Order of Omega, a national Greek organization on campus that recognizes fraternity men and women who have high standards of leadership, scholarship and community involvement, is accepting applications for 52 new members.

Applications to join Order of Omega are open for juniors and seniors until March 31 to join for the following school year. Katie Scheafer, VP of membership for Order of Omega and a member of Delta Gamma, said the organization only accepts members with a GPA in the top 3 percent of the Greek community.

“The all Greek average GPA for all active members on Kent’s campus is a 3.2 so we take the top 3 percent based on that when going through applications,” Scheafer said.

Scheafer said the Order of Omega currently has 25 members, but is able to accept 52 new applicants, which is a lot larger than previous years.

“Due to the large new member classes that the sororities and fraternities have been taking through formal and informal recruitment the chapters have grown as well as the Greek community as a whole, so are able to accept more people who fall in the category of the top 3 percent,” Scheafer said.

Lauren McGarvey, president of Order of Omega and also a member of Delta Gamma, said members are also considered based off of the community service they do and the leadership within their individual sororities or fraternities and on the Kent campus itself.

“Order of Omega has high standards of community service,” McGarvey said. “I felt that we didn’t have enough to show for it though. So when I took on the position as president, I really tried to work on getting our name out there in the community by getting more involved.”

McGarvey said some of the community service involvement they implemented this past year included a toy drive for the Toys For Tots foundation.

Order of Omega was able to collect more than 500 toys to give to children on Christmas day.

Vince Shannon, community service chairman for Order of Omega and a member of Phi Delta Theta, said he has a philanthropic background that started before joining the Greek community. He said he wanted to try something new when taking on this chairman position, which is where the idea for collecting toys came from.

“We didn’t collect all these toys alone,” Shannon said. “We really marketed this event throughout all of Kent State’s Greek community and on campus. We had a lot of support and it turned out really successful for the first time ever hosting it.”

Shannon said some advice he has for students who are applying to join Order of Omega is to use it as more than just a resume builder and take advantage of the opportunity to get involved and make a difference in the community.

Contact Zabrina Hvostal at [email protected].