Sorority House
 

What do you think is better-a single room in your sorority house or a room shared with sisters?

Pros/Cons of each?

Lets get some discussions! :)

Shared rooms bring in more money for the house corp and for a house corporation, they leave a lot more flexibility. If you're not able to fill all of your rooms, you can charge 3/4 to one person to rent a room for two (for example). If I was to build a house right now, I'd have every room built assuming 2-4 members would live in it.

Am I allowed to answer this even if I'm a guy?

I am not sure that men can truly appreciate the drama that can occur among women living in close quarters...

See I was thinking guys living together can have similar drama, but they are like two sides of a coin.

There are sorority houses with single rooms!!!???
Never heard of that except for a couple of officers (like President or NM Educator) getting a single room. At Tulsa Univ., we thought we were lucky to have 2 girl rooms in a cluster of 3 rooms that shared a bathroom.

This is the big trend right now at IU, building single rooms or double rooms. Both Beta and SAE have single rooms. Beta is all singles, SAE has a few. Delta Gamma at IU did a major renovation maybe 10 or so years ago and they made some of the really small rooms singles. They have singles, doubles and quads. It's very popular among the PNMs. Chapter houses that were built a hundred years ago have really small day rooms. Now that students have computers, TVs, DVDs, in their room the rooms are even smaller. I think it's a great idea. You can allow more live outs. I wish chapters had single rooms when I rushed, I would have looked at those chapters more favorably.

As a sophomore, go with the shared room. As a senior, save the risk of going to jail and take a single.

From all the AEPi houses I've visited, it seems most rooms were single. Either single or double no more. I know UF is all singles and Miami is mostly singles.

I'm pretty sure that in general this isn't determined by the organization, but by the available housing in the area, etc. Perhaps they prefer to build new houses with only single and double rooms, but I've definitely been in AEPi houses with triples and quads.

We had shared rooms (minus the president) and a sleeping porch. I often feel like that lowered the drama. No one waking anyone else up for 8ams or keeping others awake during finals.

We didn't have a house but a dorm floor, but I lived with my sister for two years. When she graduated, I made my mom pay for me to have a private room for my senior year. My room was always open and sisters were in there all the time, but I didn't want a random freshman roommate.

80% of housed students at my daughter's school had singles. Both the dorms and the sorority houses had doubles but also plenty of singles. She had a single all 4 years even in the decrepit first-year dorm. The sorority houses are only 15 years old so they are quite modern.

My son's university has mostly doubles in the dorms. His fraternity house.is quite old and the beds seem to be tucked under the eaves in the bedrooms in doubles, trips, and quads.

Wouldn't most guys want two girls in a room if given that chance? Hahaha.

I think a single room is always better, but that's just me. Heck, I've been married 21 years and I'd still like my own room! :)

I am right there with you and Virginia Woolf. I think we all need a room of one's own. I am a nicer person when I can have my alone time to recharge and regroup.

I think that moving into the house and getting to know all the girls better requires some room-sharing. I can be an introvert, but I think that for at least your first year in the house that sharing is the best. Many years ago I lived in our house for 2 years. Most of the rooms were doubles (I lived in a double 2 semesters) and 3 rooms were 3 or 4 girl rooms (I lived in these the other 2 semesters). You have the rest of your life to live alone if you want; I think that if your sorority has a house you should live with your sisters. By senior year you might be ready for a single, though ...

There is one exception - I have always thought that the idea of open-air dormers where the whole chapter slept in a giant room was kind of crazy. I don't know if I could do that.

For perspective: I'm a rising junior. My freshman year I lived mostly in a single in the dorms, then sophomore year I moved into the AGD nuthouse and had a different roommate each semester. Our house is set up so that the president is guaranteed a single, and the rest of the rooms are doubles with one triple. Three other doubles can be made into triples and the original triple a quad if necessary.

I'm friends with both sisters I roomed with, but first semester was admittedly difficult since the first sister and I were SO different personality wise and had different schedules/different things that ticked us off. Second semester my roommate was aiming for a single that opened up (which she didn't ultimately get) and I ended up moving in with my best friend (who needed a new roommate since her other best friend/roomie went abroad). It was the best idea ever -- even though she's my best friend, we get along very well as roommates. Similar schedules, same rules about "what goes", and we're living together next year as well.

I've always been more of an introvert and ALWAYS had my own room growing up, but I LOVE living with my roommate. I think it depends on personalities more than anything. Sure, you love all your sisters and have your best friends, but it's definitely easier to live in close quarters with some than others!

If you have an 8am, how do you keep your alarm from waking everyone else on the sleeping porch? I've been wondering this since I first heard of this concept.

You learn to sleep thru all but your own!

That wouldn't have worked for me. Unless I'm exhausted, my husband's alarm still wakes me up.

