A growing family
Several chapters in the university’s Greek community saw big changes to their living situations during the past year, and now that the dust has cleared and the moving boxes have been unloaded, members of those houses say they are relieved to begin a new semester in their new and improved homes.
The second phase in a series of renovations to the sorority houses located on the Graham Cracker — the group of houses located between Knox Road and College Avenue — was completed this year, while several fraternities played a version of Trading Spaces, said Matt Supple, director of the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life.
The university’s chapter of the Sigma Chi fraternity moved into the house at the end of Fraternity Row previously occupied by Zeta Beta Tau, which lost its charter last year due to drug-related incidents. That swap paved the way for Kappa Sigma, a fraternity that until this semester did not have official university housing, to settle into the Knox Road residence that Sigma Chi left behind.
Sororities Delta Phi Epsilon and Sigma Delta Tau each moved back into their renovated chapter houses, located next to each other on Knox Road, after a year of sharing the same residence while the two houses were gutted, rebuilt and refurnished.
The university’s chapter of Kappa Alpha Theta also moved back into its house on Princeton Avenue after it received major renovations to its electricity, plumbing, heating and air conditioning, said President Rachel Reis. The project cost a little more than $2 million and, unlike the other chapters’ renovations, was funded by the chapter’s national headquarters, Reis said.
“It’s completely modernized and a little bit funky,” DPhiE President Eleanor Danan said of her chapter’s house. “Although living with [SDT] wasn’t hectic, it’s nice having our own space again.”
Last year, DPhiE and SDT executive board members devised agreements about space and time management so both chapters could host events without stepping on each other’s toes. Occasionally, Danan said, the chapters scheduled events they could attend together.
“It really wasn’t a problem,” Danan said. “The key thing was communication — letting them know everything.”
Both houses encountered some obstacles during spring recruitment, when they had to conduct their events out of a fraternity house, members said.
“We had to turn a frat house into a sorority house and try to explain to girls that we’re going to have a new house in the fall and that this was temporary,” said Kiara Tossona, a SDT member. “Carting things over there in the freezing cold didn’t help.”
Members of other chapters that underwent housing changes also said they are relieved the project is completed. Kappa Sigma Vice President of Development Jason Fried said having a new fraternity house closer to the campus has greatly helped its chapter.
“When we were off-campus, we had to organize meetings in the sociology building,” he said. “Now we don’t have to work off someone else’s schedule.”
In 1989, the university started renovating two or three chapter houses on Fraternity Row each year because many of them were built about 50 years ago, Supple said. Now, more than 10 years after finishing work on Fraternity Row, the university continued improvements on the Graham Cracker.
During the first phase of renovation in 2008, Supple said the university refurbished three houses, adding that the university will finish the final phase next year.
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