Campus Housing
 

Independent student housing isn't allowed at my university, so none of the groups have been able to occupy houses on campus.
Each group has owned a house scattered randomly throughout the city but currently none of the 7 fraternities/sororities own a chapter residence.

There is a HUGE golf course that the campus owns, and the lease is expiring this year. The University is looking to re-absorb that land and do something with it. I've heard rumours that the majority of it will go to student apartments.

This is an opportunity for the greeks at my school to possibly have a real greek row. We just need to persuade the school administration to take us seriously.
One of the groups has an alumni who is very influential in the city, and if he can at least lend us his credibility we may have a shot. (If he is willing to help other groups out rather than just his)

I was just wondering how the schools with the big "greek rows" are allowed to stay on campus.
How are you regulated?
How are you zoned?
Do you have some sort of agreement with your school?

Any information would help,

Thanks

This could be a good thing in terms of visibility, BUT be very sure to look before you leap. You will most likely be much more regulated and might have to let randoms live in the house if you can't fill it, or else lose it.

on some campuses, the land and the house is owned either by a local housing corporation of alumni, or the land and house are owned by the orgs. national housing corporation. in those cases, the university has no say in the matter, and rules and regulations are set forth by the national office.

i have seen other campuses where the university owned the land and the greek org. had a long term lease for the land and the national org. built a house on it. other times i have seen campus housing dedicated for greek orgs. sometimes the national housing corporation may own the chapter room and parlor, i.e. public areas and the college owns the actual bedrooms/bathrooms. if all the rooms are not filled by the org. members, then other students can live in the bedrooms. they would not have use of the public areas if they are owned by the orgs. bedrooms fall under the jurisdiction of the college and public areas under the sorority/fraternity.

would your university be willing to parcel off and sell the golf course? where does each of the sororities/fraternities headquarters stand on housing for these chapters? would it help your cause if the school administration knew that the national officers of each org. were supportive of greek housing and had the funds to purchase or lease the land and build houses?

get that influential alumnus on board-i am sure that he would be willing to help all of greek life out. try to enlist members of each greek org, perhaps forming a committee and get verification from each orgs. national officers
that they are willing and ready to go ahead with housing.

Ok so as far as on campus housing goes for Greeks, i really don't know the logistics of it all but at my school the sororities are in this situation. Most of the fraternity house are located on two streets right next to campus, and some of them are actually campus owned but several of them are not. The ones not owned by campus are the big houses with several members living in them, they throw parties, and do everything else associated with being a fraternity house. The houses the campus owns I believe the house is actually owned by the org, but the land it is on is owned by campus. I'm not completely sure how this works. I know the house is not allowed to have alcohol (we are a dry campus), but the rooms in the house aren't considered dorms so the fraternity uses them as they want to.

The sorority house are on campus owned land and are considered campus housing. They are duplex townhouses. Each house has 9 bed rooms, 3 bathrooms, a den/ dinning room, study, kitchen, and another half bath. These houses are settled in a "dormitory" complex. There are 20 or so other townhouses and apartments in the complex, they are the nicest dorms on campus. The sorority houses were build as part of the complex and the only difference in them is that there are letters on the outside of the house and the furniture in the common areas was selected by the chapter in 2006, and can be changed with campus approval. As far as not havign the rooms full, our contract states that ALL 9 rooms must be rented by members of the sorority to prevent non members from moving in (something that is not allowed by nationals). Therefore all rooms must be paid for all year. So the way we ensure this is that if there is an empty room or two or nine (the problem occurs because these dorms are the year round ones on campus so we have to pay for the house, in the summer, when most girls aren't attending school) is paid for by a housing assessment. The assessment is only paid my members who have never lived in the house before, and the assessment can get pretty high depending on how many empty room you have. Also like I mentioned earlier our houses are actually considered dorms, so the price is set by the university. This means they are actually more expensive than renting a house or an apartment would be, so a lot of sisters choose to only live there one semester to avoid the assessment.

Wow, that really blows. Other posters: is that standard??

At VT, yup it is and yup, it blows. The thing is, we also aren't even allowed to live in the houses during the summer months because the school uses it for other things. Tech makes a lot of money from the on-campus greek orgs.

The way VT does Greek Housing is pretty screwed up. First of all, we're required to live on campus to be recognized. For the new portion of the greek village going up, the organizations that are moving there are also required to pay for 1/3 of the construction costs. Finally, the actual housing is 10-month, since the dining plan comes attached to that. However, our parlor fees are 12-month, even though we don't even have access to the house.

If that was hazy at all, just let me know. I'm kinda half asleep right now so I'm not sure how coherent I am...

EDIT- It's just the girls that have to live on campus, not the boys. I don't like it. It seems like a big ole' double standard to me.

I guess the village has its pros and cons. Oftentimes I wish we has the whole proper house shebang! It's nice to sort of have all the sororities together, but our houses are also kinda ugly compared to some of the beautiful homes you see on this site. Luckily, you're allowed to do basically whatever you want to the inside, so some actually end up being pretty nice. The boys' houses though... Well let's just say that there's a bit of a rodent problem there.

Thanks, those are all points I'll look into. I'll look into it during the summer and bring it up at the next Greek Council meeting!

We pay full room and board during the summer. The house is locked unless someone is living there and only the people who are actually living in the house have key access and such to the house. Now obviously if there is one person in the house then technically the whole chapter could very easily get in and use the house, but we don't. We don't hold meeting or really do anything at the house all summer; the only girls that are really there are one or two who actually are living there over the summer. As well as the maid, she comes every two weeks. Yes she still comes and we pay her to clean when the house is vacant ALL summer. Another thing about the summer is not only do girls not normally want/need to live there the only way they can is if they are a full time student (university policy). Now really who takes a full course load in the summer?