Gettysburg says: install sprinklers or sell to us
 

Gettysburg College offers to buy frat houses

By ERIN NEGLEY
Evening Sun Reporter

No Gettysburg College students died in a 2002 fire at the Sigma Chi fraternity house, but the blaze made the college think about fire safety in residence halls and fraternities.

The private college announced last spring that all sleeping rooms and common spaces in residence halls would have hard-wired smoke detectors and sprinklers by 2006. Fraternity houses must comply by 2010.

That means fraternities might have to pay more than $500,000 for the new safety features, depending on the size of the house and its proximity to a water line.

The expense might be too much for some fraternities, so the college has offered to buy the chapter houses, install the smoke detectors and sprinklers and lease the house back to the fraternity.

"Obviously, one of the goals of the board of trustees is to make the living environment as safe as possible," said Bill Lafferty, the college's director of safety and security and interim director of Greek organizations. "We've seen an obvious need to install fire detection and safety equipment."

But some fraternity members don't like the idea of replacing their alumni group landlords with college officials.

"A lot of the brotherhood is unhappy. What kind of power will the school have?" said Tau Kappa Epsilon president Ryan Whicher.

College officials extended the fire prevention mandate to the 11 fraternity houses not owned by the college because 320 college students live there, Lafferty said. The college's five sororities do not have houses.

Gettysburg Fire Chief Al Knerr said the new smoke detectors don't rely on batteries and the new hard-wired detectors will allow the college's safety and security department to pinpoint the smoky room.

"It is a great improvement, which will add in making the living areas safer for college students," he said. "With hard-wired smoke detectors, they're tamper-proof."

Smoke from cigarettes won't trigger the heat-activated sprinkler system, he added.

On campus, the college has spent about $2 million to install sprinklers and smoke alarms in dorms used by upperclassmen. Each bedroom has a smoke detector, Lafferty said, but they're not connected yet. He did not know the cost for connecting the remaining dorms.

So far, only one fraternity - Phi Delta Theta - has met the safety requirements, but several have started the work, Lafferty said.

Tau Kappa Epsilon's alumni association estimates installing the sprinklers in the sprawling home on Carlisle Street will cost $500,000, said president Ryan Whicher. The college offering to buy the house and make the changes is helpful, but the fraternity brothers have qualms about the deal.

"We have freedom to do what we want to do in our own house. We're scared they'll take that away," the college senior said.

But the freedom to stay up late, make noise and keep their privacy could cost the fraternity a half a million dollars. Several fraternities may pool their money and hire a company to do the work instead of selling the houses to the college.

"We have tons of time. There's no reason to jump to any conclusion," Whicher said.

Across the street at the Sigma Chi house, president Brad Mendosa, a senior, said the alumni group that owns the house is leaning toward selling. The student fraternity members don't have much input in the matter.

"We don't want to lose control in terms of having safety and security come in," he said. "There's a lot of tradition and ritual that's part of the fraternity experience that could be taken away."

Mendosa was a freshman when the halogen lamp overheated and caught fire, damaging the second and third floor. This promoted the new safety requirements.

"No one got hurt," Mendosa said. "I think it is a little bit overboard."

Phi Delta Theta is the sole fraternity to sell to the college. In the spring, the college bought the house at Washington Street and Lincoln Avenue for $14,000 in back taxes, said Kendra Branchick, assistant director of communications.

The college suspended the fraternity in 1996 for "failing chapter operations," said Sean Wagner, Phi Delta Theta director of expansion. Since then, the chapter house has remained empty and boarded up.

Last year, the national fraternity recruited 20 students for an interest group, the first step in becoming an official chapter. Once the group has 35 members and creates a recruitment plan, the group is eligible to become an official chapter, Wagner said.

Gettysburg College junior Doug Seale, the new Phi Delta Theta president, said he'd like to become official by the spring.

The transformation from the boarded-up building with hole-ridden walls is phenomenal, Seale said.

Repairs for the Phi Delta Theta chapter house totaled $1.2 million, Branchick said. And that's why the alumni group sold the house to the college, Seale said.

"It would have been up to the alumni to finance the restoration of the house," he said.

Now the fraternity members will pay college room and board for their housing.

Wagner called the sale "a good situation on both sides," Wagner said.

College ownership hasn't meant more discipline, he said, adding "It's never a big brother relationship."

Lafferty agreed.

"We obviously want them to maintain their individuality and they're going to do that," he said.

