Greek House Profiles
Provided by Chapter Presidents

Chi Omega Fraternity
Melanie Adamsen’03

Founded: 1895
Colors: Cardinal and Straw
Badge: Gold Chi on Omega, set with fourteen pearls
Nickname: Chi O

Chi Omega is the largest women’s fraternity in the nation, with over 250,000 members and 170 chapters. Of all national women’s organizations, it is exceeded in size only by the Girl Scouts of America. The Epsilon Kappa Chapter of Chi Omega was established at St. Lawrence University in 1982. Our organization is founded on the principles of friendship, scholarship, community service, campus involvement, career development and personal development. Our members take great pride in many ways as our sisters strive to achieve these goals.

In Spring 2001, Chi Omega won the Chapter of Excellence Award at St. Lawrence University, given for outstanding community service, scholarship, sisterhood and recruitment. In addition to community philanthropic activities, we participated in a teeter-totter marathon with the brothers of Alpha Tau Omega. Nationally, Chi Omega has a philanthropic partnership with the Make-a-Wish foundation.

Our sisters participate in many campus organizations, clubs, teams and activities. This year we were represented on women’s athletic teams, both competitive and recreational. We participated in such sports as rugby, lacrosse, crew, intramural broomball and softball, as well as Dance Ensemble. We also have sisters involved in musical organizations such as the Singing Sinners and the Laurentian Singers. Our sisters worked as writing center tutors, teaching assistants, and community assistants. On the academic side, there is a Chi Omega sister representing almost every academic honorary on campus.

At St. Lawrence, the sisters of Chi Omega are very proud of our academic, athletic, artistic, community and social activities. We cherish the strong friendships that we have forged as sisters, both in our campus home and as part of the St. Lawrence family. Our pride extends from the campus of St. Lawrence and throughout the national chapters. We recognize that the accomplishments of individual chapters serve to gain momentum for the Chi Omega Fraternity as a whole.

The greatest accomplishment for our house last year was being awarded the Campus Involvement Award at the Greek Banquet. Our house is one of the smaller Greek houses and we pride ourselves on being very active on campus. It was great to see that the rest of the community has noticed our effort and involvement.

As president, I look forward to working with the rest of the Greek houses to recruit new members to the Greek system. I mean new members not only for my house, which is one of my main goals, but also for the system as a whole. We need to all work together and show the positive aspects of joining a fraternity or sorority and help attract new members. I am sure that we will have a very successful recruitment this fall and I am looking forward to welcoming more wonderful members into my house.

Alpha Tau Omega
President Scott Leuenberger’03

ATO was founded as a national fraternity in 1865 in Richmond, Virginia, by a VMI cadet named Ottis Alan Glazebrook. Glazebrook had fought for the South in the Civil War, and following the war he wanted to start an institution that would bridge the gap between the North and the South. A very religious man, Glazwbrook based his new fraternity on Christian principles.

The St. Lawrence chapter of ATO was founded in 1882 by Irving Bacheller, best-selling author of Eben Holden, for which a building on campus is named. The national philanthropy of the ATO cannot be narrowed down to any one area, as ATO National encourages all of its chapters to do service within their communities and help out local organizations like Big Brother/Big Sister. Our chapter at St. Lawrence has worked with the Red Cross, the Canton Middle School, and Big Brother/Big Sister in Canton.

Our chapter is consistently involved in many events that are helpful to the community, and fun for our members, so it’s hard to narrow down our house’s greatest accomplishment last year. I think I’d say we did best by our continued excellence in serving the community and by maintaining SLU's high academic standards as was seen at the Greek Banquet this past year.