History

The Kappa-Phi chapter was the first chartered Fraternity at George Mason University, founded on March 14th, 1970.

The history of the Kappa Sigma Fraternity extends as far back as the year 1400 A.D. A city, guarded by twelve gates, surrounded by soaring towers, and decorated with grandiose architecture boasts the name, "The City of Letters." Bologna, Italy was the home of the renowned University of Bologna, and set the stage for the remarkable development of an enduring and mysterious organization. Manuel Chrysoloras, legendary professor of Greek and author of the first Greek grammar, Erotemata, organized a band of five students around 1400 A.D. Their primary purpose was for mutual protection from the corrupt governor of Bologna, Baldasarre Cossa. Cossa practiced regular extortion against the native and foreign students who attended the University of Bologna. Tradition has it that the Order spread the other great universities in Europe. Almost four-hundred years later, Five Friends met in a dormitory room at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, and planted the seeds of Brotherhood.

After weeks of constant fellowship, a need arose for them to create a structure to contain their feelings towards their friendship. On December 10, 1869, their friendship was formalized, and the Kappa Sigma Fraternity was born. William Grigsby McCormick, Edmund Law Rogers, George Miles Arnold, Frank Courtney Nicodemus, and John Covert Boyd recorded their bond in an Oath and Constitution. Their foundation set the standard by which all Kappa Sigmas live today-a standard rooted in virtuous tradition and dedicated to the pursuit of learning.

A major turning point for the struggling Fraternity came when a lengthy discussion over a possible candidate for Initiation into the Order ended, finally, in positive agreement. Stephen Alonzo Jackson was Initiated into the Zeta Chapter of Kappa Sigma at UVA, Charlottesville, and the course of the Order was forever altered.

Jackson's close associate and brother, Francis Nelson Barksdale, recalled him with these words:

"Gentle as a woman, firm as a rock - a perfect bundle of nervous energy. His love of the Fraternity knew no bounds, and his enthusiasm was so contagious that it influenced everybody who came within his reach. His one ambition was to make Kappa Sigma the leading college fraternity of the world, and to that end he thought and worked by day and night, until the end of his busy life."

During the Fraternity's second Grand Conclave in 1878, Jackson was re-elected as Worthy Grand Master. Expressing his expansionist ideas for an enduring Brotherhood, he addressed the Order:

"Why not, my Brothers, since we of today live and cherish the principles of the Kappa Sigma Fraternity, throw such a halo around those principles that they may be handed down as a precious heirloom to ages yet unborn? Why not put our apples of gold in pictures of silver? May we not rest contentedly until the Star and Crescent is the pride of every college and university in the land!"

Jackson died on March 4, 1892. His legacy to the Fraternity included its Ritual, a revised Constitution, a precedent-setting Grand Conclave, the first southern Fraternity to extend a chapter to the north, and most importantly, a spirit for expansion.

Today, Kappa Sigma comprises over 200 chapters and colonies in both the United States and Canada, with over 210,000 men. Kappa Sigma is the sixth largest fraternity and has approximately 150,000 Brothers in North America.