True Fraternity

What is SAE?

Sigma Alpha Epsilon was founded March 9, 1856, at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa. Its founders were Noble Leslie DeVotie, John Barratt Rudulph, Nathan Elams Cockrell, John Webb Kerr, Wade H. Foster, Samuel Marion Dennis, Abner Edwin Patton and Thomas Chappell Cook. Noble Leslie DeVotie was credited with writing the Ritual, devised the grip, and chosen the name. Meanwhile, John Barratt Rudulph designed the fraternities badge. Of all existing fraternities today, Sigma Alpha Epsilon is the only one founded in the ante-bellum South.

Founding fathers of Sigma Alpha Epsilon

SAE has been at CSUN for over forty years, and were founded locally as Pi Kappa Tau in 1961. SAE was chartered by the National Fraternity as the California Nu Chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon on December 9, 1967. While our presence has been missed for a few years, the vast Alumni network, with the help of Cal State Northridge and the National fraternity office, have brought SAE back onto campus in Spring 2008.

History of California Nu

On July 2nd, 1961 a small band of determined young men met in the parking lot of Gelson's Market in Encino to discus the beginnings of a new fraternity. Several of these young men had already been members of Phi Delta Psi, a small fraternity at Pierce Jr. College, but all were headed for bigger and better times at the recently established San Fernando Valley State College. Thus, these seventeen Founding Fathers and a three man pledge class formed Pi Kappa Tau and settled into small house on Balboa boulevard with five brave "live-ins."

However small it's beginnings, PKT wasted little time in becoming the premier fraternity at SFVSC. They dominated every facet of school life, from the Associated Students, the school's newspaper "The Daily Sundial" to almost every event held on or near campus.

Members of PKT who would become SAE in 1967

Realizing that a local fraternity would be hard pressed to keep up with the national fraternities that were destined to spring up once SFVSC became California State University of Northridge, the men of Pi Kappa Tau decided to affiliate with a national fraternity. It would have to be as strong as they and still hold the same high ideals and convictions. Pi Kappa Tau found that Fraternity in Sigma Alpha Epsilon, the nation's largest.

Upon it's first application, PKT was accepted as a petitioning chapter of SAE and received it's charter by unanimous decision at the 1967 National Convention. On December 9, 1967 PKT became the California Nu chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon.

To this day, PKT/SAE continues it's success, backed by a great national heritage as well as it's own rich local history and traditions.