History of Nu Chapter

Union College was where college fraternities were founded. In 1825 Kappa Alpha -- the first fraternity -- was founded, and soon afterwards Sigma Chi and Phi Delta Theta were founded and completed the Union Triad. Beta Theta Pi was part of the Miami (Ohio) Triad -- the second group of fraternities in the country, and Beta was formed in 1839. Nu Chapter of Beta Theta Pi was founded at Union College in 1881.

Most classes before the class of 1970 remember the old Beta Barn on Union Avenue. It was a stereotypical fraternity house -- old, well lived-in, but comfortable. Check "Animal House" out of your local Blockbuster Video to get a good picture of life in the Barn. We had winter beach parties with several tons of sand in the basement and half-coconuts for glasses. If it weren't for pledges, we never would have gotten all that sand out of the basement!

In 1966, we moved to a school-built dorm. It was infintely cleaner and newer, but lost some of the Animal House ambiance. In 1971, the Beta house moved to the old ROTC building near North College.

The house was subsequently moved off campus and thereafter deactivated.

As we prepared for Reunion '08, the National Office provided us with a list of all initiates since the chapter was founded. If we have the member's email address there is a "yes" in the last column. If there is no "yes" it means we do not have that member's email address, so if yours is missing, please go to the "Get on Mailing List " page and fill out the form. If you know of any other brother's email address that is missing, please send us an email to give us that information. Note, we have not actually published any of the email addresses here, since there are so many nefarious people out there, and likely many of us are on wanted posters somewhere. If you would like a brother's email address please go to the contact page and send Ben an email.