“Chi Omega yours forever, loyal will we be / to your symphony and colors, our fraternity!”
The members of Chi Omega celebrate their sisterhood through the songs shared within the women’s fraternity. This summer, personnel adviser and the fraternity’s new national director of music, Gail Mowry ’04, senior Ellen Hogan, and eight other choir members will lead 1,500 delegates in singing this song and many others at Chi Omega’s National Convention.
Every other year, the national governing council elects an alumna to organize music for the convention and assemble a choir to lead the delegates in song. This year, they chose Mowry as director of music, and she began selecting songs and members for the choir. Among them is Hogan, an active member of the sorority.
“I had to look through resumes and talk to people, do auditions. I narrowed it down to nine people who do of all of the music,” Mowry said. “We provide all of the entertainment for convention, and we also are charged with teaching either old songs or new songs to the entire delegation. People at the convention are supposed to learn the Chi Omega songs and take them back to their chapters.”
In addition to the songs learned and sung at all 179 Chi Omega chapters, each house has its own unique songs, both handed down from graduated classes and composed by active members.
“If you go down to a chapter in Florida, the songs they sing are going to be different than the ones we sing in Hillsdale,” Mowry said. “But there are the few like ‘Shades’ and ‘Chi Omega Yours Forever’ that we sing at convention every time because everyone knows them.”
At convention, Mowry and the choir will perform a variety of songs, some shared publicly and some specific to Chi Omega’s ritual, kept secret between sorority sisters.
“In our ritual, which is the secrets that each sorority has, there are specific songs that we sing,” junior Anna Goodwin, president of Hillsdale’s Rho Gamma chapter, said. “Those songs reflect what we stand for and what we strive to be. The song mistress is basically in charge of making sure we learn the songs, and sometimes she sings individually as well, depending on the event.”
In gathering a repertoire for the convention, Mowry has talked to alumnae throughout the nation in selecting other songs.
“I have done a lot of communicating with different members,” she said. “It’s cool because I’ve been able to talk to every member of the governing council of Chi Omega and talk to different people who know the ropes.”
Delegates attending convention then have the opportunity to learn these new songs and bring them back to teach to the individual chapters.
“When we go to convention we write or present new songs, or we find something like, ‘Oh, this one’s back from 1949, let’s sing this one,’ and people may say, ‘Oh, that one’s really cool, let’s take that one home,” Mowry said.
Songs range from lighthearted and fun to serious and formal, with a melody for all occasions: recruitment, ritual, initiation, and every day.
“Some of them are serious,” Mowry said. “I think Chi Omega is a fraternity of people that have these common bonds, and we have our purposes that we believe in and we’re very firm in those, but we also like to have fun. So there are songs that are just fun.
While elegant, the songs are also uniting among sisters — none are so complex that they prevent everyone from joining in and singing along.
“There are a lot of fun, simple melodies,” Hogan said. “Pretty, but simple enough so everyone can sing them.”
Hogan and Mowry both share a love of music and Chi Omega. As Rho Gamma’s former song mistress, Hogan taught the songs to chapter members. As an undergraduate, Mowry majored in music and was also president of Sigma Alpha Iota women’s music fraternity.
Just as songs remain a consistent part of the Greek system, Mowry said being the director of music has been a part of her continued participation in Chi Omega. Mowry has remained active in Chi Omega, serving as a go-between national leadership and Hillsdale’s Rho Gamma chapter.
“When you join a sorority or a fraternity, it’s for a lifetime, not just for those four years,” Mowry said. “I feel like this is an example of how I continue to be a part of the Greek system, even though I’m no longer a collegiate member.”