In the spring of 1994
, then-sophomores Paul Massingill and Robert Bleker were walking back to their dorms after a Student Leadership board meeting. It was a time when hazing was a major issue within UT’s Greek system and the pair felt that an alternative space for male bonding was needed. Just four years earlier, an intoxicated Beta Theta Pi member had fallen to his death from the roof of his fraternity house, and a Sigma Nu pledge was subjected to gruesome hazing in the basement of the legacy organization he’d hoped to join. After a high-profile investigation and court case, the latter fraternity’s chapter was suspended on campus. It was a reckoning for UT’s fraternity row, but the toxic culture hadn’t just disappeared. Massingill and Bleker started talking about what their ideal student organization would look like. The friends swore their group would not tolerate hazing of any kind.