About Us
About the Fraternity​
Sigma Alpha Epsilon was founded on March 9, 1856, at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. 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 Chapel Cook.
Since then, more than 350,000 men have been initiated into Sigma Alpha Epsilon. Today, there are more than 220 active chapters throughout the United States, 12,000+ undergraduate brothers, and more than 220,000 living alumni.
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Our Mission
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The mission of Sigma Alpha Epsilon is to promote the highest standards of scholarship, service and friendship for our members. Our ideals were established in 1856 by our Founding Fathers and as written in our creed, “The True Gentleman.”
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Our Vision
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True Gentlemen making our global community better.
Our Creed
“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
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No other words have better represented the ideals of Sigma Alpha Epsilon than those of “The True Gentleman.” Our creed sets forth the standards by which we base the Fraternity. “The True Gentleman” reflects both our substance and ritual. Those words are memorized and recited; awards are given to brothers who best exemplify it. Since our code is something every member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon has in common, it helps bond us, providing part of the glue that holds us together.
Our Chapter
We began our journey to becoming a fraternity as incoming freshmen in 1979. We started on the first floor of the Howell Hall dormitory, back in the day when “co-ed by floor” was a radical new idea. Heavy rains and two hurricanes passed through the Tampa Bay area our first month at the University of Tampa. Thus, our intramural teams were named the “Hurricanes,” who were the foundation of the brotherhood in the fraternity’s early years.
After eight years of diligent work by our alumni group, UT's Department of Fraternities and Sororities extended a bid to Sigma Alpha Epsilon in 2024. A big thank you to our alumni brothers and sisters for their donations. Special appreciation goes out to the entire Greek alumni family for attending each of our all-inclusive “Greek Alumni Nights” held over the past eight Gasparilla weekends from 2013 to 2020.
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Ancient Greeks wrote of the phoenix, a mythical firebird that obtains new life by arising from the ashes of its predecessors. The phoenix represents transformation, death, and rebirth in its fire.
As a spiritual icon, the phoenix is a symbol of strength and renewal. As both a fire and solar symbol, the phoenix is symbolic of the sun, which “dies” in setting each night only to be reborn in rising the next morning.