More than 170 years ago, in the Freshman Recital Room of Williams College, 31 men came together to form a fraternity that judged men not by their membership in a secret society, but on their own merits. This society was created with a spirit of openness in opposition to the secret societies that were then rampant on the campus of Williams College. That was November 4th, 1834. To put these events into some historical perspective, the year Delta Upsilon was founded, the United States consisted of only 24 states - with the western most being Missouri; Samuel Morse would not invent the telegraph for another three years. As time marched on, so did D.U. In 1898 Delta Upsilon became an international fraternity with the addition of a Canadian chapter. Charles Evans Hughes, future Supreme Court Chief Justice and US Secretary of State, incorporated the fraternity in New York state in 1909.
In the modern era, Delta Upsilon has grown to include 84 undergraduate chapters in the United States and Canada. While our membership has increased dramatically from those original 31 students at Williams, our goals and the fundamental principles to which we are committed have remained stubbornly unchanged. To this day we hold to our stated mission of Building Better Men through adherence to the fraternity's four found principles. The fraternity will celebrate the 175th anniversary of its founding November 4th, 2009.