40 Fun Facts About Delta Tau Delta

Which Anchorman star joined Delta Tau Delta at USC, where he was known for streaking around campus?

Will Ferrell studied sports broadcasting at the University of Southern California and has stayed an active alumnus of the fraternity.

Which Oscar-winning actor joined Delta Tau Delta as a film student at the University of Texas?

Matthew McConaughey graduated in 1993 with a radio-television-film degree. He had wanted to attend Southern Methodist University until a brother warned him about the tuition.

Which actor, the voice of Patrick Star in SpongeBob SquarePants, was a Delta Tau Delta member at Idaho?

Bill Fagerbakke played football for Idaho until a knee injury ended his athletic career and turned him toward the theater.

Delta Tau Delta's philanthropy partner since 2012, once called JDRF, fights which disease?

Type 1 diabetes is the cause: chapters team up with local offices of Breakthrough T1D, the renamed JDRF, for walks, galas and campus fundraisers.

Which baseball executive, a Delta Tau Delta member at Ohio Wesleyan, later signed Jackie Robinson?

Branch Rickey caught for Ohio Wesleyan's baseball team, and as an executive he also built the framework of the modern farm system.

Delta Tau Delta's brick Founders House, built in the 1850s, has which architectural style?

Greek Revival suits the birthplace of a letter society; the two-story house joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

Which Stanford quarterback and Delta Tau Delta member later won two Super Bowls with the Broncos?

John Elway left Stanford with an economics degree, and the New York Yankees picked him in the second round of the 1981 baseball draft.

Which Rocky Mountain High singer joined Delta Tau Delta as an architecture student at Texas Tech?

John Denver left Texas Tech in 1963 for Los Angeles folk clubs. Another of his hits is now a state song of West Virginia, where the fraternity was born.

Which comic, who took over The Price Is Right in 2007, was a Delta Tau Delta member at Kent State?

Drew Carey was expelled from Kent State twice for poor grades and left after three years, then enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve.

Which Delta Tau Delta member, a military aide to two US presidents, died when the Titanic sank?

Archibald Butt served Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft in turn; he had joined the fraternity at the University of the South in Sewanee.

Delta Tau Delta was founded in 1858 at which small school in what is now West Virginia?

Bethany College is where eight undergraduates aged 17 to 26 wrote a constitution, devised a ritual and designed a badge for their new secret society.

What do Delta Tau Delta members call a chapter house, a word also in the title of a Delt song?

Shelter is the Delt word for a chapter house, and Delta Shelter is among the traditional songs that chapters still sing.

What is Delta Tau Delta's biennial convention called, a name that means a festival of Apollo?

Karnea meets every two years in cities across North America, where delegates debate the constitution and elect the governing board.

Truth, Courage and Faith are three of Delta Tau Delta's four core principles; what is the fourth?

Power, in the fraternity's telling, begins as inner strength and grows when individuals unite as a brotherhood.

Delta Tau Delta's magazine, once The Crescent, took which name after an 1886 merger?

The Rainbow honors the Rainbow Fraternity, a Southern society that accepted the Delt name, badge and ritual in exchange for a renamed journal.

Which flower, namesake of a figure from classical myth, is Delta Tau Delta's official flower?

Iris is the official flower, and the Rite of Iris, a ceremony chapters perform in public, salutes a Southern fraternity that merged with the Delts.

Delta Tau Delta's Central Office left New York City long ago for which Midwestern state capital?

Indianapolis is the address again after a stretch in suburban Fishers, where a purpose-built headquarters opened in 2002.

Which Delta Tau Delta governing board, elected at each convention, began as the Executive Council?

Arch Chapter became the name under an 1889 constitution; delegates at the convention set policy and this alumni board carries it out.

What symbol sits above the letters on Delta Tau Delta's square, black-enamel membership badge?

An eye, rayed in glory, tops the letters, with a crescent moon beneath them and a five-pointed star in each corner.

Which three official colors fill Delta Tau Delta's flag and the twisted rope on its coat of arms?

Purple, white and gold mattered early on because members wore the colors as sashes and caps when official badges were too costly.

A rigged prize vote at which campus literary club drove eight students to found Delta Tau Delta?

