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The Fraternity of Alpha Kappa Lambda has a proud history that dates to the early part of the 20th Century. This organization has weathered the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, two world wars, the Great Depression, the turbulent 60's and all the days in between. In April of 1914, the Los Amigos club formed a national fraternity at the University of California in Berkeley. That fraternity is Alpha Kappa Lambda. Today AKL has chapters located coast-to-coast of the United States. The Fraternity has over 22,000 initiated members and has granted charters on 76 campuses. Through the years we have had many great men join our brotherhood. A fine history of men, events, and traditions has emerged. We hope this page will give you some insight into the world of Alpha Kappa Lambda. We hope in the future to provide much more information from our archives, members, and chapters.
1906 discussed the possibility of forming a house club where they might live together as men and brothers, helping each other, encouraging each other, and perhaps living more economically than they could separately. The earthquake that devastated San Francisco that year delayed the formation of the club for a time, but in 1907 the idea was brought up again among Charles Booth, Harry Osborne, Joseph Taylor, and Gail Cleland while they were attending a YMCA Conference together at Pacific Grove, California. There they made plans to begin Los Amigos, a house club named from the Spanish translation of "The Friends." These men were joined in 1907 by William Barnum, Harold Savage, Oscar Perrine, Herman Bergh, Leonard Day, Allen Kimball, and Ludwig Rehfuess. "When we organized Los Amigos as a house club . . . house clubs and fraternities were a dime a dozen. They came, they lived for a few months or a few years, then they went out of existence again. But Los Amigos did not got out of existence," recalled Gail Cleland. Cleland continued, "And seven years later . . . in response to the suggestion of Benjamin Ide Wheeler, the President of the University of California, we organized our house club as a national fraternity of one chapter." Past National President William B. Herms (Alpha, Honorary, California) described the origins of Alpha Kappa Lambda in THE LOGOS in 1925: "Distinguished scholars contributed to the building of the new Fraternity. (President Wheeler) gave advice and encouragement, Professor Charles Mills Gayley and Professor James T. Allen suggested the name 'Alpha Kappa Lambda' and the motto 'Alethia Kai Logos'," which in classical Greek means "The Truth and The Word." "The Motto is a symbolic statement of our ideals. We are seekers after Truth, the highest Truth, if you please . . . And the Word, which again lends itself to interpretation," expounded Herms. In addition, Herms continues, "Somebody has said, 'This is the Logos of Alpha Kappa Lambda--Service.' Or fully stated, our motto means 'Devotion to God through Service to Man.' It is abstract enough for any philosopher, and is meaningful to us all." Gail Cleland said, "What is the significance of our motto? As Plato suggested, an Ideal is a permanent thing, but as Aristotle supplemented, (an Ideal) is effective in the actual world of reality only as it becomes embodied in a concrete expression in the life of a man or an institution. As we (explained) to President Wheeler, 'We don't want to preach (ideals), we want to live (them)'." The founders of Los Amigos were a diverse group, but they all had the common desire for studious living in their college environment and continued integrity after their formal education concluded. As noted above, Los Amigos was born out of the practical desire of college men of limited means. Alpha Kappa Lambda would be founded on the higher desire to give men on other college campuses the same opportunity for brotherhood, scholarship, and service.
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Los
Amigos was born out of need- the need of men for a place to live and study
that was within their means. Several students attending the University of
California at Berkeley in the year