Chapter Rooms
 

Just posing a question...

After hearing and reading about various organizations rules when it comes to Chapter rooms, It came to me that every organization handles them differently. I was under the impression for the last 3 years that everyone had the same rules. For instance, our house doesn't let anyone in the chapter room except Theta Xi brothers (not even a plumber or electrician or associate), while another house I know has parties in theirs. I was reading another posting where they were saying that associates can go into the chapter room. And shows on TV show chapter meetings or at least what their chapter rooms look like. Hell... we don't even tell the new associates and any other people where our chapter room is (its hidden). Only on initiation day will they know where it is (kinda cool surprise).
So the question...

What's your policy on your chapter room and is it that way nationally?

We have an informal chapter room and a formal chapter room. The informal chapter room is really like our den... we watch movies and TV in there, and anyone is allowed to hang out in there (male guests, non-sisters, etc.) Then we have a formal chapter room... I'm a pledge, so I don't really know much about that room. A lot of stuff is stored in there right now LOL.

We have nothing:D

But other houses have chapter rooms and only permit initiates to enter with the exception of candidates entering for ceremonial purposes. Sometimes, once a new member becomes a candidate they will use the chapter room for something but only under specific circumstances.

I was an active member long before a lot of you were born. We had a huge chapter room. Anyone could go in there except during meetings or ritural events. We used it for Study Tables, getting away from crowds, just a nice quiet place. It was a big rectangle room with windows facing out onto the stree that had shutters we closed during ritual and meetings. Ritual materials were in a locked closet that only the President had the key and a member of the House Corporation.

DaffyKD

Our house was originally a private home, and our chapter room was the living room, so it's really the middle of the house. You can't come in without going into it. The only other room of any size is the living room, which is off the chapter room and also can't be isolated. If we had designed our house from the ground up, I definitely would have put in a real chapter room.

Because on my campus we cannot have sorority houses (5 or more women living in a house is a brothel), there is an all greek dorm. Well in this dorm we have a room which we use as a chapter room, which is open to anyone, except during meetings and ritual. It is a place to hang out or study. We do not have the option of haing something more private, because it is a dorm.

Our chapter room is downstairs off of our dining room and anybody can go into it. We study, work on projects, etc in there.

Phi Kaps here have the chapter room pretty much out in the open connected to their dining area and they clear the furniture out of it to have parties... it's even less private than ours :)

That's about all I know about chapter rooms though... the only experiences I've had with them!

~April

we actually wanted our chapter room in our new house to be phi psi exclucive...but there was no way to manage that since the house is not that big and at some time pledges will need to use the room for their meetings. i know that the ucla phi psi has a chapter room that you have to be a brother to get into. it is a really cool idea, and i wish we had that in our house.

Yes there is :-).

LOL maybe I should be sure of what I'm talking about before I post. We put our bags and keys in there one day so that our Bigs could secretly steal the keys and decorate our rooms... and I didn't see any sort of ceremony.

I have a lot to learn and I'm the first one to admit it! Thanks.

How would you hide a chapter room? Could anyone give ideas (without revealing too much)?

My sorority was unhoused, but Panhel had a room in the student center that members of all sororities could use. AEPhi and Theta (the two unhoused sororities) stored our ritual stuff there, in locked trunks, and we could use the room for committee meetings. Panhel meetings were also held there. People could also hang out there and study as long as there wasn't a meeting going on. That was the closest thing we had to a chapter room.

To answer ktsnake's question - when my husband and I were house hunting, we saw a house with a hidden room in the basement. You opened up what looked like a closet door and there was a pretty big room behind it. Since it was in the basement, you couldn't see that the outside wall didn't match up with the inside wall.

I think whether a chapter has a chapter room depends on the size of the house and whether it was built from the start as a fraternity/sorority house. My chapter house was built as a private home 130+ years ago and there is no way to have a secure chapter room with exclusive access. We hold our formal chapter meetings in a classroom with no windows. We do have a ritual to gain access to a room that is set for formal chapter. There are chapters with secret chapter rooms on many big campuses. I visited a chapter house at a Big 10 school that had their house built (as a fraternity house from the start) in the 1920s. It had a secret chapter room that you entered through the back of a closet in the basement. It held their charter and really old archive materials, and was permanently set for chapter meetings. We had to pass the test with flying colors to get to see it!

I asked my dad about this- he said his group had the inverse of a chapter room- there was only one room in the house that non-brothers were allowed into, the rest of it was off-limits. Very weird.

Well, some are hidden behind closet/cupboard. Some just blended into wood panel walls ... Just different case for different house. Definitely worted to start one!
A chapter room is in the attic, and it blended well with the ceiling panel so that only certain people know about it. Or most of the chapter rooms are in the basement, and one can argue that the foundation of the house occupies the emptiness of the basement (if you compare the floor plan of the basement and the first floor, there is a difference that even the new members would notice).

How about the library? You can make the handle off couple books. Or the fireplace, one would not even guess something hidden there.