Sigma Alpha epsilon

The mission of Sigma Alpha Epsilon is to promote the highest standards of friendship, scholarship, and service for our members based upon the ideals set forth by our Founders and as specifically enunciated in our creed, “The True Gentleman.” 

The Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity has more than 240 chapters on college campuses throughout the United States, with nearly 14,000 collegiate members and 190,000 living alumni. We are the first national fraternity to establish a Leadership School to educate our undergraduates and the first national fraternity to build a central headquarters building.  Sigma Alpha Epsilon is North America’s largest social fraternity with more than 335,000 initiated members.  

Sigma Alpha Epsilon was founded March 9, 1856 at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa. 

 Sigma Alpha Epsilon reached a historic milestone on March 9, 2014, with the elimination of pledging and the membership classification of pledges. Instead, we have implemented a holistic education known as the True Gentleman Experience. It provides education throughout a member's collegiate tenure and fosters both personal and professional development. We are the first large national fraternity to eliminate pledging for all of our chapters. 

 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