page_title: Phi Sigma Kappa
section_title: Expansion
hierarchical_section_title: Phi Sigma Kappa / History / Expansion
caption_attribution_description: English: Identifier: halcyon1914unse (find matches) Title: Halcyon Year: 1914 (1910s) Authors: Subjects: Phi Sigma Kappa's Phi Chapter, 1914, from Swarthmore College -- College Yearbooks Publisher: Swarthmore, Pa.: Swarthmore College Contributing Library: Swarthmore College Library Digitizing Sponsor: Lyrasis Members and Sloan Foundation View Book Page: Book Viewer About This Book: Catalog Entry View All Images: All Images From Book Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book. Text Appearing Before Image: ar DuLUTH Superior Utah Milwaukee Harvard Graduate Schools Omaha Oxford University Cleveland Colorado Chesapeake INIontreal Rhode Island Philadelphia Maine AlbanyCaliforniaWestern CanadaTrentonMontanaPuGET Sound Page One Thirty 01)1 t)tgma i^appa iFraternttp Founded at Massachusetts Agricultural College, 1873 Fraternity Organ—The Signet tRATERNiTY Color—Silver and Magenta Red Fraternity Flower—Red Carnation The annual banquet of the chapter was held at the Hotel Walton March 8, 1913 Pf)i Chapter MDCCCCXni Warren Wallace Weaver Kenneth Vernon Farmer William Mark Bittle David Tully Dunning Joseph Durbin Stites mdccccxivLeRoy Durborow Edwin Randall Murch John Joseph Matthews Frederick George Hicham Warren Earle Gatchell mdccccxvCarleton Meloney Thomas William Martz Beury Henry Clay Martin Harry James Stites Norman Sherrerd Samuel Smedley, Jr. mdccccxvi John Dwight Murch Laurance Peters Gowdy Augustus Raymond Albertson William Theodore Pohlig Herbert Lawyer Brown Page One Thirty-one Text Appearing After Image: PHI SIGMA KAPPA Note About Images Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original work.
context_page_description: Phi Sigma Kappa, colloquially known as Phi Sig or PSK, is a men's social and academic fraternity with approximately 74 active chapters and colonies in North America. Most of its first two dozen chapters were granted to schools in New England and Pennsylvania; therefore its early development was strongly Eastern in character, eventually operating chapters at six of the eight Ivy League schools as well as more egalitarian state schools. It later expanded to the South and West.
  According to its Constitution, Phi Sigma Kappa is devoted to the promotion of its three Cardinal Principles: the "Promotion of Brotherhood", the "Stimulation of Scholarship", and the "Development of Character".
  Phi Sigma Kappa began on March 15, 1873 at Massachusetts Agricultural College in Amherst by six sophomores. Phi Sigma Epsilon merged with Phi Sigma Kappa in 1985, which was the largest merger of Greek-letter fraternities.
context_section_description: Originally, only one chapter was contemplated by the founders. And although the germ of expansion arrived early, its period of gestation consumed 13 years. As early as 1875 an inquiry had been received from a group at Maine Agricultural College, and a few years later there was an unexpected letter from the University of New Mexico-but nothing came of either "feeler." In 1878, John A. Cutter was inducted into the group, a man destined to have much to do with the preservation of the order's early records and with its expansion beyond the confines of the Massachusetts campus. Graduating from Aggie he went on to attend Albany Medical College (which in 1873 had become a unit of Union College), and established a group which became Beta Chapter (1888). 
  Cutter was also instrumental in the establishment of Gamma at Cornell (1889). The transition to a national order was accomplished. These same early years saw the pin (or badge) adopted essentially as it is today; an induction ritual, which embodied the concept of universal brotherhood and expanded the order's horizons beyond Massachusetts, was written in 1890; the establishment of the Fraternity's magazine, The Signet, and the first chapter out of the Northeast came into being at West Virginia University (1891).
  "Bigness was never one of our ideas," Big Chief Barrett said in later years, admonishing a convention that was getting starry-eyed over dozens of new expansion possibilities. And the principle has held; though Phi Sigma Kappa stands high among national orders, size alone has never been a major consideration or goal.
   Phi Sig's value to other campuses was as an organization offering something special and valuable to persons of varying backgrounds. Massachusetts Agricultural − Aggie − was more egalitarian, open to men of average means but high potential, and not filled with the class-conscious scions of Boston and New York society. In many ways it has kept this ethic throughout its expansion. It never was simply another fraternity to be invited. Founder Brooks, four years before his death in 1938, put it this way: "We believe that our fraternity exerts a powerful influence for good in national college life. The thought which lay in the minds of the Founders was good. May our brothers never forget that the foundation for a useful and satisfying life must be thought -- thought resulting in the visualization of a high ideal; and the determination to use all of one's strength of body, mind and soul for its realization."
  During the final decade of the 19th Century, careful expansion nevertheless led to solid chapters at Yale (Sachem Hall), Columbia, Maryland, Penn State and Penn, among other storied schools. Dartmouth, Brown, and MIT followed soon after. Eventually Phi Sig was present at six of the eight Ivy League schools; even Canadian campuses were not excluded in the thinking of those who carried new chapters in all directions shortly after the turn of the century. Rho Chapter was organized at Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario in 1903, and seventeen other units were added during the decade. Under Cutter's and Barrett's leadership, the national organization was strengthened, and work was begun among the alumni to support their continued interest in the Fraternity after graduation. The Greek system's uniqueness among American organizations is based partly on this principle – the idea of continued involvement for members after undergraduate days. Phi Sigma Kappa was one of the early leaders in such efforts and remains one of the strongest alumni-oriented groups. If Founder Brooks' assessment of its purpose is true, then there would be no end to the Fraternity's influence on its members, and its role in their lives—another vital part of Phi Sig's heritage.
  Though the admonition against "bigness for bigness' sake" was always there, the demand to serve campuses wherever they might be was equally loud. In 1909, for example (after the Grand Council had earlier refused to put a chapter on the West Coast because of the distance involved and because it feared such a chapter woul
caption: ΦΣΚ's Phi Chapter, at Swarthmore College in 1914
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