The Neotrophian Society was the hub of campus life, so the eight formed a secret group to wrest control back for the wider student body.

Which Delta Tau Delta founder returned from Kentucky in 1861 and saved the dying fraternity?

Henry K. Bell found two students at Jefferson College in Pennsylvania, who rode 22 miles through a snowstorm to be initiated as the Civil War emptied the campus.

Which Delta Tau Delta founder, listed as dead in early catalogues, was found alive in Arkansas?

Alexander C. Earle, the youngest founder at 17, had left to fight for the Confederacy; he was greeted as a returning hero and attended three conventions.

Which Pennsylvania school's Delta Tau Delta chapter became the fourth and final Alpha in 1875?

Allegheny College took the title after member James S. Eaton travelled to Ohio to rescue the records of a governing chapter that had collapsed.

The W.W.W., a society that merged into Delta Tau Delta in 1886, began on which Southern campus?

The University of Mississippi is where seven transfers from an Alabama college founded the society in 1848; their chapter became the Delts' Pi chapter.

Which city hosted Delta Tau Delta's first general convention in 1866 and its centennial in 1958?

Pittsburgh drew delegates from just five chapters in 1866; a later convention there made a pilgrimage to the restored founding house.

Two of Delta Tau Delta's founders already belonged to which older secret fraternal order?

Freemasons William Cunningham and Richard Alfred were in their mid-twenties in 1858, and Cunningham's lodge experience helped him draft the outline of the new group.

Delta Tau Delta helped found which umbrella group for men's fraternities in 1909?

The National Interfraternity Conference grew out of a wish to turn bitter rivalries into cooperation, and Delt James B. Curtis was one of its founders.

Which Supreme Court justice was Delta Tau Delta's international president from 1966 to 1968?

Tom C. Clark joined at the University of Texas; he left the Court in 1967, mid-presidency, so his son could become attorney general without a conflict.

In 1924 Delta Tau Delta added a board officer devoted solely to which side of chapter life?

Scholarship got its own supervisor after grades slumped around World War I, and the fraternity also set an academic standard for initiation.

Which early NASA astronaut, the second American to orbit Earth, joined Delta Tau Delta at Colorado?

Scott Carpenter studied aeronautical engineering in Boulder but finished one requirement short of a degree after a washed-out bridge made him miss a final exam.

Which astronaut, pulled from Apollo 13 days before launch, was a Delta Tau Delta member at Auburn?

Ken Mattingly was replaced as command module pilot three days before liftoff, helped NASA bring the crippled craft home, then orbited the Moon on Apollo 16.

Which sculptor, originator of the mobile, joined Delta Tau Delta as an engineering student?

Alexander Calder studied mechanical engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology, and the fraternity now names its award for house renovation after him.

Which author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces joined Delta Tau Delta as a Dartmouth student?

Joseph Campbell soon transferred to Columbia, where he ran track and was for a time among the fastest half-mile runners in the world.

Which founding member of R.E.M. joined Delta Tau Delta at Emory University before dropping out?

Peter Buck moved on to Athens, Georgia, where he met singer Michael Stipe while working at the Wuxtry Records store.

Which Modern Family patriarch joined Delta Tau Delta while playing football at Ohio University?

Ed O'Neill left Ohio University after his sophomore year, admitting he spent more time on sports and parties than on studying.

Which University of Kansas Delta Tau Delta member won the Olympic discus at four straight Games?

Al Oerter took up the event at 15, when a stray discus landed at his feet and he threw it back past the crowd of throwers.

What is written as the motto on the ribbon beneath the shield of Delta Tau Delta's coat of arms?

The fraternity's name is the motto inscribed on the ribbon; most fraternities instead keep secret mottoes from which their names derive.

Delta Tau Delta's mission statement, adopted in 1995, commits its members to lives of what?

Excellence is the stated goal, and the member-development framework that every Delt takes part in is likewise called the Life of Excellence.

Which Secret Service agent, shot shielding Ronald Reagan in 1981, was a Delta Tau Delta member?

Tim McCarthy stepped in front of the president and took a bullet himself; in college he had walked on to the Illinois football team.