Sigma Alpha Epsilon was founded March 9, 1856, at the University of
Alabama at Tuscaloosa. Its founders were Noble Leslie DeVotie, John
Barratt Rudulph, Nathan Elams Cockrell, John Webb Kerr, Wade 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. Extension was
vigorous, however, and 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 Civil War in 1861, 15 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. Every member of the chapters at Hampden-Sydney,
Georgia Military Institute, Kentucky Military Institute, and Oglethorpe
University fought for the gray. Members from Columbian College, William
& Mary, and Bethel were in both armies. Seventy members of the
fraternity lost their lives in the War, including Noble Leslie DeVotie,
who is officially the first man on either side to give his life in
military service.
The miracle in the history of Sigma Alpha Epsilon is that it
survived that great sectional conflict. When the smoke of the battle had
cleared, 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 little college burned to the ground,
they decided to go to Athens, Georgia, to enter the state university
there. It was the founding of the University of Georgia Chapter at the
end of 1865 that 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.
The reconstruction years were cruel to the South, and southern
colleges and their fraternities shared in the general malaise of the
region. In the 1870s and early 1880s, more than a score of new chapters
were formed, some of them at exceedingly frail institutions. Older
chapters died as fast as new ones were established. By 1886, the
fraternity had chartered 49 chapters, but scarcely a dozen could be
called active. Two of the 49 were in the North. After much discussion
and not a little dissent, the first northern chapter had been
established at Pennsylvania College, now Gettysburg College, in 1883,
and a second was placed at Mt. Union College in Ohio two years later.
It was in 1886 that things took a turn for the better. That
autumn, a 16-year-old youngster by the name of Harry Bunting entered
Southwestern Presbyterian University in Clarksville, Tennessee, and was
initiated into the Tennessee Zeta Chapter, which had previously
initiated two of his brothers. When Sigma Alpha Epsilon took in Harry
Bunting, it caught a comet by the tail.
In just eight years, under the enthusiastic guidance of Harry
Bunting and his younger brother, George, Sigma Alpha Epsilon experienced
a renaissance. Together they prodded Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapters to
increase their membership. They wrote encouraging articles in the
Fraternity's quarterly journal, The Record, promoting better chapter
standards and, above all, they undertook an almost incredible program of
expansion of the fraternity, resurrecting old chapters in the South
(including the mother chapter at Alabama) and founding 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. When Harry
Bunting founded the Northwestern University chapter in 1894, he
initiated as a charter member William Collin Levere, a remarkable young
man whose enthusiasm for the fraternity matched Bunting's. To Levere,
Bunting passed the torch of leadership, and for the next three decades,
it was the spirit of "Billy" Levere that dominated Sigma Alpha Epsilon
and brought the fraternity to maturity.
Billy did everything. He was twice elected national president,
served as the fraternity's first full-time executive secretary and
chapter visitation officer (1912-27), edited its quarterly magazine and
several editions of the catalog and directory of membership, and
published a monumental three volume history of the fraternity in 1911.
It is small wonder that 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 a stone's throw from
Lake Michigan and across from the Northwestern University campus, was
started in 1929, and the building was dedicated at Christmastime 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. The first
such workshop in the fraternity world, it was immensely successful, and
today nearly every fraternity holds such a school. The Leadership School
is unquestionably the best service Sigma Alpha Epsilon provides to its
undergraduates who come to Evanston in regimental numbers each year. It
was probably John Moseley more than any other whose leadership carried
Sigma Alpha Epsilon forward during the next 20 years until his untimely
death in 1955. The last years of his life he served the Fraternity as
its executive secretary, capping a distinguished academic career that
had included two college presidencies.
Since World War II, the fraternity has grown much larger, and it
has changed in a number of ways, some quite obvious and others quite
subtle. Its growth in chapters and membership has been quite
spectacular, and its total number of initiates continues to be the
highest in the fraternity world.Qualitative changes in recent decades
have been profound. Alongside their colleges, chapters have
democratized. Membership today is more heterogeneous than it was a
generation ago, as chapters have welcomed increasing numbers of men from
religious, ethnic, and racial minorities, enriching chapters with an
unprecedented cultural diversity. One has but to peruse the roster of
the 600 or so delegates at the annual Leadership School to confirm the
dimensions of change.
The fraternity enjoyed the "happy days" of the 1950s, endured to
survive the campus revolt of the 1960s and early 1970s, and tried to
steer an even course in the turbulence that marked the late 1970s and
the 1980s. Together with its fellow collegiate Greek-letter societies,
it wrestles today with problems attendant upon risk management, hazing,
alcohol abuse, and sexual misconduct rife on our campuses. Never before
have the challenges been so great or the opportunities so rich.
Accordingly, the fraternity has undertaken a thorough program of reform
and rejuvenation, seeking to assist its undergraduate members to make a
reaffirmation of faith in their best, most wholesome traditions, while
seeking to adapt creatively to a new and invigorating college climate.
Sigma Alpha Epsilon looks to a future full of promise while it instills
values in young men across North America.
