History of the Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity
Alpha Tau Omega began as an idea in the mind of a young Civil War veteran who wanted peace and reconciliation. His name was Otis Allan Glazebrook. His people were defeated, many of their cities burned, much of their countryside ravaged. But Glazebrook, who had helped bury the dead of both sides, believed in a better future. He saw the bitterness and hatred that followed the silencing of the guns and knew that a true peace would come not from force of law, but rather from with the hearts of men who were willing to work to rekindle a spirit of brotherly love.
Glazebrook, deeply religious at age 19, believed that younger men like himself might be more willing to accept, forgive, and reunite with the Northern counterparts if motivated by Christian, brotherly love. But he needed an organization, a means of gathering and organizing like-minded people.
In Richmond, Glazebrook consulted with University of Virginia alumni who furnished further information concerning fraternities. He discovered that they were not Greek in name only, but Greek throughout. Their mottoes, besides being written in Greek, reflected Greek ideals. Greek philosophy, sometimes tinged with the medieval mysteries and Masonic lore, waste the cultural ideal of the fraternities.
The name came spontaneously. He remembered the ancient insignia of the Church, the Tau Cross subjoined by Alpha and Omega. "Alpha" and "Omega" signify to the Christian absolute plenitude or perfection. "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last." Joined with the Cross the whole signifies that Christ is all in all, the beginning and end of salvation.
Having projected a Christian fraternity and appropriated a distinctively Christian symbol for its name, the Cross naturally was its logical emblem. In the center he inscribed a crescent, three stars, the Tau Cross and clasped hands. Upon the upper and lower vertical arms he placed the Greek letters for Alpha and Omega and upon the horizontal arms, the Omega and Alpha letters respectively.
On September 11, 1865, Glazebrook invited two close friends, Alfred Marshall and Erskine Mayo Ross, to his home at 114 East Clay Street in Richmond, Virginia. There, in the rear parlor, he read them the Constitution he had written and invited them to sign. As they did, Alpha Tau Omega was born. It was the first fraternity founded after the Civil War, and the first sign of Greek life in the old Confederacy.
History of Xi Chapter at Duke University
The Xi Chapter of Alpha Tau Omega was founded at Duke University in 1872. Xi was the 14th national chapter established. Of the 158 Alpha Tau Omega chapters nationwide, the Duke Xi chapter is the longest continuously active chapter.
Today, with over seventy brothers, the Xi chapter is very active in a variety of sports and clubs on Duke's campus. Currently, several Taus compete on the varsity swim team, while others are involved in activities as diverse as community service programs, campus councils, club sports teams, student government, and genetics research.
The Creed of Alpha Tau Omega
To bind men together in a brotherhood based upon eternal and immutable principles,
with a bond as strong as right itself and as lasting as humanity;
to know no North, no South, no East, no West, but to know man as man,
to teach that true men the world over should stand together and contend for the supremacy of good over evil;
to teach, not politics, but morals; to foster, not partisanship, but the recognition of true merit wherever found;
to have no narrower limits within wich to work together for the elevation of man than the outlines of the world:
these were the thoughts and hopes uppermost in the minds of the founders of the Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity.
- Otis Allan Glazebrook, 1880
History
