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Our History

      The Tau Mu chapter of Chi Omega was installed on November 15, 2003, at Washington University in St. Louis. Since then, the chapter has grown to over 125 active members. The sisters are leaders in the Greek community as well as on campus. Chi Omegas are involved in over 200 different student organizations at Washington University.

      Chi Omega was founded in 1895 at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, AR. By 1904, Chi Omega extended through Texas, Nebraska and California, and as far north as Virginia and Washington, D.C. Today, Chi Omega is the largest women’s fraternal organization in the world with over 300,000 initiates and 171 collegiate chapters.

      The Fraternity’s Five Founders were Jobelle Holcombe, Jean Vincenheller, Ina May Boles, Alice Simonds, and Dr. Charles Richardson, a regent of the University and a national officer of Kappa Sigma Fraternity. This small band of women founded Chi Omega after realizing a need for an organization that would foster both friendship and respect for the potential and inherent value of women. Dr. Richardson, a dentist by trade, crafted the first badge out of dental gold.

      The six purposes of Chi Omega were established in order to preserve and enhance the values of each member. The six purposes are:
  • Friendship
  • High Standards of Personnel
  • Sincere Learning and Credible Scholarship
  • Participation in Campus Activities
  • Career Deelopment
  • Community Service
      Chi Omega was the first women’s fraternity to undertake a major gift to a university: the Greek Theatre at the University of Arkansas. The theatre still stands, with five words engraved on the frieze: Knowledge, Integrity, Courage, Culture, and Intelligence.

      The Chi Omega Symphony was written in 1909 by Ethel Switzer Howard, a pledge of Xi Chapter at Northwestern University. She wrote the poem in preparation for her initiation and felt that the words exemplified goals to which every Chi Omega aspires.

      To live constantly above snobbery of word or deed; to place scholarship before social obligations and character before appearances; to be, in the best sense, democratic rather than 'exclusive', and lovable rather than 'popular'; to work earnestly, to speak kindly, to act sincerely, to choose thoughtfully that course which occasion and conscience demand; to be womanly always; to be discouraged never; in a word, to be loyal under any and all circumstances to my Fraternity and her highest teachings and to have her welfare ever at heart that she may be a symphony of high purpose and helpfulness in which there is no discordant note.

Ethel Switzer Howard, Xi Chapter, Northwestern University, 1904


      To learn more about Chi Omega's history, check out the Chi Omega National Website!
© 2007 Tau Mu Chapter of Chi Omega