FWIW, I believe that everyone should share a room at some point. I had never shared a room for longer than a few nights (sleep overs, camp) until I lived in the sorority suite. It wasn't always the greatest of experiences, but I'm really glad I did it. My DH does find it odd that I did have four different roomies, though!

Needless to say, by the middle of my junior year, I grabbed one of the singles and held onto it like a life preserver!

We put them in the bed with us so it wasn't on a hard surface.

Our house had a dormer. IIRC we had wake up duty. (I never lived in.)

You put your tag on the board with the time you wanted to get up (fifteen minute increments between 7 and 9 I think) and whoever was on duty that morning came in and woke you up at that time. I think you got one follow-up after that and then you were on your own. So only the person on duty that morning used an alarm clock.

We had a wake up system. There were girls who were assigned it based on a point system. So Suzy who didn't have many points was given one shift a week to wake girls up. Girls had an option to put their names down for 630, 7, 730 or 8. So Suzy who had the 7am shift on Tuesdays would quietly wake all the women who signed up for 7. She would then wait ten minutes and make sure they got up or ask if they wanted to be put for 730. It worked really well actually. I still miss sleeping on the porch. Plus it wasn't that bad for Suzy either. They often got ready while waking people up and took quick breaks to walk the porches.

Some girls knew how to put their alarms on silent and only have them vibrate.

From a house corp standpoint (and I don't see how NPC groups would feel any different), if we're confident we can fill every single bed all of the time, no matter what, a single-room concept is great. If we could ever foresee having an empty bed, then a single-room concept can result in a lot of money burning.

There was a coed fraternity at my school, where everyone (men and women) slept on a sleeping porch, specifically, the attic. One of the house duties was a wake-up system that they called "arousal" (LOL). Whoever was on "arousal" duty slept in a room in the main house, with an alarm clock set for 5am (!). Each member signed up for a specific wake-up time starting at (I think) 6am, and the "arousal" person was responsible for quietly awaking each member at his/her chosen time.

I've heard (though never lived it) that once you get used to being woken gently every morning by an actual person, you really miss it when you have to go back to an alarm clock world. It's not the waking up part that would be my problem, it's the going asleep. Every roll over, snore, mid-dream chuckle, would set me off and I'd never sleep. Yeah for the ridiculously light sleepers of the world.

On a related note, can houses even be built these days with sleeping porches? I would think crowding and people per square foot regulations would prohibit it in new construction. Considering the last house at Iowa to be built (the beautiful AChiO house) had to include sufficient parking, I can't imagine they'd have said "but it's ok to sleep 40+ girls in 1 room!"

Having lived in two doubles, and one quad, I can say the quad was easier because everyone went to great trouble to be accommodating to one another. Living in the double with luck of the draw women, was always walking on egg shells.

Our chapter house slept 67, in a mix of singles and doubles, with one triple. For the most part, sophomores got doubles, and juniors got singles or a double if they didn't have a lot of points. I think it was fun to room with someone, but it was also nice to be in the president's suite :-)

We had an open air dorm that nobody slept in regularly, but it was often used for visitors or live-outs. During work week prior to recruitment, a lot of seniors stayed there if their apartments weren't available yet.

4 mans (or quads) at my school are most desirable... how odd! (they're also huge though, no bunks or anything)

I'm transferring schools next semester and will go from sharing a dorm floor to actually having a sorority house. I wanna check out the rooms since all of this talk of porches etc. has made me curious. Do you think it would be rude if I asked to come see the house? It's summer though...maybe no one is there. Hmm. What do you think?

Have you gone through the affiliation process with the new chapter? If not, I wouldn't assume that they will extend active membership to you, or that you will live in the house.

Definitely what irishpipes said. If the answer is yes, then many times people will live in over the summer while they take summer classes. Or at least they do out here. It may not be as nice however. I know that over the summer girls had to do all the cleaning and fewer lived in.

Lol of course. That would be way too presumptuous had I not.

A lot of the fraternity houses are open in the summer, they still have guys living in them sometimes. Most of the sorority houses close for the summer. If you want to see one, I would contact someone with the chapter and see if a sister or alumna can take you on a tour. :-)

Contact the chapter president. Even if they are closed for the summer, there may be times when it's open. My house had "summer chapter" where whoever could come, usually along with parents, would come paint, do light maintenance, maybe deliver and install new beds which seemed to be a never ending process in an old house with 60 beds. If they do anything like this you DEFINITELY want to participate. It will be a great bonding moment ahead of moving in and starting in on work week.

I had a single when I lived in, but it was the size of a closet. Actually, my closet was bigger (not kidding, we called it "the annex"), but didn't have an outside window, so the smaller room was where I had to sleep and the larger room was where all my stuff went besides my bed and tiny little TV. I never understood why they didn't knock out the wall between the two rooms and wall up the inside window in the one.

Anyway, only 8 women lived-in for us, and there were 4 singles and two doubles. I took a really full course load the year I was in the house, so I appreciated having my own space, even if it was a little wonky.