Panhellenic Housing-Info needed
 

We are forming Greek Row on our campus and are looking into the possibility of a Panhellenic house to house our 3 (soon to be 4) sororities on campus.

Does anyone know of campuses where there are Panhellenic Houses and if so how well they have thrived?

I only know of Jacksonville State University, University of British Columbia and Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

SMU sororities have individual houses - I don't think that's what you meant.

Jacksonville State University sororities live in dorms and each chapter has a floor. There are a few schools that do this.

Are you refering to university owned houses like at the University of South Alabama or Washington and Lee?

Appalachian State University has something similar. The university purchased a closing hotel and transformed it into the "Panhellenic Hall." Each sorority has beds for around 30 women and each sorority has space in the building. It's actually a pretty nice set-up because the chapters can use the ballrooms for meetings and chapter events!

would you describe what exactly you mean by panhellenic housing?

TCU has dorms arranged in a circle that have a wing designated for each fraternity and sorority.

I think they are working on building actual houses sometime in the next 10 years or so... that's the rumor, anyway.

I was wondering the same thing???

The sororities at UNT (minus ChiO) each have their own houses on Sorority Row, but they are all built together (i.e. they all share a wall at the ends of the houses where the stairwells are). So they are like really giant townhomes in a way. On the outsides and insides they look like seperate houses, but they are all connected.

It's hard to describle.

Structurally they are connected, but there aren't any doors that you can go through inside the houses that will take you from one house to the next.... if that makes sense.

Probably not. hehehe

Chi O has a seperate lodge somewhere close to campus. I *think* the University is building a house for DG?

You " think" right. KD's house is also in the works. I believe they both will be finished around the same time.

I think Southern Mississippi also has new university owned sorority houses.

I know what you mean by Jacksonville State's Panhellenic House. It's not the PH Dorm, in which each sorority has a floor, it's a separate (and gorgeous) house in which several members of each sorority can live. My daughter, an AOII, lived there two years ago.

The premise was a good idea but I'm pretty sure there were only members from 2 sororities living there that year, although it was full. Oh well, they learned a lot about each others' groups.

All the sororities held various parties there during the year.

The sorority housing at University of BC is owned by the local panhellenic association. http://www.vapa.bc.ca/housing/
You might want to contact them directly for first hand information.

Note: the land is owned by the university and the Panhellenic Association owns the house. In the US, land leases can get messy when trying to take out a mortgage. It can be done, but you have to jump through a lot of hoops

At SMU, we have individual sorority houses and two Panhellenic sorority houses -- women from all sororities have members living in the house and they are very popular. Apparently, you have to sign up during the fall semester of your freshman year (before you are even in a sorority) to get in for your sophomore year. It works great because there is limited room, if any, for sophomores in the sorority houses.

Yep. The Panhellenic House is the old ATO house. We had our Bid Day party there a couple of years ago.

I LOVE this idea!!!

The University of Tennessee at Knoxville has a Panhellenic building built around 1964. The building houses only big meeting rooms, with storage and small kitchens. A dorm has floors...or half-floors...designated for sororities. That will change in the next few years. Sororities are now being allowed to build houses.

University of CA, Irvine has University-owned townhome sort of housing. They are really nice. They have different sizes to accommodate different sized houses. It is not my school, but I had a friend who went there.

Hope this helps.

At Whitman (I think) they have a dorm that has some unaffiliated undergraduate women and all the sororities, each in their own section.

That sounds awesome! I really like that idea! Then you don't have to share those rooms with the rest of the university - should make reserving rooms for rituals, meetings, etc much easier. Plus you would think there would be more Panhel spirit :) Or competition....

That is really cool there are Panhellenic homes at SMU. It sounds like fun. I didn't even know SMU had those.

more description...
 

Our university is looking at something similar to this:

http://www.vapa.bc.ca/housing/

It is very similar to housing in a dormitory but is only for greek women.

Our Greek life would like to go and see how they are set up to see if they would be an idea for our new greek row, as we have a small area for greek row and half of our chapters are quite new.

Thanks for all the input!

I'm on the local housing board for ZTA at SMU and it has been quite interesting. Our house is known as Panhellenic I and we usually rent out to individuals. We also worked with another group who leased our house for 12 months while their's was being re-built and will be doing so again next year.

The UNT lodges are great! I attended the ribbon-cutting for ZTA's and the inside was amazing. ZTA actually owned land to build a house but gave it up in order to be a part of Greek Row at UNT.

birmingham southern college(alabama) sororities have a townhouse-like building that houses each chapter. each chapter has their own townhouse unit which consists of a formal foyer,living room, a dining room and kitchen on the ground floor, chapter room/laundry/storage and tv room in the basement and 4 double bedrooms with ensuite baths to house 8 girls on the second floor. they are very spacious and are large enough to handle the membership.all are decorated beautifully. the exterior facade is different for each chapter so that each "house" is very distinguishable from its neighbors, yet each facade blends in. i am not sure if the bsc website has a photo of the house, but maybe some of the individual chapter websites will.

As I and others have posted, at Univ of West Georgia, the sororities have been in 1 dorm since 1972. A new Greek Village has been announced for perhaps Fall 2009. Sororities and fraternities are weighing their options.

Washington & Lee had a Panhellenic house prior to fall 2000 when the sorority houses opened up. It was a former fraternity house that had gotten kicked off campus (specifically Delta Tau Delta) in the early 90s. My impression was that it was another housing option for sophomore women (2 year living requirement at W&L and Greek housing is on-campus, so most Greek housing is filled with predominantly sophomores) and maybe some of the Panhellenic officers. Once they opened the sorority houses it became something called the "Delt Center" (uhhhhhhh) which was a house for independent men who didn't drink and would host non-alcoholic social events. I don't think I'd be out of line to say that that tanked miserably at W&L. Then, the house became the International House (a big step up for them, and they throw a lot of parties there now b/c it has facilities to do so just like the fraternities do) and the former international house became the Spanish language/culture house.

You can see a lot of pictures at the house here:

http://ihouse.wlu.edu/

One of the things I wonder if the IHouse will start doing is getting a cook like the fraternities do... I am not sure, but part of me wants to say that Panhellenic may have served meals there when they had the building.

I can't really say much else about it than that it existed and was basically a holdover for before they had houses. There was also an authorized "Panhellenic Suite" in one of the dormitories at that point too (and all the sororities had suites to store their records/materials as well). I'm not sure how the suite and Panhellenic house differed.

Yep, thats true. It works really well for our campus because only sophomores live in so freshmen can still live in their freshmen halls and get to meet a lot of people from their classes then they move in for sophomore year and when they're upperclassmen they move off campus with a group of friends to a house. We have the capacity for 7 NPC sororities in the building but currently have only three (TriDelt chapter pulled in '05) so unaffiliated women live in the other sections.