17, 1904, the second fraternity, Sigma Delta, was founded and accepted all the rest.
OPiO first was housed in the Smith House at 53 Elm Street in 1904. [NOTE: Much
later, that building became the home of Delta Kappa Theta, a social fraternity from SUNY
Potsdam.] It then moved to a house on Chestnut Street at Missouri Avenue, later to a large
white house on Main Street, and finally in 1918 to 95 Market Street. At its 25
th
anniversary
celebration in 1928, the mortgage was burned ceremoniously. Later, the fraternity moved to its
present home at 14 Leroy, the former Sisson House.
At one of the first meetings, Prof. Haviland suggested the desirability of a cipher code
by which they could write and post notices without the possibility of their being deciphered by
anyone not within the chapter. Writing the alphabet and digits on a blackboard, he placed
mathematical and chemical symbols under each until the code was complete. From that time
on, personal notices were posted in code, which, of course, were the source of much mystery in
the school. When selecting the names of officers, the code was referred to.
St. Lawrence Rivalry.
Clarkson’s intense athletic rivalry with St. Lawrence began in
1896 when Clarkson lost its first football contest, 12-0. This rivalry was stopped for 17 years
when, during a Clarkson-SLU track meet in the spring of 1903, a rowdy group of “Tech”
partisans (not Tech students) became upset at one of the decisions, and started throwing sod.
One clump of sod struck the chairman of the St. Lawrence Athletic Commission in the back of
the neck. This action caused athletic contests between the two schools to be suspended
immediately. They were not resumed until 1920 when Clarkson’s football team again lost, this
time by the score of 24-0. (See 1900)
