About DU - Building Better Men Since 1834

In October of 1874, three students at the University of Michigan began a conversation that changed the lives of hundreds of men who have since entered the academic institution. These three men, decided to start up a group that was built on the values they found important. By the following spring eleven more men joined the three and they united under a single purpose. They found that the ideals and values sought by their members were the very same as those held by the Delta Upsilon Fraternity, or the Anti-Secret Confederation as it was officially known at the time, and there purpose was to begin a chapter here at Michigan.

That April, the 10th, 1876 the Michigan chapter was born. From there the brothers recruited new members and grew in much the same way we do today, although technological improvements make life now significantly different than it would have been back then. In 1903 a chapter house was dedicated to the Michigan Chapter of Delta Upsilon, the same house that is occupied by the brotherhood today. The architect who designed the house, Albert Kahn, created an open floor layout, in reflection of the ideals of non-secrecy. The house is an English Tudor style and has detailed wooded craftsmanship intended to inspire symbolism for the fraternities founding principles. It is also the first house that was built here at Michigan specifically to house a fraternity; this can be seen in most of the decorative wood work on the front porch and main floor.

As life at Michigan, and around the world, changed over the years, the brothers of Delta Upsilon continued to occupy their house at the corner of Hill and S. Forest. At one time the estate also included the house just east of the 1331 residence, and both were academic homes to brothers. Sadly in 1998 the Charter was suspended, and Delta Upsilon was no longer available at the University of Michigan. The house, under ownership of DU alumni, was rented to the fraternity Tau Epsilon Phi while there was no DU to speak of. Fortunately the reason we are here now is that Delta Upsilon is back. Thanks to the generous contributions of our alumni, John Layman, Ed Whipple, and John Markiewicz to name a few major contributors, the commitment of newly found brothers, and both direction and guidance from the Assistant Director of Greek Life, John Duncan, a DU from Oregon State, more brothers began to learn of the new fraternity and in the Fall of 2001 the Michigan Colony of Delta Upsilon was formed.

Every new brother had the goal of getting the colony to become a chapter and in 2002 the brothers were back in the house that was built for them. Within a year of getting the house back the brotherhood was ready to become a chapter. On April 13, 2003 the Michigan Chapter of Delta Upsilon was back, and will hopefully be around for at least another one hundred uninterrupted years.

In 1825 the first undergraduate fraternities were founded in the US. These organizations were created as secret societies that began to work as political machines for the betterment of their members. On November 4, 1834 on the campus of Williams College, a group of thirty men gathered together to begin an organization of there own; one that would stand apart from the secret fraternities that existed. They called themselves "The Social Fraternity" to reflect their beliefs that a society will better itself through group action; they had no intentions of being secretive.

As word of this Social Fraternity traveled through Williams, and on to other Universities, men on other campuses began to gather under the same ideals that brought those men together on November 4th. Within four years Union College had a group and soon to follow were Middlebury (1845), Hamilton (1847), and Amherst (1847). With the exception of Middlebury; these anti-secret groups first came together to form an organized fraternity in November 1847. They met in convention and officially formed the Anti-Secret Confederation. The original motto read Ouden Adelon, "Nothing Secret," and the colors were set as old gold on a field of sky-blue. The four chapters to originally found the Anti-Secret Confederation were joined at the 1852 Convention were joined by Wesleyan, Western Reserve, and Colby. These seven chapters are referred to as the Seven Stars and are indicated as such on the shield of the contemporary Fraternal Crest.

With the 1864 Convention the four chapters in attendance, Hamilton, Rochester, Middlebury, and Rutgers officially changed the name from the Anti-Secret Confederation to Delta Upsilon. The 1879 convention brought a change from a policy of anti-secrecy to non-secrecy, as Delta Upsilon began to take the shape of the fraternity that exists today. In 1882 our journal, the Quarterly, came into print, and has not missed a publication since. In 1909, led by Alumni Charles Evans Hughes, Colgate and Brown 1881, DU became incorporated. This meant the election, by an Assembly of graduate Trustees, of a Board of Directors to govern DU between Conventions. The first Leadership Conference, currently held every summer, was in 1949. In the 1960s the civil rights movement brought a change in the policies of many fraternities, yet DU, with its merit based beginnings, was the first fraternity to exist without restrictive membership policies, as such they never had to rewrite national bylaws to eliminate discrimination.

From the beginning Delta Upsilon was created to follow in the four principles the serve as the strength to our purpose as a fraternity. These principles are:

The Promotion of Friendship
The Development of Character
The Diffusion of Liberal Culture
The Advancement of Justice