Toucan
02-26-2010, 10:23 AM
Founded on February 26, 1897 at Vincennes University (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincennes_University) by William Raper Kennedy, James Thompson Kingsbury, George Martin Patterson, and Rolin Rosco James, it started as Tau Phi Delta (ΤΦΔ), a literary society (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_society) with fraternal ideals. During its tenure as a literary society, many requests for the chartering of other chapters were denied, and expansion never occurred. Tau Phi Delta changed its name to The Sigma Pi Fraternity, United States in 1907. The name not only signified a new era for the fraternity, but a new focus, expansion. Within the first year, Sigma Pi began to build new chapters. With the establishment of the Fraternity's first Canadian chapter in 1984, the organization's name was changed to The Sigma Pi Fraternity, International. The Fraternity was the first of its kind to be founded west of the Ohio Valley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_Valley) and a charter member of the North-American Interfraternity Conference (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North-American_Interfraternity_Conference). Today, Sigma Pi consists of 132 active collegiate groups, dozens of alumni clubs, and over 90,000 initiates.