of Michigan
- Richard Scruggs - Lawyer
- John Shadegg - Arizona Congressman
- Grant Shaud - actor on "Murphy Brown", University of Richmond
- George Smathers - senator and congressman, D-FL, philanthropist, University of Florida
- David Spade - actor/comedian
- Drew Stanton - quarterback Michigan State University
- John Sununu - U.S. Senator from New Hampshire
- Barry Switzer - (honorary) former football coach University of Oklahoma, Dallas Cowboys
- Kevin Tighe - actor
- Rudy Vallee - entertainer
- Charles Z. Varnell - George Lucas's right hand man and co-producer of Star Wars
- Ed Wilson - President and CEO of Fox Entertainment
- Robert Young - actor ("Father Knows Best", Marcus Welby, MD)
- William T. Young - businessman, major owner of thoroughbred racehorses
[edit] External links
- http://www.sae.net/ - Official site
| Fraternity Leadership Association Delta Kappa Epsilon | Kappa Sigma | Phi Sigma Kappa | Sigma Alpha Epsilon | Sigma Lambda Beta | Sigma Pi |
||
dain alaia
