Eta Chi: Celebrating 30 years of empowering women

Since 1989, the women of Eta Chi, a chapter of the international fraternity known as Alpha Phi, have been supporting and empowering one another while giving back to the local community. For those of you who may not be familiar with Eta Chi, they are an off-campus women’s fraternity located right here in Lennoxville and they are one of only two women’s fraternities in the entire province. This year marks Eta Chi’s 30th anniversary and to celebrate, we thought we’d take you back to where it all began. While the Eta Chi chapter was formed in 1989, the roots of the women’s fraternity go back to 1986 with Zeta Gamma. “We created our own local fraternity first called Zeta Gamma before petitioning Alpha Phi because you have to be deemed worthy to become an international chapter,” explained Linton Carter, founding Vice-President of the women’s fraternity and Chief Development Officer of UNICEF Canada.
At a time when two fraternities were being formed by male students at Bishop’s University, Linton and her peers decided to start their own women’s fraternity. “We created an off-campus sorority, as it was called back then,” added Carter, “It wasn’t an official university club; it was a self-organized group.” After its first year, members of Zeta Gamma decided they wanted to be a part of an international Greek letter organization and petitioned Alpha Phi. “There are certain requirements to become an international chapter,” mentioned Carter, “We had to do a certain number of volunteer hours, we had to have a purpose, we had to have a certain grade average; there were certain criteria.” As another requirement, Zeta Gamma needed to have community liaisons to help them carry out their work in the community. See full story in the Monday, Dec. 9 edition of The Record.