This page was created by Collin Hardwick.
Secrecy: The Basis of a Solid Fraternity
The point of maintaining secrets among purely members of the fraternity is so that only members from Beta Theta Pi may identify each other, and enables members to gain privileges that accompany initiation into the fraternity. Certain information is learned throughout the initiation process that is unavailable to those of the outside world.
Founder John Reilly Knox stated in an 1843 letter that, the inspiration for learning and maintaining secrets about the fraternity laid in the interest of what men bound together by a common purpose and bond that rested neither on the self nor prestige or greed. Rather, these secrets, and the values they were based on, were a driving factor to push members to accomplish greatness through association, to lift each other up on the basis of purely the fraternity and what it stood for. If a member was to lack reasons for motivation for any task in life, the hope was that they could at least be pushed to achieve greatness for Beta Theta Pi.
