Other GLOs mentioned in your founding?

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by badgeguy

When it comes down to it in the most basic sense, all groups are somewhat connected to each other becuase there were always some founder who had connections to somebody who was connected to another group, or founders were rivals of other groups at their schools......in all my years of research I have yet to truly find any group that was completely autonomous without ANY connections to some other group.

Sinfonia, perhaps? I have never heard of any connection, formal or informal, with any other collegiate fraternity, beyond general knowledge of the existence of other, general fraternities. There were, so far as I recall, no other fraternities at the New England Conservatory at the time of our founding. I've never seen any reference to Father Mills belonging to any other fraternity, and the nature of the Conservatory at that time would suggest that most if not all of the faculty were probably educated somewhere other than a liberal arts college or university, which is where general fraternities would have been found. Many would have been educated or trained in Europe.

The Zeta Chapter of Alpha Chi Omega was chartered at NEC almost 3 years before Sinfonia's founding, but I can't recall ever seeing any reference to that in any Sinfonia history, nor have I ever seen anything to suggest that Father Mills or anyone else was trying to provide an Alpha Chi Omega-like experience for men at NEC. What history I have read would seem to suggest a different impetus for founding the Sinfonia Club, which soon became the Sinfonia Fraternity.

That said, there are historical snippets to suggest some influence of European student groups -- the (unverifiable) story that NEC president George Chadwick suggested the name "Sinfonia" after an organization to which he had belonged while a student in Leipzig (the "Symphonia Club") comes to mind. And I do know that when the Fraternity was still young (10+ years), people involved in the Greek movement, like George Banta and Emily Butterfield, were influential, but that would have been after founding.

But otherwise, I don't see anything in our history suggesting a connection with any other GLO.