Phi Delta Theta
fraternity
Phi Delta Theta (ΦΔΘ), commonly known as Phi Delt, is an international college social fraternity founded in 1848, and currently headquartered, at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Phi Delta Theta, along with Beta Theta Pi and Sigma Chi form the Miami Triad.
The fraternity has over 200 active chapters and colonies in over 44 U.S. states and five Canadian provinces and has initiated more than 310,000 men between 1848 and 2024. There are over 180,000 living alumni. Phi Delta Theta chartered house corporations own over 135 houses valued at over $141 million as of summer 2015. There are nearly 100 recognized alumni clubs across the U.S. and Canada.
Among the best-known members of the fraternity are Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd President of the United States, Vice President Adlai Stevenson I, chief justice of the United States Fred M. Vinson, Baseball Hall of Fame member Lou Gehrig, actor Burt Reynolds, architect Frank Lloyd Wright, astronaut Neil Armstrong, and John S. McCain Sr., U.S. Navy Admiral and grandfather of John McCain, and William A. McCain, brother of John S. McCain Sr.
History
Founding
In 1839, Beta Theta Pi was founded at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. In protest against the university's president, members of Beta Theta Pi and another fraternity, Alpha Delta Phi, blocked the entrances of the main educational and administrative building in what became known as the Great Snowball Rebellion of 1848.
After the president expelled most of the students involved in the uprising, Phi Delta Theta was formed by six men staying in a dormitory the day after Christmas.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Phi Delta Theta” is fraternity. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Delta, Theta and fraternity, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3378722. VIAF identifies the subject as 125497145. The Library of Congress control number is n81043328. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1848, 2024, 2015 and 1839.
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This entry incorporates text from “Phi Delta Theta” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.