With Saturday’s deadly fire fresh in their minds, members of the university’s off-campus fraternities and sororities are as supportive as ever of a city mandate to install sprinkler systems by May 2006 — even though funding the costly project is driving up rent.

“Anything involving safety is the right thing to do,” said Karen DeMatteo, the housing corporation vice president for Kappa Delta. “I do not ever want to make that telephone call to a parent that because of my negligence … we were not able to save your daughter. That to me is the bottom line.”

But like city landlords, housing corporation directors, which manage most fraternity and sorority housing renovations, are facing the reality that the added safety comes with a price tag.

Kappa Delta’s sprinkler system installation, which was completed last July, cost the sorority about $200,000. The sorority covered the cost with loans that will require rent increases to pay off.

“The problem for most sororities and fraternities is they don’t have the money to do this,” DeMatteo said. “It’s a tremendous amount of money, number one, and it’s about a two-year process to do the work.”

The 2003 city mandate applies to all off-campus dormitory-style housing — specifically about 14 fraternity and sorority houses — but excludes other student-filled high-rise apartments like College Park Towers.

And though housing corporation directors agree the mandate’s three-year window allotted enough time to finish the task, it still left them struggling to finance the added safety measure.

“It’s just something that’s been startling,” said Megan Urbaniak, president of Delta Delta Delta housing corporation. “I think fire safety is important and I think it was appropriate, I just think it needed to be widespread amongst the entire college community.”

Delta Delta Delta, which moved its planned sprinkler system installation up to this summer to comply with the mandate, had 10 percent of the total project cost covered by its executive office, Urbaniak said. The rest of the $100,000 will likely be funded by a 5 to 8 percent rent increase in years to come.

For Delta Delta Delta, the sprinkler costs followed a $150,000 cost to install a fire alarm system and thicker, fire-safe doors during the summer of 2003.

Sprinkler systems can also take years to complete. For Kappa Delta, an architect had to draw the layout of the 65-year-old house, and there was a 10-month delay before water lines were connected to the house, DeMatteo said.

But time and money burdens are bearable, officials said.

“Anything that is for the safety for the students is right,” DeMatteo said. “But you have to look beneath the surface. If they’re going to pass something and they want it done for the right reasons, there has to be a support system in place to help chapters get to that point.”

University-owned fraternity and sorority houses are not subject to the city mandate, but all houses will have sprinklers installed when renovations to Graham Cracker sorority houses are completed. The last of the Graham Cracker houses to begin installations will be Alpha Chi Omega and Delta Gamma, which start in July 2007.

Greek life acts as a resource for the off-campus houses, providing help with finding architects, directing them to sprinkler contractors and helping them to understand the code, but “ultimately it’s up to them,” said Bob Nichols, assistant director of facilities for the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life.