Herstory
Omega Phi Beta Sorority, Incorporated was founded on March 15, 1989 at the University at Albany, State University of New York by seventeen dedicated women of various cultural and ethnic backgrounds. They came together because they realized the apathy toward Latina women and decided they wanted to initiate change. They agreed to create an organization to fight against the injustices historically suffered by our gender. As the first Latina-oriented organization in the history of the University at Albany, they struggled to establish our organization, our purpose and most importantly a precedence.
With an emphasis on community service and sisterhood, Omega Phi Beta immediately became a positive influence on the University at Albany campus community as well as the Albany city community. Realizing the importance of expanding our service we initiated our first pledge class and established a second chapter, the Beta Chapter at SUNY New Paltz in the Spring of 1991.
What brought together our prominent seventeen founders and what attracted those initial pledge classes, still attracts so many women today. Although our orientation is Latina, we are open to women of all cultural backgrounds and the diversity of our membership and interestingly the diversity of our seventeen founders' attests to this fact. Omega Phi Beta Sorority, Incorporated thrives on the diversity of its members and we attribute a lot of our success to our organization's ability to embrace each members' differences.
Omega Phi Beta was established due to the desire of identifying with and establishing our culture as well as symbolizing order strength and unity. Our founders set their precedence and today, we as a whole stand alongside them and exemplify what our values of pride, honesty and beliefs of tradition and custom symbolize.