New Sorority Housing at Auburn
 

I was looking on the Auburn website and stumled on this:

https://fp.auburn.edu/housing/docume...%20preview.pdf

It's set to be ready for fall 2009. It's not like how I invisioned it 4 years ago when it was first proposed. I dunno how I feel about it. What do ya'll think? How do you think this will affect recruitment?

Interesting - not quite what I was expecting either - 6 sororities in one bldg?? That's going to get really crowded when having members live there. Not sure what it will do to recruitment.

L
AU ZTA Gamma Rho

Crud. My computer froze when I tried to open it but....why are they doing this? Isn't the current system working any more?

The buildings look pretty big. 3 floors of 4-person suites. 20 suites per floor=60 suites. My guess would be 2 sororities per floor. It will be the same number of beds as they have on the Hill right now. But the 6 chapter rooms on the first floor... No privacy. at least on the Hill, even if you share a building, your chapter room in the basement, completely seperate from the other chaper.

They'd better rethink that. At Mississippi State in the seventies, there were several chapter rooms in each basement and each sorority pretty much knew what the others wore to initiation. Also, some would listen to each others' ceremonies through the walls with drinking glasses.

The new set up will give sorority women private rooms and they'll only share a bathroom with one other person. It will make it more like apartment living and make living in chapter housing more competetive with off campus options. Also, rumor has it, Auburn will be requireinf ALL freshmen to live on campus, so with sororities in the Village, that frees up over 600 beds on the Hill.

Back in the day, all women had to live on campus! Seems like it was changed to let seniors live off campus my senior year. I wonder when the rest of the rules changed.

I'm cracking up envisioning this.

I don't get why people get so bent out of shape knowing what people wore to initiation. I guess because ASA is pretty open about what we wear...I know we had pics up everywhere from before/after initations. We held our initiation in a local church though, so you'd have had to work pretty hard to "spy" on us.

I wonder if having 6 sororities all in one building would affect inter-sorority relations. Division in the building: Our side vs. their side? Or maybe a common bond: Our building vs thier building?

At least on the Hill, the chapter rooms were on opposite ends of the basement so there was some privacy. Of course when I was in school, we were still in the Quad and the only sorority in the bldg. If 6 are in a bldg, how will they do rush? 6 groups of girls in the lobby? Mayhem!

I think the PNMs will wait outside in the courtyard. That's how you access the chapter rooms.

At Birmingham Southern, 2 sororities share each of the 3 townhouses. I wonder how that works out.

I like the basic concept, but I agree that it might make more sense to place the chapter rooms throughout the buildings rather than all on one floor. Since they are already mixing the use of the floor on the other levels, why not?

I kind of think they should set it up so that each group has a designated section: like this floor has a couple of multi-bedroom suites, a chapter room, a couple of study room, etc that will be primarily used by ABC.

If you compare the idea of having a house to having that set up, it's pretty comparable. But when it's just chapter rooms all on one floor, why would that be a big improvement over having a chapter room in a dorm?

See, that's my point. They already have what they want in separate dorms or in some cases (the really big dorms), no more than 2 sororities to a dorm. The majority of each dorm is independent and that's okay. I'd hate to see intersorority rivalries spring up because supposedly this group is too loud or that one is trying to take extra space or you name it...

I do wonder if it's hard to keep people living on the dorm floor these days when the off-campus (or even on-campus in some cases) competition is better.

It's one thing to have members live in dorms if everyone is living in dorms. It's something else if the norm is to live off campus after freshman year, except for the Greek women who might have to live on the hall. I suspect they like living on the hall but would like something nicer. (At this point aren't even the hill dorms going on at least 20 years since the last big renovation?)

I agree with you that it's going to need some working out since it's less well defined than the old dorm floors plus chapter rooms, and that this plan seems to suggest a weird mix of uses that might end up troublesome.

I'm not generally sure that it makes sense to have undergraduate housing mixed with classroom space. It just seems like you are asking for some noise issues.

Similarly, what independent wants to be living above or below a chapter room during any kind of event?

Do you suppose the idea there is that they can mix funding for the project?

curious
 

Just curious- are the fraternities housed in university housing too- I just assumed all SEC schools had sororities with southern mansions-

Fraternities at Auburn have houses. The new sorority housing will be located adjacent to the "Old Row" Fraternities.

I believe that only the sororities at Auburn and Tennessee do not have houses. They have suites/housing in dorms. The rest of the SEC fraternities and sororities have houses. Or at least the opportunity to have a house.

Also, my understanding is that the sorority and fraternity houses at Vanderbilt house a small number of members. Under ten and usually just officers.

