Sigma Nu Fraternity
Kappa Theta Chapter
Jacksonville University
To believe in the life of love,to walk in the way of honor,
to serve in the light of truth,
this is the life, the way,
and the light of Sigma Nu,
this is the creed of our fraternity.
Brief History
Sigma Nu's history began in the period following the American Civil War, when a Confederate veteran from Mississippi enrolled at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington Virginia. That cadet was James Frank Hopkins, and it is to him and two of his classmates that Sigma Nu owes its existence. When Hopkins enrolled at VMI, the South was in a state of turmoil, only beginning to recover from its devastating military defeat. VMI was recognized for its civil engineering program at a time when the South needed engineers to repair its bridges, railroads and general infrastructure. At the Institute, cadets suffered from the aftermath of war and its disruption of 19th Century home life. No less insufferable was the institutional system of physical harassment imposed on lower classmen by their own upper classmen.Hopkins had experienced military subservience during the war, and was willing to tolerate a reasonable amount of constraint intended to induce discipline. However, Hopkins was unwilling to accept any amount of hazing, as then tolerated at VMI, in the name of his Christian faith. "Not one ounce of hazing" was he willing to suffer and he was doggedly adamant to eliminate it.
Two classmates and close friends who were also unhappy with the hazing situation soon joined Hopkins. They were Greenfield Quarles, from Arkansas, a Kentuckian by birth, and James McIlvaine Riley from St. Louis, Missouri. These three men began a movement to completely abolish the hazing system at VMI. Their efforts climaxed on a moonlit October night in 1868, presumably following Bible study at the superintendent's home, when the three met at a limestone outcropping on the edge of the VMI parade ground. Hopkins, Quarles and Riley clasped hands on the Bible and made a solemn pledge to form a brotherhood of a new society they called the Legion of Honor in acknowledgement of the French Légion d'honneur.
The vows taken by these three Founders bound them together to oppose hazing at VMI and encouraged the application of the Principle of Honor in all their relationships. That the founders should adopt Honor as a guiding principle was a natural move since a rigid code of Honor was already an established tradition of the VMI Corps of Cadets. The Honor system at VMI required each cadet to conform to the duty imposed by his conscience that each act be governed by a high sense of honor.
This chapter of Sigma Nu was founded on February 12, 1984.
We Stand For Love, Truth, and Honor
Official Sigma Nu Site
Jacksonville University Site