The Founding of DKE

On Saturday, June 22, 1844, 15 Yale College undergraduates met in No. 12 Old South Hall and established a new society they called DELTA KAPPA EPSILON.

The Fraternity's open motto, "Kerothen Philoi Aei" or "Friends from the Heart, Forever" was adopted, as was the DKE pin and the secret grip.

THE FOUNDING OF THE FRATERNITY
AS RECALLED BY ONE OF THE FOUNDERS

Edward Griffin Bartlett, Phi 1846
from
The Delta Kappa Epsilon Quarterly,
Vol.1, No.1.; January, 1883

It is a worn little book which lies before me; the cover marred and scratched, the paper yellow with age and the ink faded to a dull brown. The first page is half filled with my handwriting, and below are signed, beside my own, fourteen names--each marking sharply the individuality of the writer, and recalling the face of an old friend, each turning my thoughts to the end of the earth where he who bore it lives in active usefulness or rests in honored grave--all carrying me back to the day, a full generation ago, when we, fifteen boy classmates at Yale, formally avowed the bonds of mutual friendship which has long held us.
The spring of 1844 seems a queer old time, as I recall it now. Yale was to us the great seat of learning of the world. Rivalry with Harvard had not been thought of, and in fact we knew too little and heard too rarely of the Cambridge school, to take even a languid interest in its welfare.

Click here to read more.