Another drawback is that it is so far from central campus. The Hill is just about a 5-10 minute walk from Haley Center. But thev Village is at least twice the distance away. I know Auburn is going to a pedestrian campus, but I only see a very limited amount of parking near these buildings. One of the drawbacks of the Hill is that there is not enough parking for major sorority events (mainly recruitment and chapter).

True- but at Tennessee the sororities are begining to build houses.

Just curious, but why is that?

Well I think it is a combination of the brothel law and the rich university benefactor who stated in his/her will that there could never be sorority houses.:D

Actually, I don't know the reason, but I felt the need to be a smartass.

Can't speak to UT but at Auburn, the only reason that there aren't houses is that no group has stepped up to be the first to build. Plain and simple.

Wouldn't everyone pretty much have to step up at the same time, Panhellenic advisories/rules being what they are?

Haha, I was expecting someone to bring those up. ;)

I'm not sure how it would have to pan out at AU, but at MS State, one sorority finally said to heck with the university's rule about no sorority houses, we're building one. You'd better believe that the others rushed to buy land and keep up. One sorority that was floundering said no way and left at that point. So much for Panhellenic spirit, lol.

But I remarked earlier about how little privacy they had in those 2 dorms with 9 chapter rooms crammed in the basements. I don't blame the sororities for wanting to get out of there.

Thanks for the reminder. I do recall reading about this on another GC thread regarding UT sororities as well.

Houses Are in the Future for Sororities

From the Tennessee Panhellenic Website - Do the sororities have houses?

The UT Panhellenic community chose to build a Panhellenic Building to meet the needs of their members in the 1960s. It still provides our chapters a wonderful place to host events, and meetings, as well as a place to meet friends between classes. In addition, many chapters have designated floors in residence halls where many women live together from the same sorority. What we have is the best of both worlds.

The downside to houses is that they cost more money and that dues have to go up a lot, and I think that you also end up needing more alumnae support in terms of house associations and upkeep etc.

If you really could have the best of both worlds: housing people wanted to live in with some autonomy and the security of on-campus support for upkeep and financing of the structure, wouldn't that be great?

And houses the groups own also can destroy any sense of a level playing field among groups. With dorm floors and chapter rooms, a small group can afford to exist and be solvent with a small chapter; with true group supported houses, forget it. It's not going to work out to just have a tiny house when everyone else has mansions.

not what I was thinking?
 

When I read the initial posts (before opening up the link), I thought the "same building" meant like it is at UNT.

At UNT, the sorority homes are pretty much connected together (same building pretty much) - but they are seperated (sort of like really big townhomes!) and they look like traditional greek homes on the outside (pillars, etc)

I personally don't dig the layout of the Auburn place. I like that they have individual bedroom suites (at the old ADPi house we had roomies and while I loved my sisters, it was hard cramming 2 ppl's things in one room and still trying to keep it orderly.) but that's about it.

Apparently not. At least, that's not what's happening at UT. Initially all of the groups were going to have townhouses in a Greek Village of sorts, but one group decided it wouldn't suit their needs long term and wanted to go ahead with an actual house. Other groups followed suit and dropped out of the townhouse plan. However, not every group on campus had prepared for the eventuality of a house (financially) and therefore are staying with the townhouse option or possibly a lodge since they can't afford or aren't ready to build - at least not right now. I think the chapters planning to build houses are AOII, ADII, DDD, Chi O, and KD. I've heard rumors of others as well.

There is more information at this website put together for AOII's capital campaign.

Are they still putting these new buildings in where the CDV was (Hemlock & Mag)? I thought I heard they had changed this.

The locaton has changed. They will be located much closer to the stadium where the old ROTC field and hanger used to be.

It looks pretty in the rendering but I don't like it. Everyone being that crammed in there looks uncomfortable to say the least and a nightmare during recruitment. What about girls ditching parties and going to another sorority (yes, I know the rules but just saying). You definitely will know everyone else's business if the space of a year and you might even pick up a few new songs if the insulation is cheap. :) I guess it just doesn't give me the nice living space vibe for a chapter.

looking for Kappa Alpha Psi
 

I just left waffle house yesterday at 3:00 pm. Too busy to stop and say Hello! Where r u at

It's okay, but not great. Pretty much only the officers live in the house because I think a maximum of 8 girls can live there. Most of the girls live on campus, or commute. I know at the KD house most meetings take place in our basement. I would like to think that eventually, the sororities can get larger houses, similar to the fraternity homes. However, due to the recent changes at BSC, it's more of a wait and see attitude with so many activities and organizations.