Three U of Tennessee Fraternities Close (Fire Code Problems)
 

Regional station WVLT (CBS affiliate) reports:

http://www.volunteertv.com/news/headlines/36311484.html

No immediate word that I've seen yet as to when the houses will re-open. Very tough for the men to have to go through this at this time of year. Excerpts from the story posted on WVLT's web site:

Residents living in three on-campus fraternity houses have voluntarily closed their doors after a Tennessee State Fire Marshal found several fire code violations during inspections.

The three are:

* Pi Kappa Phi
* Lambda Chi Alpha
* Sigma Phi Epsilon

Occupants of all three homes were given two choices, voluntarily vacate or hire someone to keep a trained 24 hour fire watch at each of the homes until the violations were fixed and the homes re-inspected . . . .

As I mentioned in connection with a similar recent situation at the U of Kentucky, events like this are a sobering reminder to house managers, RM officers, and house corporations -- as well as to current actives in chapters-- to do their best to keep housing up to codes.

Edited to add from another source

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/de...violate-codes/

Karen Collins, spokeswoman for UT, said she was unsure if the fraternity houses would be opened for the next semester.

"We don't own the houses; we own the land," Collins said. "Ultimately, it's up to the chapters to schedule the work."

Collins said fraternity houses are operated by house corporations composed of chapter alumni. She said there are 13 fraternity houses on campus. With three closed for renovations and three closed for safety issues, the campus now has seven functioning fraternity houses.

Update January 3, 2009
The article linked below says that Pi Kappa Phi is now cleared for occupancy; Sig Ep expects to be cleared after an inspection in a few days. Both have made repairs, etc. to meet codes. Reportedly the occupancy status of Lambda Chi is still uncertain / questionable:

http://www.wrcbtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=9611567

Ill openly say I'm out my lane on this one, but why is this news? The house didn't burn down did it? Lives aren't lost, no?

Right -- no burned houses, no lives lost. However, the condition of the houses as revealed in fire inspections caused resident members to have to move out at an inconvenient time. Not that any time would be really convenient. As I said in my earlier post, "events like this are a sobering reminder to house managers, RM officers, and house corporations -- as well as to current actives in chapters-- to do their best to keep housing up to codes."

I think that events don't necessarily have to be catastrophic to serve as reminders about safety, code compliance, etc.

I also thought that an update about improvements that have been made was reasonable, because it showed positive responses to the inspection reports.

But if the news, the thread or the posts or are deemed too insignificant or irrelevant, the moderator can delete and edit -- that's part of what we have mods for.

Edited to add: If the original question was more like “Why do the local stations / papers consider this news?” I can only guess along these lines:
+ UTK is the flagship public university in TN; lots of alums (Greek or not) are at least moderately interested in what’s happening at their alma mater -- and this happened to involve three houses;
+ UTK is a major employer in Knoxville, so there’s a chance that a good number of readers or viewers have friends, neighbors or family members working there – and “the latest” events around campus are of interest just to be able to keep up with what people are talking about;
+ UTK is an SEC school, and so there may be a little more interest in Greek-related goings-on than there would be in some other parts of the country;
+ there’s a student safety issue involved, and that can be of interest to parents of local / regional college kids living away from home, whether at UTK or at other schools;
+ fire inspection and fire marshal “closure” orders have a bit of a built-in “audience” – landlords, business owners, homeowners, and construction / renovation / repair outfits can be interested in what the fire inspection officials are looking for, and what kinds of enforcement procedures are going on.

So I can see news editors making the judgment that this would be “news” of interest to a decent number of their readers / viewers. Not everyone would agree, of course.

Update: All 3 Houses Re-Opened

WBIR has a short article on its site. Good news: Pi Kappa Phi, Lambda Chi Alpha and Sigma Phi Epsilon have made necessary changes and are reopened:

http://www.wbir.com/news/local/story...=78126&catid=2

Update (Mid-May, 2009): Two U of Tennessee Fraternities Recently Cited for Fire Code Violations

Pi Kappa Phi and SIgma Phi Epsilon have been cited recently. See:

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2009/ma...de-violations/