Talk:Sigma Phi Sigma

Initial page creation notes

Due to missing or protected yearbooks, we still need to confirm chartering dates for Beta chapter and Epsilon chapter.

Baird's Manual (20th) had a very limited amount of information on this dormant fraternity. However, yearbooks and a Google search slowly provided information to fill out the list of chapters from the 8 of 18 Baird's had provided, to what I think is a complete list, of 18. I found it surprising when the referenced and detailed history on the Beta chapter said: "..by 1941, 26 chapters of Sigma Phi Sigma were founded (!), including chapters at the Universities of Pennsylvania, Maryland, California, Illinois, Maine, Nevada, Missouri, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Nebraska, and Washington; Cornell, Ohio State and Brown, at then Oregon and Washington State Colleges; and Auburn."   If we add to this list the chapter at Penn State, that totals 18, which is the high water number given by Baird's. So I favor that more conservative chapter count of 18, discounting the idea that there was 26, and was able to fill in the missing schools from Baird's list accordingly.

I wrote to the alumni of the group that became the Beta chapter, at Penn State, (now Sigma Triton of TDX) because the date they claim for their chartering as a unit of Sigma Phi Sigma seemed off by a decade - should be older. I await a response and will edit the list with what I find. I told them I inferred that one of the following was true:

1. Your chapter is actually older than March 13, 1915, and you entered Sigma Phi Sigma in perhaps 1909, (or ’08 or ’10) and not 1919.
2. There was a previous incarnation of Sigma Phi Sigma on your campus that died after just a few years, and your young local of Iota Chi Delta re-established it by taking on the same chapter name (Beta chapter).
3. Or, and I think it unlikely, Sigma Phi Sigma kept that name slot open in anticipation of your group, while elsewhere establishing Gamma, Delta, Epsilon and maybe Zeta chapters.

My best guess is that #2 is what happened. But I await word from the ΤΔΧ chapter, or online access to the Penn State yearbooks. Jax MN (talk) 04:40, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

The Baird's Archive notes this chapter's formation slightly out of order of other early chapters, but that itself is not uncommon for fraternities. The online Baird's Archive notes that the Penn State's predecessor was Iota Chi Delta (local), founded in 1913, and that the ΣΦΣ chapter was chartered in 1919. That explanation seems right. I've adjusted the article to that timeline. Jax MN (talk) 21:48, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

Another Sigma Phi Sigma

A separate local fraternity with the name Sigma Phi Sigma was founded at the University of Kansas in 1912. It immediately attempted to woo a group of fraternity-minded men at Washburn College to join as a second chapter. They declined. The Washburn group, known as Alpha Delta (Washburn) continues today as "the oldest local fraternity West of the Mississippi."

The University of Kansas chapter chose the colors purple, green and gold. Its flower was the American Beauty Rose, and it published a magazine called The Calumet. In the WWI-era 1918 Jayhawker yearbook, 26 men were noted as serving in the active military ranks. In 1923 Sigma Phi Sigma at Kansas dissolved when it accepted a charter to join Delta Chi national fraternity, still active as of 2022.

References