We offer social, scholastic, athletic, philanthropic, and leadership opportunities, but the most important opportunity is Brotherhood. In early 1996, eight men met in the recreation room of Naugle Hall, a campus dormitory at Shippensburg University. It was there that Justin Kaufman described his visit to the Phi Delta Theta chapter at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Kaufman's older brother Clinton is a Phi from RIT, and while visiting him Kaufman had seen a successful Phi Delta Theta chapter in action. Convinced that the ideals and beliefs of his brother's fraternity were exactly what was missing at Shippensburg, Kaufman set out to form a chapter of Phi Delta Theta at Shippensburg University. On April 4, 1998, the Pennsylvania Omicron Interest Group was officially colonized. The colony by now had twenty-nine members, each distinctly individual, but also bound by a bond of brotherhood as strong as any other. These twenty-nine men will forever be remembered as the Founding Fathers of Pennsylvania Omicron. Less than a year later, on March 26, 1999 the Founding Fathers and four members of the first pledge class known as the Alpha Class were initiated into Phi Delta Theta. The folowing day, the fraternity was officially installed as a chapter and granted a charter from Phi Delta Theta headquarters.