I'm amazed that the house corporations haven't already done this. It saves so much on your insurance that such rennovations are almost cost effective. And of course, the real advantage -- the safety concerns they alleviate is really immeasurable.

I think the college is really helping the organizations out by offering to buy the houses and pay for the rennovations. I'd be a little worried about the university taking my house over as well.

But really, if you have enough alums, 500K isn't such a huge number if you've managed to cultivate strong alum support. Just this year, here locally, our OU chapter is having a 1.5million dollar rennovation and the OSU chapter raised 2.5 million for rennovations.

Don't be surprised if, down the road, the administration asks to have a non-member permanently installed within each house (think more RA than house mom). It's a natural extension of the arrangement.

The sad thing is that many schools are beginning to chafe at the "yoke of liability" they have around their necks. Our reputations as beer drinkin'/hell raisin' types have helped them to decide that they may be better off without us.

I've heard from a few people around the country that the other thing Greeks are known for (being the leading contributors @ many schools) is overshadowed by the hierarchy's desire to get rid of us. We can talk all we want about "living the Ritual", but the negative stuff outweighs the good. Thoughts, folks?

Interfraternally,
BF

At Washington State University, we have also had to install the sprinkler systems in the houses, and we had a deadline of 2006. This was due in part to 3 fraternity fires over the course of 4 years. On our campus, if a chapter does not have a sprinkler installed, or scheduled to be installed by 2006, they will lose university recognition.
This summer, we finally had our sprinklers installed. We were only able to do this because of a houseing fund that had been saved for large projects, like this. Still, it is a lot of money for any chapter to come up with, alumni support or not.

Are the houses located on campus property? If not, then I fail to see how the college can enforce this. Are they offering fair market value for the houses?

No.

No to one or both dude? :)

The houses are off campus. At least the three that I drank at were off campus. I don't know what the school is offering for the houses.

Not a new concept on these pages, but one that must be understood by our undergraduate brothers and young alums...and generally isn't.

In our society the legal mode in these cases is to sue everyone in sight when there is an unfortunate incident.

Why should the university administrations put themselves at this risk? Big business certainly wouldn't.

Re: Gettysburg says: install sprinklers or sell to us
 

I wish, when they installed the brand-new sprinklers in the residence halls on my undergrad campus, they had installed something like that. It would have prevented many false alarms.

Re: Re: Gettysburg says: install sprinklers or sell to us
 

Don't confuse smoke activated alarms with heat activated sprinklers.

Enough smoke will set off the former, but it takes heat (the devices come with different temperatures at which they go off) to set off heat sensitive sprinkler systems.

I'm assuming Gettysburg is a private college -- their website says they only have about 2500 students, so that's a fairly safe assumption to make I guess, they can require anything they want of the students if those students want to remain students. If Gettysburg wanted, they could just decide to get rid of GLO's altogether.

The fact that they're even offering to help in my opinion is an indication of good faith. I would just be worried that today's good faith effort could result in Gettysburg converting the house to a special interest dorm or something of that nature.

Re: Re: Gettysburg says: install sprinklers or sell to us
 

You still would have had false alarms with the smoke detectors. Sprinklers can also have false alarms. That is why they usually are not required. The Pa state house even talked about making them mandadory a few years ago but it got shot down because of the problems. A sprinkler is basically a just a water line. At each fitting/sprinker head there is a small amount of lead solder. When the room gets hot the lead melts and water comes out.

There are also problems with sprinklers. The heads can be set off just by bumping them or something as simple as a helium balloon. Then the whole house gets flooded with water. How is that for a false alarm? At DeltaSigStan's school the sprinklers accidentally went off the first month the new fraternities were built. I'll guess there was probably a few hundred k in damage. Then there is the problem with reliability. Central Sprinkler that happens to be in Pa used to be the nations largest manufacturer of sprinklers. They had to recall 35 million sprinkler heads a few years ago. I think they declared bankruptcy.

Okay, we did have those super-duper sensitive sprinkler ones too. They have those mini red bars in the middle of them, that if they get knocked out, that's how the sprinkler gets set off? Yeah, the third floor of the residence halls w/ the sororities in them got flooded b/c somehow (probably a helium balloon during rush! lol) the little bar got knocked out of place on the sorority hall on the 4th floor. It was a mess.

DeltAlum, you're right, I should have been more clear. We had a combination of both somehow. All I know is, if you had more than one person gathered in the hallways while smoking, those suckers would go off FAST. The university had to implement a rule that you could only smoke in your rooms, not in the hallways b/c of all the smokers that would set off the alarms on accident.