When Jim Knoll, San Jose State ’83, stopped by the site of Delta Sigma Phi’s founding in New York City back in 2012, he expected a moment of quiet reflection. Instead, he was met with confusion, a security desk, and a lot of locked doors.

“I just wanted to see the plaque,” he remembers. “But no one seemed to know where it was. Eventually, they let me through, and there it was—tucked away behind security.”

Originally installed in 1999 to commemorate the Fraternity’s centennial, the plaque marked the location of Delta Sig’s founding in 1899 at the College of the City of New York. For years, visiting it meant navigating a maze of security protocols inside what is now Baruch College. Still, Jim kept going back—and so did others. It became a pilgrimage of sorts for members of the New York Alumni Association, which Jim helped organize. Each year on Founder’s Day, they’d meet for a toast and make their way through security to pay their respects to the spot where Delta Sigma Phi began.

But in 2022, they found the plaque gone. “They were redoing the lobby, and I thought—this is our chance. What if we could move it somewhere easier to reach?”

That question sparked a months-long effort. Jim worked the phones, found the right person in facilities, and made the case: the plaque belonged somewhere public. Somewhere visible. Somewhere you didn’t need a building badge to see it.

His persistence paid off. Today, the plaque proudly hangs just inside the Lexington Avenue entrance of Baruch College. “You walk in the door, turn right, and there it is,” Jim says. “You don’t need to ask anyone. It’s just there.”

The building itself isn’t the original, which was demolished around 1913, but it stands on the same ground. “It’s the exact spot,” Jim says. “And that connection—you can feel it.”

For Jim, the move wasn’t about a piece of bronze. It was about honoring a history he’s spent decades investing in. “When people come to New York, they want to see where it all began. This makes that possible.”

Jim speaks with reverence about the Fraternity’s founding—how three young men, just teenagers, came together to build something inclusive in a time when the world was anything but. “They were poor. Immigrants. Students from the tenements who got into college on merit alone. No one would accept all of them because of their backgrounds, so they started something new.”

And more than a century later, it’s still something worth visiting.

“This plaque is just a marker,” he says. “But what it represents—that idea of a Brotherhood of man—it’s still alive. And now, anyone can come see it. Just walk in the door.”