Sigma Alpha Epsilon’s presence on the University of Wyoming campus began in 1903 when the Sigma Beta Phi student group and local fraternity was founded. In 1917, the group successfully petitioned the Sigma Alpha Epsilon national fraternity for a charter as the Wyoming Alpha chapter. This combined 100+ year heritage makes Sigma Alpha Epsilon the longest-standing Greek letter organization on the University of Wyoming’s campus.
After residing in various locations throughout Laramie, the chapter constructed the
current chapter house located at 1621 E. Fraternity Row in 1958.
In 1979 Wyoming Alpha won the John O. Moseley Award for Fraternity Zeal, which is
given out annually to the single best chapter in the Realm.
Today the chapter is actively involved on campus, with members involved in the Associated Students of the University of Wyoming, Army ROTC, Order of Omega, Mortar Board, and numerous other registered student organizations. Its annual Master of Misery Haunted House is one of Laramie’s favorite Halloween events, which raises thousands of dollars to the Laramie Cathedral Home for Children.
Wyoming Alpha is active on the national level of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, and regularly sends its members to the John O. Moseley Leadership School and DeVotie Ritual Institute. The chapter has been recognized in the Eta Province and Foster Region, and is proud to have been awarded the Chapter Achievement and Most Improved Chapter awards dozens of times in the past few decades.
The chapter has a strict zero-hazing policy, is welcome to any and all visitors, and strives to follow the creed of Sigma Alpha Epsilon: The True Gentleman.
The True Gentleman is the man whose conduct proceeds from good will and an acute sense
of propriety, and whose self-control is equal to all emergencies; who does not make
the poor man conscious of his poverty, the obscure man of his obscurity, or any man
of his inferiority or deformity; who is himself humbled if necessity compels him to
humble another; who does not flatter wealth, cringe before power, or boast of his
own possessions or achievements; who speaks with frankness but always with sincerity
and sympathy; whose deed follows his word; who thinks of the rights and feelings of
others, rather than his own; and who appears well in any company, a man with whom
honor is sacred and virtue safe.
- John Walter Wayland