Sigma Phi Epsilon’s Beta chapter was founded in 1927 and was disbanded in 2008 for repeated rules violations including hazing new members, according to the Associated Press.
Now the fraternity is working to put themselves back on the map, but with a revamped looked.
“We are currently a colony and are trying to establish ourselves back on this campus through academic and extracurricular leadership,” said President Felix Faerber, a junior majoring in management.
“We are recruiting through personal interviews and people who are interested have to fulfill certain academic and leadership criteria,” he said.
Faerber said the chapter currently has 63 members and is actively recruiting this semester. None of the previous members are invited back, he said.
“We are more focused on quality than quantity so no quotas have to be fulfilled,” Faerber said.
Sophomore Zach Wepfer, an international studies major and the vice president of programming, said the new chapter hopes for a fresh beginning.
“What’s done is done and will not effect our new chapter, we are getting to start fresh,” Wepfer said.
“We are different from the previous chapter, which had some good men who made poor decisions, and so we will build our own reputation, which we have started last semester and will continue as the spring unfolds,” Faerber said.
Faerber said he would like to teach the previous members the meaning of being a SigEp.
“The actions that occurred back then do not represent what SigEp stands for and I would like to sit down and talk to them about what it really means to be part of this fraternity,” Faerber said.
Now the chapter is focusing on a positive experience for its members while reinstating its founding principals.
“This chapter is a balanced man chapter, which means no pledging and no hazing,” he said. “We will form brotherhood through academic and extracurricular leadership and the spirit in which Carter Ashton Jenkins founded Sigma Phi Epsilon more than a hundred years ago,” Faerber said.
Wepfer said members will participate in the Balanced Man Program instead of the traditional pledge system.
“The Balanced Man program is all about ‘sound mind and sound body’ that is pretty self-explanatory,” Wepfer said.
The fraternity’s national goal is to build balanced men, Faerber said, and the chapter will provide an experience committed to leadership and academic development, Faeber said.
“This group of men represents everything that is great about the greek system and hazing is not tolerated in any form in our organization,” he said.
“We develop brotherhood through leadership and academic excellence, which we proved by having a 3.65 chapter GPA last semester.”
Wepfer said there are a lot of negative stereotypes with most fraternities and sororities, not just SigEp.
“The original ideas for fraternities and sororities were very well intentioned, but over the years many chapters have lost sight of those original ideas,” Wepfer said. “We plan on fighting the current negative stereotypes by behaving and acting in ways that would make our fellow members and greeks proud.”
