When, in the winter of 1849-1850, the Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity decided to establish a Chapter at Madison University, it was, in fact, founding two of its future Chapters, Colgate University and the University of Rochester. It all began on the afternoon of February 18, 1850, when twelve students of Madison University (now Colgate) crowded into a sleigh and rode twelve miles over the snow to the Hamilton Chapter, located in Clinton, where they were initiated into the mysteries of Alpha Delta Phi.

“The new Chapter began holding regular meetings and seemed destined to a prosperous future. Many… friends of Madison University, however, thought its location, for many reasons, unfortunate; and this, combined with other causes, induced a majority of the professors and students of Madison…to secede from the College, and, coming to Rochester, to found… the University of Rochester. All but two (who had graduated) of the members of newly formed Chapter were among the students who left Madison for Rochester.”

For over one hundred years the first fraternity to be founded on the now Colgate campus was nonexistent. It was not until the winter of 1958-1959 that the first stirrings of that local fraternity destined to become the Madison Chapter of Alpha Delta Phi was felt. At first it was the dream of two students sitting at The Colgate Inn. “In order to provide greater opportunity and to strengthen the existing fraternity system at Colgate, a handful of students considered the creation of a new social fraternity incorporating the desirable features of life on Fraternity Row and life in the living units provided by the University.” But their dream was to grow. At first it was slow, but always steady. Among other things accomplished, members were recruited, regular meetings were held, a treasury was established, and finally formal approval was given the group by the Board of Trustees of the University on January 15, 1960. On that date a new local fraternity known as Alpha Chi Epsilon came officially into being.

Within the next four years Alpha Chi Epsilon was to take its place as an active social fraternity on the Colgate University campus. Physically, socially and academically it was to flourish. A thirty-room chapter house was purchased and renovated; and the Brotherhood grew, while academically Alpha Chi Epsilon topped the campus.

From its inception Alpha Chi Epsilon had determined to seek national affiliation. Among its earliest papers can be found the following statement: “Alpha Chi Epsilon…is a group established with the purpose of affiliating one day with a truly outstanding national fraternity.” On December 7, 1964 this goal was realized. On that day a group of 32 Brothers, both graduates and undergraduates, this time in a line of honking automobiles rather than in a sleigh, made the twenty mile trip to Hamilton College, where, like those eight men 114 years earlier, they were initiated into the mysteries of the Alpha Delta Phi. A mere eight years later, the Madison Chapter became inactive.